Richie Randazzo won the lottery, landed a model girlfriend, took a trip to Atlantic City, and then learned that his new girlfriend might be connected to a prostitution ring. It's been a busy few weeks for the now-former doorman at 1021 Park, who admitted today that the building dismissed him. Fortunately, buses to the Taj leave on the hour. [NYP]
Fred Wilson needs you! New York's most prominent venture capitalist is giving a keynote speech at the Web 2.0 Expo at the Javits Center in a few weeks. But instead of finding time in his busy schedule to write the thing—or using the sack loads of cash he has accumulated to hire a professional—he plans to creating the speech on a wiki basis, which means he'll be able to sit back and observe (or sleep, left!) as giddy tech-heads do the work for him. Sound familiar? Yes, indeed. Maybe as part of another experiment with "crowdsourcing," he'll solicit some volunteer construction workers to help him finish off that 12-story palace he's building in the West Village?
1 Model Management president Scott Lipps is none too pleased with his former assistant-turned-booker Vivien Wang. Although Wang departed the agency on good terms in May, the relationship quickly went sour once she landed at rival DNA Model Management. Now 1 Model claims that Wang and her new employer have been trying to poach clients, including Denisa Dvorakova, who's walked for Chanel and Christian Dior (and who's pictured on the left with Wang and model Noot Seear). Lipps' lawsuit against Wang and DNA after the jump!
Restaurateur/style maven Taavo Somer continues in his quest to bring his weird rural-retro aesthetic to every corner of the market: He's opening a second barber shop (there's already one upstairs at Freemans Sporting Club on Rivington) at 5 Horatio Street on Friday. So if you're brave enough to get a straight cut razor shave under the gaze of a taxidermied creature, you know where to go. [Style.com]
At least dumb celebrities like David Beckham and Britney Spears had the excuse that their illiterate markings were in a different alphabet (Hindi and Hebrew, respectively), but imagine walking around with "I'm Awsome" printed across your back. Not that the correct spelling would be much better. [L Mag]
Keith McNally, the restaurateur behind Balthazar, Pastis, Morandi, and Schiller's, turns 57 today. Oscar-winning actress Hilary Swank celebrates her 34th. Famed director (and Sopranos bit player) Peter Bogdanovich turns 69. Park Avenue boob-job pro Dr. David Hidalgo turns 56. Comedian Tom Green is 37. Ad exec Chuck Brymer is 49. Vivica A. Fox turns 44. And Jaime Pressly of My Name is Earl is 31.
Adriana Lima leaving the set of CW11's Morning Show ... Lindsay Lohan and Sam Ronson shopping at the Chanel store in SoHo and then having lunch at Bar Pitti a few hours later ... Naomi Watts and a friend shopping with Watts' son, Alexander, in tow ... Kirsten Dunst shopping with a friend in SoHo ... British actor Simon Pegg leaving his hotel ... America's Next Top Model winner Whitney Thompson on the set of a photo shoot in the West Village ... Sheryl Crow, son Wyatt, and the nanny walking home from a shopping excursion in SoHo ... America Ferrera posing with Blake Lively at the premiere of their new movie, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 ... Mary Louise Parker and Richard Simmons leaving The Late Show set.
Business can't be going well for Betty Beauty, the line of pubic hair dye created by Nancy Jarecki, the socialite wife of Moviephone creator Andrew Jarecki. Last year, Jarecki's company earned fawning coverage from Vanity Fair and was advertising in some of the most upscale salons in town. Now Betty Beauty is advertising inside subway cars, right alongside those ubiquitous ads for Dr. Zizmor and Spanish-speaking personal injury attorneys. Jarecki says her company is paying $10,000 for 50 underground ads featuring euphemistic taglines and no mention of what the product is actually used for. So why the new marketing approach? You can blame the tough economy (pink pubic hair dye is always to first to go!) or the omnipresent Brazilian waxing trend (does anyone have any public hair left to dye?). But you can blame Nancy herself when that creepy guy on the 6 starts asking whether your carpet matches the drapes.
Simon Doonan may have a brilliant eye for design, fabulous taste in decor, and a wicked sense of humor, but blind items don't seem to be his forte. In this week's Observer—and in between talk of his noble battle with toe fungus—Doonan recounts a special invite he and partner Jonathan Adler received during a recent trip to Capri:
A couple of weeks ago, the Columbia Journalism Review pointed out that the Wall Street Journal had updated some of its stipple portraits (or "hedcuts"), replacing the portraits of cheery-looking banking moguls (like Citi CEO Vikram Pandit) with more somber-looking ones. It isn't clear if the Journal took it upon itself to update the illustrations or if publicists had been the ones pushing for the change, but the switch made some sense: When you're announcing billions in losses and shedding employees daily, do you really want to be beaming on C1? Yesterday, Henry Kravis's visage (left) graced the Journal following the news that Kravis's private equity giant, KKR, would go public. We've already gone to the trouble of wiping the smile off Kravis's face for when KKR follows in the footsteps of Steve Schwarzman's Blackstone Group and takes an ugly tumble. (We also gave Henry slightly plumper lips. You're welcome.) After the jump, test your skillz by identifying a few (appropriately serious-looking) people who have made Journal appearances in recent years.
Bernie Goetz is back! And he'd like to be known as Bernard now, not Bernhard, okay? The man who famously shot four black teenagers in a subway car in 1984 is now running to become an Independence Party state committee member. (And his chief challenger may be as crazy as he is: Dr. Fred Newman, a controversial "former Marxist who is now a psychotherapist.") Goetz isn't new to the local political fray: In 2005, he ran for Manhattan public advocate on a platform of instituting vegetarian diets in public schools and assisting the city's population of infirm squirrels. Really. Fortunately, Goetz hasn't updated his website since his last run, so you get a taste for his nutty politics here. After the jump: footage of Bernie playing with with one of his rodent pals!
We'll leave it up to you to decide if Alex Gardega is any good as a painter, but you have to give him props for his media savvy. The fledgling artist was the subject of a story today in the Post about bartering. (Apparently, he's been trading his work for alcohol, gas, and MRI brain scans, among other things.) If the name rings a bell, though, that might be because he's the same guy who made the paper for his $10 sketches at the Spotted Pig and for painting Bill O'Reilly into The Last Supper a few months later. If getting your name out there is a half the battle for a struggling artist, then Alex Gardega has already won! [NYP]
