Milan Front-Row Report: McDreamy Who? It’s Roberto Bolle!Until the end of the week, the front rows of the Milan shows were a lovely reminder celebrities exist in nationalities other than American. Just because we don’t know who they are and Us Weekly doesn’t explain why they’re “just like us” doesn’t mean they’re not famous
This Year’s ‘Saveur’ 100 Is Thin on the NYC Love
We know another year has gone by in the food world because the Saveur 100 is out. The list “offers a vivid snapshot of the wide … world of food,” says the magazine, so the picks skewed global — licorice from New Zealand, anyone? — but we are, as always, only interested in the New York stuff.
Neighborhood Watch
Find French Onion Soup in Manhattan; A Co-op for Fort Greene?Bay Ridge: A VFW post has been fined by the Department of Health because its ice machine constituted a need for “food protection certification.” [The Brooklyn Paper]
Cobble Hill: Now that the deli and the TV repair shop are gone, we can dream of the G&D Television Wine Bar. [Gowanus Lounge]
Forest Hills: A new development threatens restaurant culture, as for-rent signs specify “NO FOOD.” The horror! [Queens Central]
Fort Greene: Plans are afoot for a food co-op. Does anything else scream gentrification louder? [The Brooklyn Paper]
Manhattan: Look for delicious French onion soup at Pastis, Landmarc, and Rue 57, among others. [
NewsFeed
Meatpacking Moguls Remm, Birnbaum, and Rabin on How to Be CoolOur fave waitress Courtney Yates isn’t the only face Belvedere Vodka is using to try to look cool — the company, in association with UrbanDaddy, is running Web interviews with David Rabin, owner of Los Dados and Lotus, and Eugene Remm and Mark Birnbaum, owners of Tenjune. Remm and Birnbaum don’t exactly steer toward the underexposed when asked for their favorite restaurants: BondSt, Nobu, Bar Pitti, Los Dados, Mr. Chow, the Spotted Pig, Pastis, Buddakan, Dos Caminos Soho, Cipriani, Butter, Rose Bar, and Waverly Inn.
neighborhood watch
You Aren’t the Only Person Who Comes Home to Find Random People Smoking in Your StairwellClinton Hill: Beware of undesirables who sneak into your apartment building to smoke butts, do drugs, copulate, urinate, and drink coffee. Because it’s happening. [Clinton Hill Blog]
East Village: The latest bank branch hopes that if it puts up a big photo of the hood in Ye Olden Days, no one will notice that it’s filled mostly with bank branches now. [Vanishing New York]
Flushing: Local Quaker farmers demand freedom of worship! Well, they did in 1657. But the tatty document in which they listed their demands, called “The religious Magna Carta of the New World,” is on display up in here. [NYT]
show & tell
Video: Padma and Alberta Go Way BackIntrepid socialite-cum-reporter Fabiola Beracasa hit the Philosophy di Alberta Ferretti presentation, where she found Elle’s Nina Garcia, Vanity Fair’s Alexis Bryan, and reality-television hostess Padma Lakshmi (who, long before she was intimidating the hell out of Top Chefs, was modeling for Alberta Ferretti in Milan). Watch and see what they had to say about Philosophy’s latest feminine line.
new york fugging city
Rain Fails to Fug Up Alyson Hannigan’s BangsThe burst of lunchtime rain abated just in time for a few of hoi polloi to take in the Philosophy di Alberta Ferretti presentation without ruining their hair. Which was crucial in Alyson Hannigan’s case, because she merrily showed off crisp new bangs to her gushing pals in the crowd, and every girl knows you can’t debut a hairdo when it’s plastered to your forehead. Unless that’s the look you’re going for, in which case you have larger problems than a little drizzle.
Neighborhood Watch
Gael Greene Unmasked and on the Loose in Midtown WestAstoria: Sakura sushi has just opened on Ditmars near 36th Street, and they have quite an extensive menu. [Joey in Astoria]
Flatiron: Macaroni-and-cheese porn has been posted to tease an upcoming roundup on the city’s best, and Mayrose already sounds like it has a leg up on the crusty contenders: “Down and dirty, this macaroni. It will fight you on the way down, and you may lose.” [Gridskipper]
Midtown West: Gael Greene unmasks herself at BLT Market and is treated to some nice extras. “A note to my pal, Restaurantgirl, ” she writes, “that’s what a restaurant can do when you’re not anonymous.” [Insatiable Critic]
Upper East Side: An Alto Adige white on Sfoglia’s wine list does not name the varietals because producer Elena Walch refuses to share what grapes she uses. [Mouthing Off/Food & Wine]
West Village: Julius on West 10th Street is open again after a brief seizure by New York State Department of Taxation and Finance and “crammed with the usual ancient drunkard queens.” [Eater]
show and talk
What to Wear to Turks and Caicos
Behind closed showroom doors (and in the Santa Monica airport), designers have been showing off their resort and cruise collections the last few weeks. The lines are bright, colorful, and chock-full of obscenely expensive bikinis. We hit up the target demographic Fabiola Beracasa and Byrdie Bell to see what the ladies planned to buy for their next vacations.
show & tell
As the Tents Turn: Isaac’s Back, Marc by Marc’s Gone, Look Out for Agyness Dean
With the collections hitting Bryant Park for the last time (please, Mayor Bloomberg, don’t make us hoof it to the Javits Center), we’re armed and ready for the season’s big changes.
London calling: One of Fashion Week’s hottest invites will be missing this season. Marc by Marc Jacobs is now showing across the pond, coinciding with the opening of the designer’s new flagship store.
Model down! Runway favorite Gemma Ward is skipping the season to shoot The Black Balloon with Toni Collette. We’re not saying Ward was typecast or anything, but she is playing a pretty young thing. Couldn’t she work in a coal mine?
Target hawker Isaac Mizrahi makes his grand comeback with a new collection and show on Monday, February 5, at 475 Tenth Avenue, near 36th Street.
Jeremy Scott is moving his often ridiculous, always outrageous show back to Paris, where he debuted in ‘97. We’ll miss the strip-club after-party.
After first canceling his show (his “goods” didn’t arrive on time), Stephen Burrows is now hosting a fall press preview. Tara Subkoff and Trovata shows, however, aren’t rising from the dead. Trovata split earlier this year citing “creative differences.”
atlantic yards watch
Bruce Ratner Will Ensure You Have Overpriced Coffee
Speaking of the inexorable march of franchised coffee, we noticed something interesting while idly gazing at some Atlantic Yards plans today. While much about Bruce Ratner’s project is still up in the air — Miss Brooklyn’s size, the project’s time line, the exact numbers of jobs it will create and people it will push out of their homes, who will win Daniel Goldstein’s lawsuits — one thing, however, is set in stone, at least according to sketches provided by Frank Gehry’s office. Atlantic Yards will definitely have a Starbucks.
Photos: Atlantic Yards Project [amNY]
Earlier: Old East Villager Distressed By Starbucks Influx; Also, Sky Is Blue
in other news
Old East Villager Distressed By Starbucks Influx; Also, Sky Is Blue
As lead-a-counterculture-icon-around-his-old- stomping-grounds pieces go, there’s not much surprise in today’s Times profile of Dog Soldiers author Robert Stone, whose memoir of the Beat Generation, Prime Green, drops on Tuesday. As the author trundles through the East Village, there’s the fond memory of how back in the day you could give a bum a dime to watch your kid; the lament that newly cleaned buildings have ruined the neighborhood’s “grimness”; and an odd story about how returning GIs, given their first slice of pizza, put scoops of ice cream on it because they thought it was pie. Still, the biggest watch-and-weep moment comes when the old soldier comes face-to-face with the Devil itself:
Heading toward Astor Place, he discovered that one of his favorite coffee shops had been turned into a Starbucks. Stopping for a light, he said, with less sadness than surprise: “I used to have such a tremendous sense of the city and of this neighborhood, and it’s lost to me now.”
Well, yes. We all know the Starbucks-is-taking-over feeling. But we’d suggest Stone dig deeper. After all, last time we checked, that Astor Place Starbucks had bathrooms grim enough for any old-timer. Plus, we hear they’re doing a brisk business in Venti PizzaCremas.
Counterculture Lion, Back in His Tidy Jungle [NYT]
in other news
Group Wants to Shape Up New Yorkers, New York
The Public Health Association of New York City has a new report out, and it’s a jaw-dropper. The problem it identifies — only one quarter of us get enough physical activity — is not all that newsworthy; we already knew that New Yorkers, once you get past yoga-crazed downtowners and the Chelsea iron-pumping contingent, are not exactly gym bunnies. What’s staggering about the PHANYC report, titled “Steps to Get New Yorkers Moving,” is the sheer scope of its remedy suggestions. The Association offers nothing less than a total reengineering of the city under the fitness flag. Proposals start with the obvious (more bicycle routes), proceed to the novel (“enable parks to directly benefit from the property value and property tax increases they generate”), and finally hit the full, glorious WTF. Apparently PHANYC wants the city to build “step streets” in its hilly parts, line the avenues with trees to make them more inviting for joggers, institute diagonal parking because it’s more pedestrian-friendly, adopt European traffic-calming measures, close certain streets to vehicles, and reduce speed limits. It’s not that we think these things are bad ideas, necessarily; it’s just that the plan seems a bit aggressive. What’s next, trying to ban all bad fats from our diets? Oh, wait.
Agenda for a Healthy New York [PHANYC]
