To our office came a gleaming new copy of New York magazine's Look Book book. It's 255 pages of pictures of those New Yorkers whose "taste, or courage, or both," as editor Adam Moss writes in the desultory introduction, "you can't help but admire." Or maybe you can! All of our old friends are there: Mica De Jesus, the befreckled gypsy; Alex Kennedy-Grant, the guitar virtuoso; Kay Goldberg, the ninth grader who graces the cover; and of course Lisa Falcone, the writer, topless model and mere terrible of Liliana and Carolina.

New York magazine polls "some of the brightest minds in real-estate economics" and gathers the predictions on our crazy local market from dire to sunny. It turns out their worst-case scenario is that by 2010 purchase prices for housing plummet frighteningly... to 2004 levels. Oh, how frightening! Panic! How utterly unimaginative. Couldn't they have worked global warming into this or something? Maybe little illos of million-dollar 320 square-foot studios with water pouring in the windows in the year 2020—and outside you can spy former brokers and publicists, clad only in dog fur, their botox long expired, wrestling each other in the dank rising waters for big steaming hanks of child-meat?

It's a pleasant surprise, but we actually love Lloyd Grove's profile of New York Post editor-in-chief Col Allan in this week's New York. Allan, a saucy Aussie if there ever was one, comes off as a pugnacious tyrant who is driven by a desire to win at all costs. Also, he likes a drink every now and again. Mostly now. Read the whole piece: There's a ton of detail, and Grove's knowledge of the tabloid industry may not have saved his job at the Daily News, but it is put to good use here. Our handy highlights follow.

Didja hear the one about the young writer who got her start as a big bad blogger—until a savage backlash from readers made her reroute her career? Well, check out the October Glamour, in which Gawker alum Jessica Coen calls for an end to the "unmitigated and unintelligent nastiness" you find online. How did Coen's Damascene conversion come about? WWD has the scoop.

David Haskell, founder of fun indy mag Topic and man-about-town, has just accepted the deputy culture editor job at New York, and sent around the following email to Topic staff: "i've taken a job as deputy culture editor at new york magazine, starting october first. i'm very excited, and looking forward to telling you about it in person as details emerge. meantime, topic's plans for the next few months—finish, print and launch Topic 11: Escape—hold steady, and a december escape party is on the calendar. judging from last night's epic meeting w/ the art department, this issue is going to look fantastic." Escape, indeed!

New York mag contributing editor Michael Idov sends us this cartoon, telling us it's "quite likely the worst thing I've done in my life." Oh, c'mon! We're sure that's not the case!

Phil Weiss crops up in today's New York mag with a write-around profile of king of all media Matt Drudge, who could not be found anywhere. (It does contain pretty much everything you might need to know about Matt, except where he is and if he's gay or not and why there might be Spanish overheard at what might or might not be his house.) This is becoming something of a trend at New York. In the hopper over there, that we know of, there are forthcoming stories on former Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald, a story sort-of-maybe about our boss Nick Denton, and a story about New York Observer owner and Jersey boy-king Jared Kushner; each subject is, when we last heard, variously barely or sort-of not-at-all participating. Do Adam Moss and his band of boys just crave rejection? Is there a self-help book for this?

You'd think that New York would've learned something from the Times' mishandled move to its new building, but alas, it appears that the move down to Varick and Grand isn't going quite as well as perhaps Adam Moss would've liked. Oh, and bloggers? Don't think you'll be able to "work" from home anytime soon! Coen, Rovzar, Ozersky, Gallagher et al: We're looking at you. The full memo follows.

Is it incredibly romantic or sort of creepy that New Pornographer A.C. Newman's bride walked down the aisle to the Velvet Underground's 'I Found A Reason'? Maybe it's just sort of codependent. Maybe romance and codependence are inextricably linked? [NYM]

From New York magazine's review of Essential Therapy, the spa whose owner has been accused not only of fondling a client who fell asleep on the table but also of using the space for porn shoots and swinger parties: "Downstairs, jewel-toned and metallic fabrics adorn the walls, furniture, and even the floors of the waiting lounge, five treatment rooms, and men's and women's locker areas. (A sauna, steam room, and six-person Jacuzzi add to the warmth.)" Mmm, warmth.

"Over a poulet de grain rôti at La Goulue, on Madison Avenue, he added: 'I'd always loved New York and felt like I knew it, but I'd never actually been here. My main exposure to it came from 'Sex and the City' and 'Friends.' " That's parkavenuepeerage.com blogger and New York magazine fact-checking intern James Kurisunkal, batting his lashes at the Times today. But is he really a hayseed who knows nothing about NYC that he didn't glean from Carrie and Rachel?

Yesterday, there was such a dishy little item for the New York magazine's Intelligencer blog! It was about how former Men's Fitness editor Neal Boulton is telling people all about how he's still dating publisher Jann Wenner. But today that item is nowhere to be found. We hear that Jann called New York editor Adam Moss over it even. Now that's how the gays used to get things done in ye olden times. Love it.

In New York mag, Jennifer Senior takes a long, long, hard look at "the competition reality genre"—basically, all shows where contestants actually have to have skills besides willing to publicly humiliate themselves—and finds it lacking, especially w/r/t the career of inaugural Project Runway winner Jay McCarroll. Jay has been homeless and living in his studio for two years, cultivating his collection and, apparently, honing his already impressive nasty whiny streak. Why is this? Jennifer asks, along with 40 or 50 other rhetorical questions. Including! "If [Jay] couldn't succeed in the aftermath, why were we watching? Of what use was the show?" Um. To entertain us? By being a T.V. show?

The Near-Fame Experience Of Being A Bravo Reality Star [NYM]

The bizarre Gawker colonization of (or assimilation by!) New York magazine continues. Following in the footsteps of founding editor Elizabeth Spiers, who spent a year at the magazine, and her former Gawker co-editor Jesse Oxfeld, who was recently booted upstairs to the position of senior editor, Jessica Coen, most lately of Vanity Fair's website, is taking a position as New York Senior News Editor, managing their ever-growing online presence. (Forty-something staff and growing!)

In Monday's New York mag: "Married Man Seeks Same for Discreet Play," by David Amsden. Says the PR teaser, breathlessly: "He has a loving wife, a small child—and sex with men on the side. How the Internet has made it easier than ever to lead a detection-proof double life." Ooh, who is "he"? Dollars to donuts we don't find out. Still, looking forward to it! (And to young Mr. Amsden not writing about teen girls for once.)

How crazy is it that Lloyd Grove, our favorite former gossip columnist at the New York Daily News, is on assignment for New York magazine to write about nutty New York Post editor Col Allan? So crazy! We hear the piece is at least a few weeks away, though he's been working on it for a while. One might assume the rationale for assigning the piece, despite any actual or theoretical conflict of interest, is that Lloyd would bring some sort of inside knowledge to the story. But if that were true, wouldn't he still have his job at the Daily News? Hi-o! Oh, just asking, Lloyd!

Jesse Oxfeld named senior editor at New York magazine. Starting next month. If he's still there. [WWD]

Have you ever loved a magazine so much that you wanted to reach out and touch it in its special internet-place? Yeah, us neither. Apparently, though, some Facebook-inclined people need to have this kind of relationship with New York magazine. They want to tell it their thoughts, like "I wish 2 be the editor of NY MAG ONE DAY!" Good luck with that, Sarah Sarway (Yeshiva of Flatbush). Also, if you ask a question on the Wall, there's a chance that ice-princess publicist Serena Torrey will deign to lower herself to personally answering you. Her avatar is a photograph of three pigs. The pigs represent Adam Moss, Bruce Wasserstein, and the younger Wasserstein who secretly owns the magazine. Or: ignorance, stealth, and narcissism. Or: the three vanities. Or: Appolonia 6. Go on, poke her!

We [Heart] New York magazine! [Facebook]

When New York magazine moved into 444 Madison Avenue, it was a young magazine in its late twenties. Rupert Murdoch had just sold his stake and the magazine's full floors—for the most part, 13 (edit), 14 (art) and 15 (ad sales)—represented a new era. The Newsweek sign came down and in its stead the now iconic New York sign went up. Folklore has it that Murdoch personally insisted on the signage. But now New York magazine is heading downtown, and the building is collapsing around them.

David France, who is so gay that he co-wrote Jim "Gay American" McGreevey's The Confession, has a long examination of the (pseudo)science behind gaydar in New York mag. It's endlessly long and contains few revelations—the ultimate conclusion is that sexuality is "about your soul." But if you're really interested in looking for physical signs of a gay gene, the article talks about three fun ones: "gay accent," lesbo-hands (index finger longer than ring finger), and hair whorl (gay men's may tend to go counterclockwise). The article cites a whorl study of "more than 50" short-haired gay men that took place at a pride festival, about 23 percent of whom had counterclockwise hair whorls. How scientific and conclusive! We decided to aid the research by taking a long, hard look at (who else?) ourselves.