Fern Mallis and Simon Doonan’s Tips on TippingAttention shoppers! It’s that time of year. Yes, the Tipping Time, wherein you must give of your bounty unto all those little people who make your world go round (even if it makes you a little morally queasy). But what to give, and to whom? Well! We ran into Barneys creative director Simon Doonan and Fashion Week overlord Fern Mallis several weeks back at the launch for our New York Look fashion magazine (which, we might add, yet again, is pretty fucking fantastic), and asked them how they treat the help when the holidays come around. What we discovered was a highly detailed system of reward, based on equal parts anger, fear, and compassion, which we’ve made into a handy list, below.
1. If you subscribe to fashion magazines, be generous to your postal carriers.
As every girl or gay knows, September fashion magazines are heavy enough to be used as doorstops or murder weapons. You’ve seen your coffee table buckle under the weight. Now imagine the spinal discs of your poor postal carrier, forced to lug a 5,000-page Vogue to every apartment in your building. And then there’s Bazaar. And W. Oh, God, that W. Feel guilty yet? Doonan does. “Every postal worker who has ever delivered to my building has gone on sick leave with hernia from lifting magazines. It’s a really disastrous situation,” he says. His tipping solution: at least $25. “But I do raises, so [my postal carrier] is making a fortune now.”
photo op
Chelsea Clinton Floored at StarbucksYeah, hey, it’s me. I’m at Starbucks. Guess who’s sitting right behind me. [Whispers] Chelsea Clinton. She’s sitting right behind me. I don’t know, she’s typing on her laptop. She’s sitting on the floor. She looks hot these days. Totally hot. I mean, way hotter than when she was like 13. No, I’m at a table. What? You think I should give her my seat or something? No fucking way, dude.
Chelsea Clinton at Starbucks: We Have Soooo Been There [Jezebel]
neighborhood watch
You Aren’t the Only Person Who Comes Home to Find Random People Smoking in Your StairwellClinton Hill: Beware of undesirables who sneak into your apartment building to smoke butts, do drugs, copulate, urinate, and drink coffee. Because it’s happening. [Clinton Hill Blog]
East Village: The latest bank branch hopes that if it puts up a big photo of the hood in Ye Olden Days, no one will notice that it’s filled mostly with bank branches now. [Vanishing New York]
Flushing: Local Quaker farmers demand freedom of worship! Well, they did in 1657. But the tatty document in which they listed their demands, called “The religious Magna Carta of the New World,” is on display up in here. [NYT]
in other news
Your Council Speaker Is Totally Crushing on Valerie Bertinelli
In 1978, before we knew we really like boys, we had the mad hots for our bubbly 13-year-old babysitter, Lisa, who rocked gym shorts, knee-length Jox socks, and two perfect, feathered brunette wings over her forehead. But why did we really worship her? Because she was a dead ringer for Valerie Bertinelli, that spunky Italian nymphette who, back then, played youngest daughter Barbara on One Day at a Time. (Today, she duels with Kirstie Alley in those Jenny Craig commercials.)
So, in this new NY1 clip, when our (sometimes) bubbly, openly lesbian City Council speaker Christine Quinn said that she likes to chill out by watching Lifetime flicks starring the adult, still-perky Val, we knew just what she was talking about: “Anything with Valerie Bertinelli is usually a good show because there are struggles,” said Quinn, who also did the usual dodge of the usual probe into her mayoral ambitions. “They are strong women, and it usually ends on an up note.”
neighborhood watch
Chelsea, Now With Lap Pools!Chelsea: New promo pics for the too-fabulous Yves (so French!) condo tell a smoldering story of love, lust, and on-site lap pools. [Curbed]
Clinton Hill: Don’t click here unless you’re ready to see the dead, mutilated squirrel left in front of the home of this blogger. Revenge from a developer who got a snarky write-up? [Brownstoner]
Downtown Brooklyn: The massive new real estate planned for the area may not be so massive overall…think 1.6 mil square feet of office space versus the 4.5 mil projected a few years ago. [NYO]
