Just the news you wanted this lovely Friday before a holiday weekend: W reports that The Hills' Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt, possibly the two most hated in the history of TV, are planning to open a bar in Murray Hill, a space formerly known as The Dip on the corner of Third Avenue 29th Street. That should be interesting. [W via Gawker]
Two people who are both a little too told to be doing what they're doing are celebrating birthdays today. John McCain turns 72 today and Michael Jackson is 50. Also celebrating today: Bob Rubin is 70, hedge fund manager Eric Mindich is 41, Hollywood director Joel Schumacher is 69, choreographer Mark Morris is 52, and Robin Leach is 67. Christine Schwarzman, gala staple and wife of Steve Schwarzman, is 56. On Saturday, Warren Buffett will celebrate his 78th, Lewis Black will turn 60, Andy Roddick will be 26, and Cameron Diaz will turn 36. On Sunday: Richard Gere will be 59, Patrick McMullan turns 53, Chris Tucker will be 36, SonyBMG CEO Rolf Schmidt-Holtz will turn 60, and Giants head coach Tom Coughlin will celebrate his 62nd birthday.
Remember that hour you totally wasted searching for your name on the Internet and then laughing at pictures of people who happen to have the exact same name as your own? Who knew my namesake was a 64-year-old insurance salesman in Talahassee? Hilarious! So there's a site called HowManyofMe.com that will do the calculations for you and reveal just how many people are out there who are, well, you. After the jump, a handful of notable New Yorkers and the number of people who share their famous names, including the 2,658 women named Jennifer Lopez, the 614 men named David Chang, and the 61 dudes who have Marc Jacobs stamped on their driver's licenses.
Hedge funder Scott Bommer and his wife Donya have sold their duplex penthouse at 1060 Fifth Avenue for "around" $48.9 million according to the Observer, just seven months after they picked up the place for $46 million. The Bommers will no longer possess one of the few Manhattan apartments that comes with its very own greenhouse; on the plus side, the couple's regained the record for the priciest co-op transaction in NYC history, an honor they temporarily lost when Jonathan Tisch picked up a Fifth Ave co-op for $48 million earlier this summer.
It's no longer cool being a banker—at least as far as real estate developers are concerned. While Wall Streeters might be reluctant to spend big on an apartment during this economic downtown, doctors don't seem to share their concerns—"people are always getting sick"—and so now developers and brokers are focusing their attention on physicians. A bunch of MDs aren't going to be able to save the entire Manhattan real estate market on their own, of course, especially since many of them are "quite a bit more conservative" than the young Wall Street turks who used to plunk down eight-figure sums for sprawling lofts about as quickly as they'd drop $500 on a $29 bottle of vodka at a Marquee. But newly-unemployed bankers who miss the old days needn't dispair. Just ace the MCATs, go through four years of medical school and another four years of residency, and your broker may start returning your calls again.
The Metropolitan Museum wasn't especially pleased when it was revealed to be the subject of Michael Gross's latest juicy tome, Rogues Gallery: The Secret History of The Moguls and the Money That Made the Metropolitan Gallery. A dispute over cover photo rights was settled several months ago; now GalleyCat reports that the book, which promises to unveil "the secrets behind the upper class's cultural and philanthropic ambitions," is scheduled for an April release. [GalleyCat]
Samantha and Mark Ronson (left) headed to lunch at Bar Pitti ... Michael Phelps turning up for an appearance on CBS' The Early Show ... Kim Kardashian getting out of an SUV near Times Square ... Lindsay Lohan shooting scenes on the set of Ugly Betty ... Kate Hudson and son Ryder going for a walk through the Village ... Gerard Butler leaving a lunch in SoHo ... Katie Holmes leaving rehearsals ... Nina Garcia promoting her new book at an event at Saks ... and Adrian Grenier walking through Midtown.
Jason Pomeranc is heading East. His Thompson Hotels is planning its first property outside of North America, a 100-room boutique property in Seoul that will be designed by Ilan Waisbrod of Studio Gaia. The hotel will be equipped with a "golf area," which should not be confused with a "golf course." Jason's iteration features a driving range, putting green, and some sort of simulated golf set-up, but it will still cost $100,000 in initiation fees to become a member if you're not a hotel guest. If it's anything like his previous projects, you can expect it to be "done" in about three weeks, but actually open to the public in September 2014, with the pool under construction until February of 2015. [HotelChatter, HD Mag]
Sometimes there's the chance for a comeback following a spectacular fall from grace. That doesn't look like a likely scenario for Adam Hochfelder. The erstwhile property mogul, who once controlled as much as 8 million square feet of property as part of his company Max Capital, counted billionaires Richard Kalikow and Robert Bass as partners, and was a social fixture around town, was arrested yesterday on charges of grand larceny and forgery. According to the Manhattan DA, the 37-year-old stole more than $17 million from banks and family members, money he used to pay off debts and for personal expenses.
John McCain has apparently taken careful note of the fact that no sooner had the news of Joe Biden joining the Democratic ticket emerged, his 2007 memoir Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics jumped straight onto the bestseller lists. McCain now seems to be taking advantage of his media interviews to market his own backlist, which consists of such magnum opi as Faith of My Fathers: A Family Memoir and Why Courage Matters: The Way to a Braver Life. In an interview with Time, the fiesty politico vehemently insisted that the reporters read his books for the answers to their questions. What, just because he's in the running for president, he should put all his eggs in one basket?
The maxim "all publicity is good publicity" will be sorely tested by the Observer's profile of Jeff Goldstein, the 32-year-old party promoter-turned-boutique owner who, despite a reasonably respectable pedigree—high school at Hunter, Skidmore, five years in banking, childhood friends with major namedroppability like Charlotte Ronson and Shoshanna Lonstein—apparently conducts himself like Willy Loman on roids. Potential customers to his store Blue & Cream are yelled at from the entrance, reports Irina Aleksander ("Hey, guys! This is a great men's and women's clothing store!") while he himself admits that "[s]ometimes I think I scare away people. I mean I don't even look like Mr. Fashion, I'm just a regular guy."
