Remember that hipster trailer park at the Brooklyn Nut Factory that everyone was talking about? Well, the cops finally heard about it and they're none too happy. The evacuated the place this afternoon.
The very hard partying NYU economics professor Nouriel Roubini painted such a bleak picture of our economy he was dubbed Dr. Doom. Now his outlook has changed so he says he wants a new nickame. We're here to help.
At New York today: former über-flack Lizzie Grubman talking on Nightline about the pains of being a heiress. Next, Page Six-er Paula Froelich recalls the business of covering "people being stuck in the wrong role in an Edith Wharton novel."
The Box is opening in Moscow! Amy Sacco is still going strong in London. Looks like Manhattan's party scene is better in other countries than here. But get ready, along with the "new Beatrice," 2010 is bringing a reopened Bungalow 8.
Tipsters report: the NY Daily News gossip' team's down one, as Laura Schreffler's out. Is the NYDN gossip desk growing rust? We know one person who turned the gig down. Update: Ben Widdicombe's on the move: TMZ!
Her Majesty of Outlandishness Björk and her avante garde filmmaker husband Matthew Barney have shelled out several million for a house in Brooklyn Heights. From the look of the pictures, they've got a lot of remodeling to do.
ABC News' Jake Tapper, seemingly bored silly on a flight to Riyadh, or maybe just experimenting to see how many links he could get from wingnut websites, published perhaps the most imbecilic article in the history of journalism on ABC.com.
Ha. Daily Intel has obtained a photograph of Vogue editor Anna Wintour, the most important woman in fashion, standing in line to vote. This grainy image raises so many questions: Why does she seem to be hiding behind a concrete column? Why have her fellow voters turned their backs on her? And most importantly, is she in the tank? Anna, please write in with answers. This is what democracy looks like. [Daily Intel. Click to enlarge]
I cannot say I expected a blog best beloved for its breathless Gossip Girl recaps* would be the blog whose archives I spent the most time raiding to read up on the collapse of capitalism. But this crisis has been full of surprises and one of them is that reading New York magazine's Daily Intel blog could have saved investors a shit ton of money, because they have been paying superclose attention to the saga of America's Crapital Structure and they take very good notes. They reeled me into their archived coverage of what they call the "White Men With Money" beat when they ingeniously dubbed Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein the "Lila Fowler of Wall Street" after the moneyed alpha girl of the Sweet Valley High series. It wasn't a connection I'd think to make, but maybe that's because I'm not as savvy at parsing rumors…1. For instance, they totally rejected the worthless albeit true rumor about Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain's bad toupee and embraced the ex Goldman banker wholeheartedly. He looked like Clark Kent, therefore he would save his company with magical superpowers and common decency and it was really as simple as that. 2. Conversely, they did not like Lehman Brothers CEO Dick Fuld. Did not trust his eyebrows. And seized an early opportunity in June to lambaste him for being a style nazi. He was superficial! And people like that are always way too concerned about what other people think, and they overlook what's inside. Korean Development Bank was no more likely to save him from his deluded sense of reality than Elizabeth Wakefield was Bruce Patman. 3. Early into their shift steering the John Thain love train, they hired a prominent astrologer to see what was in his stars for the year. Just to make sure their instincts were correct. WERE THEY EVER.
Kirkus editors Chuck Shelton and Elaine Szewczyk (who apparently decided she didn't want her name used in this context after the Daily Intel item went up) both copped a feel of the National Book Award Loser for Nonfiction's junk last night. Chris was showing off the results a his recent Vanity Fair article, for which he'd waxed his "back, sack, and crack." The verdicts? "You cannot believe how smooth it is" and "As smooth as summer cherries."
Today, the erstwhile Daily Intel points us to a marked-for-deletion Wikipedia entry for one 'Jamie Isaac Conde,' whose great-grandfather Conde Nast started that whole magazine empire we seem to recall hearing about somewhere. Apparently, though, Jamie — like his namesake company — hasn't had an entirely scandal-free existence. Though he's trying (maybe — Wikipedia, people) to launch a career as a screenwriter, like most other inhabitants of his Californian zip code, he also has had a brush with violence, as evidenced by his interview in Gunstories, a book about teens and their experiences with guns! (What?)
In more pre-Thanksgiving cocaine-themed news (seriously, wtf) the Daily Intel reports that dissolute drug den (and hangout of the high-living) 205 is actually in danger of being shut down by clever vice cops, who have been posing as cab drivers and asking departing patrons if they've been offered drugs. Tricky, tricky! But owner Guy Jacobsen denies that the city's wacky suspicions have any merit. "I have a license to sell one drug; it's the one behind the bar." Ah, so that's where he keeps it.
So it turns out that the lovely Charmin installation in Times Square isn't for pooping, as we'd wondered, or for bulimia, as the Times had suggested. No, as the Daily Intelligencer reveals, these toilets are clearly for one thing only:
