Diddy, Still Fighting After All These Years
Diddy and a hip-hop marketing man fought over a model at Soho club Upstairs. The publisher of Forbes and the editor of Sports Illustrated really like white truffles. Butter owners Richie Akiva and Scott Sartiano were hit with a $120 million lawsuit by the developer of their new Chelsea club. Terrence Howard will make his Broadway debut in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr. were congratulated at dinner at Primola because Gellar changed her last name to Prinze. At Da Tomasso, Celine Dion ordered fourteen dishes of ravioli with tomatoes and peppers.
party lines
Explosion Damage Damages ‘Damage’ PartyHuman beings build mental models for things. You don’t really think about your commute into work; you just do it, the same as you do every day. This is why every now and then, when you walk to that same subway station to go someplace else, you get on that usual morning-commute train even though you mean to go the other way. Well, we have a model for party reporting, and last night we were set to cover the after-party for Glenn Close’s new FX drama, Damages, which we were told was at Cipriani’s. We assumed that meant Cipriani 42nd Street, so we left the office at the end of the day on autopilot. We saw some police barricades; we ignored them. We turned onto 42nd Street. There were a lot of bright lights. The street was blocked off. Wow, we thought, big premiere.
in other news
MTA Won’t Raise Fares, Thanks, Somehow, to Stuy TownThe benevolent overlords of MTA are now promising no fare hikes for 2007, honestly. For real. Not for subways, not for LIRR, not for Metro-North or bridge-and-tunnel tolls — not even for lightning-fast, camera-equipped Space Age ultrabuses. The news comes as a backtracking, after Peter Kalikow & Co. had already put a $240 million hike on the books, not to mention scared the bejesus out of everyone by floating a bizarre service-cut proposal. Now Kalikow says enough money has appeared to make that hike unnecessary, which raises the question: Where did the money come from all of the sudden, and who’s the secret Santa?
It comes from, says Kalikow, the city’s booming economy — and particularly its real-estate market. “The agency gets revenues from real estate transactions,” the News says, adding later that “it will get some assistance from the megasale of Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town.” All of which is well and good, if it keeps our subway fares down. But also: Huh? Is there a MTA tax on real-estate transfers? Is Tishman Speyer throwing a few MetroCards at Stuy Town residents to keep them happy? We don’t quite get this bit and would appreciate anyone who could explain.
On the other hand, it’s not like it so much matters. The MTA is predicting “huge deficits” for 2008.
MTA Plays Fare and Holds It for ‘07 [NYDN]