cityfile

Spotted

cityfile · 08/21/09 08:33AM

Adrian Grenier walking in the West Village, laptop amnd coffee in hand ... Courtney Love getting out of a car in SoHo ... Diddy walking down Broadway ... Geraldo Rivera carrying his dry cleaning across the street ... Sienna Miller walking in SoHo ... Sarah Jessica Parker leaving her townhouse in the Village ... Kanye West walking with Amber Rose in SoHo ... Jodie Foster hailing a cab ... Renee Zellweger leaving ABC studios in Midtown ... Agyness Deyn walking in SoHo ... Jessica Biel getting in an SUV ... Julia Roberts walking downtown ... Melanie Brown and husband Stephen Belafonte shopping in SoHo ... America Ferrera filming scenes for Ugly Betty ... and Lindsay Lohan standing outside the Waverly Inn with sister Ali and a friend.

cityfile · 08/21/09 08:26AM

Fuld Seals the Deal at 640 Park

cityfile · 08/21/09 07:44AM

• A rare bit of good news for former Lehman chief Dick Fuld and his wife Kathy! The couple have closed on the sale of their 6,200-square-foot co-op at 640 Park Avenue, albeit for quite a bit less than they were hoping to make on the sale. After originally putting the apartment on the market for $32 million in May, the couple ended up selling it for $25.87 million. The lucky buyer? Glenn Fuhrman, the co-founder of MSD Capital, Michael Dell's investment fund. [Real Deal]
• Celebrity hairstylist Orlando Pita bought a condo at 101 Warren Street last September. Now he's unloaded his former co-op at 2 Fifth Avenue. The two-bedroom pad, which Pita first put up for sale in '07, sold for $2.95 million to Razorfish co-founder Craig Kanarick and his wife, Rebecca Odes. [Cityfile]

Happy Birthday

cityfile · 08/21/09 06:51AM

Kim Cattrall turns 53 today. Kelis is turning 30. Heroes star Hayden Panettiere is turning 20. Google co-founder Sergei Brin is 36. Steve Case, the co-founder of AOL, is turning 51. CBS Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith turns 58. Randy Mastro, a former deputy mayor and now a lawyer, is 53. Actress Carrie-Anne Moss (The Matrix, Memento) is turning 42. Country music legend Kenny Rogers is 71. C-list reality TV star Brody Jenner is turning 26. And Long Island's very own Amy Fisher turns 35 today. Weekend birthdays below!

Lindsay Lohan's Days Are Never Drama-Free

cityfile · 08/21/09 05:45AM

• Lindsay Lohan left her cell phone at a deli yesterday. When she returned a few minutes later to retrieve it, an employee refused to give it back to her. LiLo wasn't too pleased to hear that, of course. (Let's hope the Italian ice she's holding made up for it.) But most of the time, she only has herself to blame for her troubles. Yesterday she tweeted that she was at a store in SoHo. But then she got annoyed when a gazillion photographers materialized outside a few minutes later. [Sun, P6]
Salman Rushdie was spotted making out with a hot, young babe at the Inglourious Basterds party at the Standard Grill the other night. [P6]
• Jennifer Aniston supposedly "feels rejected and upset" after Bradley Cooper dropped her and started dating Renee Zellweger. [Us]
• Speaking of Zellweger, she used her appearance on David Letterman's show last night to promote the Blue Parrot, the Mexican restaurant she co-owns with Ron Perelman, Jon Bon Jovi, and Larry Gagosian, among others. [People]

The September Issue Makes Its Debut

cityfile · 08/20/09 07:03PM

• The September Issue debuted at the Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday night and the fashion set turned out en masse, not surprisingly. Just a few bits from the big event: Anna Wintour couldn't stop talking up Fashion's Night Out; Thakoon gushed that Anna is now "bigger than Madonna"; the film's unlikely star, Grace Coddington, emphasized that she really never wanted to take part in it; everyone ignored Tom Florio; Diddy claimed Anna as his fashion "godmother"; and Marc Jacobs, who insisted on putting on a French accent when speaking to reporters, argued that contrary to what most people think, Anna's really very "maternal and caring."
• Speaking of Jacobs, rumor has it his wedding to Lorenzo Martone will go down this weekend in Provincetown. And his big Fashion Week after-party, which was canceled last year, will return this fall.

Eating & Drinking: Thursday Edition

cityfile · 08/20/09 03:20PM

• Cooking shows are all the rage right now with the Food Network and Travel Channel both witnessing record ratings. Real estate shows, however, have been bombing. Why? "Food can take away the pain." [Bloomberg]
• A Q&A with Danny Meyer, who says he hopes to regain the star that his Union Square Cafe lost recently just as soon as Sam Sifton takes over as Times dining critic, and that his big pet peeve are dishes with hazelnuts in them. [RG]
Steve Hanson reports the eatery he's opening in the former Hog Pit space on Ninth Avenue will be casual American spot called Bill's Bar & Burger. [NYT]
• The chance the fish you're eating does not have some mercury in it? Virtually nil, according to a new report by government scientists. [NYT]

Good News/Bad News

cityfile · 08/20/09 02:59PM

As always, there's both some good and bad economic news today. The not-too-encouraging: The New York State Department of Labor reports that New York City's unemployment rate jumped to 9.6 percent last month, "surpassing the national unemployment rate for the first time since the recession began." Much better: Morgan Stanley is hiring 400 new employees! (If you don't know anything about emerging markets, foreign exchange, and/or derivatives, however, don't even bother taking the time to hunt for the latest version of your resume.) Regardless, feel free to focus on whichever piece of news suits you, depending on whether you're the glass-half-full or glass-half-empty type. [NYT, AP]

The Magazine Ad of the Future; Rupert Takes a Hit

cityfile · 08/20/09 01:01PM

• Get ready to see commercials appear inside magazines. CBS is embedding tiny screens in an upcoming issue of Entertainment Weekly, which will play a clip promoting the network's fall season. What will it look like? Like this. [WSJ]
• Poor Rupert: The billionaire chairman of News Corp. only collected a compensation package of $18 million for the most recent fiscal year, which is down from $30 million, or 40 percent, from a year earlier. [AP]
David Letterman continues to beat Conan O'Brien in the ratings. [NYT]
• Did Glenn Beck get yanked off the air after stirring up so much controversy recently, or is he on a regularly scheduled vacation? It's a mystery! [Politico]
60 Minutes is planning to air a tribute to Don Hewitt this Sunday. [NYT]
• Meghan McCain is returning to The View as a guest host. How thrilling. [NYP]
• Reader's Digest is one step closer to officially filing for bankruptcy. [NYT]
• What is Jayson Blair, the disgraced ex-New York Times reporter, up to these days? He's a "certified life coach" for a mental health facility. [Gawker, AP]

Valentine's Day: Ruined!

cityfile · 08/20/09 12:43PM

"Can a candlelit dinner give you cancer?" New research today suggests that, yes, that charming, romantic dinner your boyfriend was planning in your honor may just have been an attempt to kill you. [NYDN]

A Little Piece of Iceland On the Hudson

cityfile · 08/20/09 11:57AM

Björk and Matthew Barney have put their West Houston Street apartment up for sale now that the couple is relocating to Brooklyn Heights. But that's not the only property the quirky Icelandic singer and avant-garde artist are looking to dispose of, it seems. Björk's home in Snedens Landing, the tiny hamlet in Rockland County overlooking the Hudson River, is also available to buy ($1.8 million) or rent ($7,000 a month). Needless to say, you can't find a "formal" dining room constructed out of stone and decorated with hard-carved wooden furniture and reindeer antlers just anywhere. [Real Estalker]

A Recession Is No Friend to the Grammar-Challenged

cityfile · 08/20/09 11:01AM

You may have been thinking the fact that you were laid off recently gave you a pretty good excuse to sleep in a little bit late, occasionally spend the mornings in your pajamas, and maybe even go an entire day without showering. How wrong you were! As the Wall Street Journal's Christina Binkley explains it, you'll need to get up earlier, dress better, and possibly take remedial English classes, too:

Sheila Bair's Consolation Prize

cityfile · 08/20/09 10:33AM

Sheila Bair, the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, may not be worthy of coverage in the eyes of Vogue editor Anna Wintour. But maybe she can take some comfort from Forbes' new "100 Most Powerful Women" list. Bair comes in at No. 2, right behind German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who nabbed the top spot for the fourth straight year. [Forbes, NYDN]

Winding Back The Clock to '03

cityfile · 08/20/09 10:20AM

Perhaps you were under the impression that Marquee, the Chelsea club owned by Noah Tepperberg and Jason Strauss—and now in its sixth year— had seen better days? Maybe you were thinking A-listers had moved on to Strauss and Tepperberg's new venue, Avenue? Apparently not:

Spotted

cityfile · 08/20/09 08:59AM

Drew Barrymore walking to yoga class downtown ... Whoopi Goldberg leaving the Apple store in SoHo ... Lindsay Lohan shopping at INA on Thompson Street ... singer Jessie James arriving at MTV's studios in Times Square ... Sienna Miller getting out of an SUV and heading into an office building ... Amber Rose talking on her cell phone ... Al Pacino shooting scenes for You Don't Know Jack ... Whitney Port walking in SoHo ... Frances Bean Cobain shopping at Zachary's Smile in the East Village ... Carlos Leon riding a bike in SoHo ... Penn Badgley walking to the Gossip Girl set ... and Sarah Jessica Parker leaving Minetta Tavern with Hugh Grant.

Invest With Confidence

cityfile · 08/20/09 08:26AM

Leave it to a former employee of Lehman Brothers to come up with the worst name for a hedge fund ever. Edward Filippi, who once sold commodity investment products for Lehman, is the founder of Ground Zero Strategic Commodities: "Putting the words 'ground zero' in a hedge fund name may disturb many people, as it undoubtedly conjures up images of the site where the World Trade Center was destroyed nearly eight years ago." You think? [NYT]

Lyor Cohen Takes a Loss, The Mayor's Ex-Wife Lists

cityfile · 08/20/09 07:34AM

Lyor Cohen, the man who runs Warner Music, turned Def Jam into a music powerhouse in the '90s with Russell Simmons, and now happens to be Tory Burch's boyfriend, has taken a loss on the UES co-op he owned with his ex-wife, Amy. In 2006, Cohen and his then-wife paid $7.75 million a duplex at 8 East 96th Street. The purchase came about two months before the couple called it quits and now they've finally managed to unload the place: Google executive Julio Pekarovic and Maria Vasconcelos picked up the pad for $6 million. [NYO]
• Susan Bloomberg, the ex-wife of Michael Bloomberg—and mother of Georgina and Emma—has put her 4,472-square-foot penthouse at One Kenmare Square in SoHo on the market. The four-bedroom spread, which the mayor's ex-wife picked up for $10 million three years ago, is now listed for $11.5 million with Brown Harris Stevens broker Dennis Mangone. [NYO, BHS]

Limitless Credit: Just What Consumers Need

cityfile · 08/20/09 07:11AM

Big banks have lost hundreds of billions of dollars as the economic downturn has left millions of Americans unable to pay their credit card bills. So that would make this the perfect time to introduce a new card with no spending limits, right? No? Oh, well. It seems Chase is now planning to give American Express a run for its money with its new, "limitless" "Sapphire" card. The good news, clearly: Jamie Dimon's debt-collecting good squad should have no problem keeping busy for the foreseeable future. [NYP, Bloomberg]

Happy Birthday

cityfile · 08/20/09 06:25AM

Today Show weatherman Al Roker turns 55 today. Actress Amy Adams is turning 35. Fred Wilson, New York's best-known venture capitalist, is 48. Connie Chung is turning 63. Local TV anchor Maurice DuBois is 44. Fred Durst is turning 39. Former presidential candidate Ron Paul is 74. Tony-winning actress Joan Allen is turning 53. Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin fame is 61. Boxing promoter Don King is turning 78. And Disney star Demi Lovato celebrates her 17th birthday today.