Kirsten Dunst Off the Wagon Again?The recently rehabbed starlet was spotted with Champagne glass in hand, and more celebrity mishaps in our morning gossip roundup.
Dolly Lenz Can’t Imagine Why Anyone Would Dislike HerWhen it first came out that a prominent real-estate agent had been murdered several weeks ago, Robert Kolker writes in New York this week, before that person was revealed to be Linda Stein, some in the real-estate community guessed the deceased might be super-broker Dolly Lenz, a fact Lenz backed up herself, telling the writer she got twenty calls from people that night, including her own son, asking if she was okay. That’s weird, we thought. Wouldn’t her own son know if she was dead or not? Oh maybe not. “I would say I speak to my son 10 minutes a week,” Lenz says in an Observer profile coming out later this week, tidbits of which are on their Website now. “I would say I spend an hour [a week] with my daughter.” Even with her superb parenting skills, sterling reputation (“I’ve known Dolly for over twenty years, and systematically, whatever friendship she has, it dissolves,” former Elliman president Paul Purcell told New York in 2005), and — as the Observer nicely puts it — “outsize” personality, Dolly can’t imagine anything bad happening to her. “Never,” she tells the paper. “I feel like I treat everybody 100 percent fairly, and I think at the end of the day that’s all they really expect.” But maybe she shouldn’t be so sure. When Stein died, “we were hoping it was Dolly,” one broker told New York with a giggle. Um, yikes.
The $748,319,000 Woman [NYO]
Related: Death of a Broker [NYM]
announcements
‘New York Look’ on Newsstands, En VogueListen up, everybody, we have an administrative announcement. (This is a little like that fire-safety director who randomly comes over the loudspeakers in your building to interrupt your day — except it’s a fashion alert, so you should listen this time.) The fashion department at New York has been doing a little work on the side lately, and the result is a brand-spanking-new magazine, New York Look. If our Fashion Week coverage at nymag.com is practically live, intended to convey the excitement of the shows as they happen, then Look is the fully digested, carefully thought-through, and gorgeously photographed follow-up — the distilled essence, we hope, of everything that happened this spring season in New York, London, Milan, and Paris.
An online version of Look will appear in the coming weeks, but we venture to say that you really should pick up the print version on a newsstand today, because it’s rather beautiful. On the cover and at the heart of the magazine are over 40 superb images by Magnum photographer Paolo Pellegrin, who shot backstage at every major show around the world — that’s his photo of Agyness Deyn at Missoni in Milan above this text (her skin is even more loathsomely flawless in print, trust us). We’ll have an expanded edit of Paolo’s work online soon, but these pictures do demand to be seen at large sizes on glossy paper.
On top of that, our editors break down the essential spring trends for both men and women via a voluminous series of runway shots. There’s Amy Larocca on Marc Jacobs. Vanessa Grigoriadis on Roberto Cavalli. The Fug Girls on Anna Wintour and Roger Federer. Plus party coverage, model reports and … okay, we’ll shut up now. Look costs $5.99 on newsstands, and it’s available in New York at most Barnes & Noble stores, Whole Foods, Eastern News, Hudson News, Universal News, and too many smaller outlets to list here (out of town, Barnes & Noble in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, Seattle and Atlanta has it). Or you can order it online at nymag.com/look (where it costs, um, more … the cost of shipping is crazy!). Check it out. Really.
grub street
Mom Always Said Not to Play Ball in the Fancy French Restaurant
You think it’s easy being a waiter at a high-end French restaurant? Hardly. Chanterelle server Ian Tomaschik has to serve and clear a six-course tasting menu while also replenishing bread and silverware and making drinks and coffees. “In the beginning,” he told Grub Street, “I didn’t think I could pull it off.” But he has, for six years, and it’s worth it: “Once I saw the name Barry Williams on the reservation list. I was like, I can’t believe I’m waiting on Greg Brady.” Tomaschik is this week’s Ask a Waiter.
Ian Tomaschik of Chanterelle Will Serve You Fake Wine If Your Secretary Asks [Grub Street]
photo op
From Far Away, Even the Meatpacking Looks Cute
Flicking through Flickr, we happened across this very cool shot looking south at the corner of Ninth Avenue and 14th Street. We don’t really understand what was done to make the buildings and trucks all look like miniatures, but we do like the nice metaphor of the meatpacking district being nothing more than a collection of overcute playthings. Nice work, random Flickr photog.
intel
How Is a Park Slope Seder Different From All Other Seders?“All right,” said the rabbi. “We’ll try to get to the food as fast as we can.” Rose Water, the Haute Barnyard Park Slope restaurant, was holding its second-annual second-night Passover Seder, and the obstacle between the starving, secular attendees and the five-course prix fixe was an hour-long ritual leavened, as it were, with trademark neighborhood sanctimony. The plagues recitation became a mini-lecture on abused women (the modern-day plagues were rape, shame, and so on); we were even more riveted by the time- and nabe-specific Four Questions.
intel
Jon Bon Jovi Goes to Brooklyn, Does Not Build a House
Yesterday we schlepped out to the Brownsville section of Brooklyn because we were promised Jon Bon Jovi working on a Habitat for Humanity house. “Delta Air Lines joins Jon Bon Jovi and members of the Philadelphia Soul arena football team on Tuesday, April 3, 2007, at 1:00 p.m. to participate in a build with Habitat for Humanity-New York City,” said the press release (the emphasis is ours), which seemed pretty clear. Bon Jovi! Brooklyn! Together! Yay! But then we got there and discovered the dude merely giving a press conference. Wasn’t Jon going to “participate” in that “build”? “You really don’t want to see me grabbing a hammer,” he said. (Actually, we did, which is why we spent an hour on the D.) “But I’ll be happy to purchase them.” Sigh. How about Marty Markowitz, also on the scene — was he excited to have a genuine rock star purchasing hammers for Brooklyn? “I can’t really tell you I know his stuff,” the usually indefatigable borough president said, “but I know people are crazy about him.” We should have stayed in midtown. —Jonah Green
cultural capital
The ‘24’ Absurd-O-Meter: Bonus Michelle Dessler EditionWe ran into Reiko Aylesworth, who used to play CTU agent Michelle Dessler on 24, at a party for the new Philip Seymour Hoffman play, Jack Goes Boating, recently. And so we realized we had a perfect opportunity to get some expert insight on our 24 Absurd-o-Meter, which she confessed she hadn’t seen.
Did you ever read a script and just blurt out, “What the hell?!”
Oh, we would do that, probably every other day. There’s a lot of stuff that gets to us, and we say, “Oh, come on.” And it actually doesn’t even air. There were things that they wanted to do with my character …
Like what?
Oh, like, suicide. Within the course of 24 hours, I become suicidal.
the morning line
Jersey Jackals
• The Times reveals that the Garden State has been regularly raiding its own state-worker pension fund, funneling billions into other government projects. Given the size of its public sector, disaster looms; New Jersey, we thought better of you. [NYT]
• Activists in East Harlem faced bulldozers in a dramatic, and failed, showdown over a community garden. The site, on 110th and Fifth, is being cleared for the future Museum for African Art — and, of course, a luxury condo tower. [amNY]
• The Giuliani campaign, God’s gift to tabloids, has turned to Rudy’s international-policy experience: “I’ve probably been in foreign lands more than any other candidate” as a private consultant, he assured New Hampshire and hinted he’ll hit Iraq next. [NYDN]
• The Knitting Factory, the Tribeca music institution, is promising not to go the way of Tonic, Sin-é, CBGB, and many others: Should the rent skyrocket when its lease runs out, the club will try buying the whole building. [MetroNY]
• And midtown’s old-money hangout/tourist trap ‘21’ Club has even longer arms than previously thought: It just stopped the Pittsburgh Pirates from naming a stadium sports bar “Club 21.” Because otherwise the two would be indistinguishable. [NYP]
party town
At the Opera, More Than Meets The Eye• Metropolitan Opera 40th Anniversary Gala. Metropolitan Opera, Lincoln Center, 7 p.m. Expected guests include Julianna Margulies and Ivanka Trump. And there are still tickets for the public left in the “Orchestra Balance” and “Orchestra Prime” sections! Ah, Orchestra Prime: the most highbrow of the Transformers.