Alberto Rottura is the man who cuts Michael Bloomberg's hair. (His cuts cost $35.) He's also the man who tends to the locks of Betsy Gotbaum and Tom Wolfe. One person who used to be a client but no longer shows his face around Rottura's salon any longer? Eliot Spitzer. "Then he got entangled in an escort scandal, resigned and never came back, Mr. Rottura said." [NYT]
Did you know that last Friday marked Eliot and Silda Spitzer's 21st wedding anniversary? Neither did we! Fortunately, the Daily News was thoughtful enough to send a reporter to cover the momentous occasion, who found the couple celebrating over breakfast at E.A.T on the Upper East Side: "She had toast. He had oatmeal. They shared laughs." Don't forget: breakfast is the most important meal of the day! [NYDN]
♦ Invoking emergency powers, the Fed will create a special fund to buy up commercial paper—short-term debt that companies typically use for such things as payroll—in an effort to ease up the credit markets. [Bloomberg]
♦ Wachovia and its sparring suitors, Citigroup and Wells Fargo, have agreed to a two-day truce as negotiators try to work out a resolution. [WSJ, DB]
♦ Did you miss Lehman CEO Dick Fuld's testimony before the House yesterday? A recap. [WSJ, FT, NYT]
♦ Bank of America reports that profits plunged 68% in the third quarter. [CNNMoney]
For the most part, it would seem, Eliot Spitzer lives a remarkably palatable life, given that he was humiliated and forced to resign as New York governor just six months ago in a prostitution scandal. Spitzer's marriage is intact; he has plenty of well-paying work to do at his father's real estate firm; and he is able to run through Central Park and walk around the city because " he hasn’t gotten a lot of negative stuff out in public," an old friend told the Times. Spitzer has even received well-wishes from former vice president Al Gore, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and the widow of Robert F. Kennedy. But still: People laugh at him. The Times investigated exactly who:
Whitney Port of The Hills eating lunch with musician Jay Lyon at Extra Virgin on West 4th Street ... Gretchen Mol pushing a stroller ... Spike Lee signing books at the at Virgin Megastore in Union Square ... Paris Hilton posing outside the Letterman show ... Drew Barrymore walking into the Sheraton in Midtown to attend the Clinton Global Initiative ... Eliot Spitzer standing by himself ... Gisele Bundchen and Tom Brady leaving Kobe Club on 58th Street ... and Katie Holmes getting out of an SUV outside the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre on West 45th Street.
Eliot Spitzer has been keeping pretty quiet recently, hasn't he? After months of radio silence, he emerged from hiding this week to answer a few questions for TONY as part of the mag's 40th anniversary celebration. (The London edition's 40th, that is.) The ex-governor provided responses to a handful of trite questions—his favorite place in New York is the Reservoir in Central Park, his favorite New Yorker in history is Teddy Roosevelt—although he took a pass when asked how he feels now that he's no longer running the state. And if he could have a drink with one other notable New Yorker, who would that person be? "These days I prefer hanging out with my kids—having dinner and encouraging them to do their homework and put aside Facebook for awhile." Yes, we imagine keeping the kids away from the Internet is a good idea.
Time Out New York actually scored an interview with Eliot Spitzer, the disgraced former Governor of New York. Remember him? Slept with a hooker? Yeah. Then he disappeared forever and ever, except as a punchline. But he's apparently happy to answer the TONY questionnaire for their "New York 40" issue, because none of the questions are about hookers. (They tried to ask him some vague questions about, you know, not being the governor anymore, but he declined to answer them.) The portrait of post-gubernatorial Eliot Spitzer is a kind of sad one.
Natalie McLennan is the self-proclaimed high-end hooker whose statements in a 2005 New York magazine cover story helped get her convicted on prostitution-related charges last year. Now that she's done her time, McLennan is free to tell all in a new book. And, what do you know, just like her onetime pimp Jason Itzler, McLennan just happens to have unearthed from her memory some sexy new stories to tell about Ashley Dupre, famed hooker to former Gov. Eliot Spitzer and a former working girl alongside McLennan. The tales were excerpted in the Post Sunday, alongside a racy picture (left). They involve cocaine and the rapper Nas:
As if it wasn't enough that Eliot Spitzer's career, credibility, and friends disappeared into thin air when his sexual improprieties were exposed, now his legal bills are going up. Two former New York Racing Association officials have filed suit against Spitzer for prosecuting them when he was attorney general. Spitzer had argued that the officials had taken bribes to allow overweight jockeys to ride in races, but the officials were later cleared of the charges. Now the two men involved, Mario Sclafan and Braulio Baeza, say Spitzer cost them their jobs and their reputations and they'd very much appreciate $100 million or so for conspiracy, abuse of process, and false arrest. (How much do state racing officials get paid?). The full 38-page complaint after the jump.
Where did John Edwards and Rielle Hunter have their first romantic interlude? At the Loews Regency Hotel on Park Avenue, which happens to be one of Edwards favorite hotels in town. (We're guessing, however, that the hotel's owner, Jonathan Tisch, won't be including this little fact in the official hotel brochure in the near future.) But Edwards isn't the only married man who picked the five-star property to carry on behind his wife's back. In 1997, former football star Frank Gifford—the husband of Kathie Lee—bedded nude model Suzan Johnson in suite 521. (Gifford later claimed a tabloid had set him up.) After the jump, a few of the hotels where some of the rich and powerful have cheated on their wives, stashed their goomahs, and/or ran up a huge mini-bar bill.
So this is where the career trajectory of Ashley Dupre has led: A $2 million offer from "an entertainment network and a major studio" for virtually all media rights to her high-priced hooker story, including an interview, reality show and possible book. The story was broken in the Post, so Fox's TV and movie divisions are decent bets. As the scandal over her onetime john Eliot Spitzer cools toward tepid, it's hard to imagine Dupre getting a better deal, no matter how many more times paparazzi "catch" her in a hotel with a married construction heir or on the beach in a bikini. Oh, also, here are the three insane careers Dupre is interested in once she gets her payday and this scandal blows over:
