Bring On The Nubiles!

As the haves and have-mores scratch, claw and bite their way into the top tenth of the top one percent, a parasitic support structure scoops up the crumbs of excess:

There were 500 votive candles, a half-dozen Christmas trees, four scantily-clad elves, two caricature artists, one giant inflatable basketball game and a killer skyline view. But what really impressed guests at the party that Fox Interactive Media, an online group, gave on Wednesday was the vintage arcade-style Ms. Pac-Man machine.

“That,” said Adam Sumner, a 23-year-old media planner, “was awesome.”

The Scotch tasting didn’t hurt, either. “Pairing it with chocolate was really nice,” said Rohanie Singh, 29, who works in advertising.

“I give this party an 8.5,” said her friend Michael Jacobson, 29, an Internet consultant. “It reminds me of the dot-com era. What would make it better is if they had a Santa dancing in a thong on the bar. That would be like a 9.5.”

The holiday party season is in full swing, and even without a naked Santa, there is a lot going on. Business has been booming at new steakhouses like STK in the meatpacking district and Porter House New York in the Time Warner Center, at the resurrected palaces of excess Le Cirque and the Russian Tea Room, and at the Nokia Theater in Times Square, a newer addition to the music and event circuit. All are fully booked this month — and into the next — with events for financial companies, law firms, media conglomerates and tech businesses.

Corporate party planners say that 2006 is shaping up to be a good year:

“We’re having a really ridiculous fabulous season,” said Serena Bass, the Manhattan caterer who has spent more than two decades in the corporate party business. “Two-thousand four was not so great. Last year was better, and this year is really, really great. The numbers are bigger. Last year we were getting a lot of 150. Now were getting 250, 350, 450.”

Ninety percent of the parties at the Russian Tea Room, which reopened last month, will have caviar and vodka service, at a cost of as much as $500 a person, said Ken Biberaj, a spokesman for the restaurant. Even ice sculptures are back: behind the glowing white bar at the Fox party, held at Studio 450, a loft in Chelsea, there was one in the shape of a giant letter I (for “Interactive”).

As lavish as the parties are, they are still not quite up to dot-com era excess. But at a time when the Dow has reached new highs and the haves are evolving into the have mores, these celebrations are more in line with the buoyant economic mood than with the discouraging situation in Iraq. This season, there is a greater willingness to throw more-elaborate parties, complete with themes, video displays and specialty cocktails.

“In the past, we had the idea, ‘We’re in a war,'” said Danielle Venokur, the general manager of L’Olivier, a florist and event production company with offices in Chelsea and on the Upper East Side. “But for some reason, that’s not in the forefront of everyone’s mind right now.” She paused before adding: “That’s a little scary.”

As if to underscore the importance of the Bush tax cuts in all this, a recent phenomenon emerges:

To liven up their events even further, many planners are borrowing ideas from clubland and Hollywood, creating plush lounges and adding $5,000 lighting set-ups and video effects. Some are even offering bottle service and V.I.P. seating, where chief executives and other high-ranking officials either occupy a separate area of the party, or have a more private event with, as Ms. Bass put it, “less loud music, slightly brighter lights and better wine” before their employees are admitted.

“We’ve gotten several requests for club-style additions to the party,” said Joseph Cozza, the vice president of sales for banquet spaces at Cipriani. “Different environments are very popular, either a small lounge area or deluxe bars.”

Somewhere In North Carolina A Lightbulb Goes Off In John Edwards’ Head — “Two Americas: Brokesters And Dons” (Alternate Title: “Of Mooks And Men”)

As the haves and have-mores scratch and claw their way into the top tenth of the top one percent, even mafia members are feeling the pinch, with some even struggling to make ends meet:

Richard Martino, a slender 47-year-old, favors Prada shoes and until recently drove a sleek black Mercedes-Benz. He has owned multimillion-dollar homes in Harrison and Southampton, N.Y. He spent much of the last decade running a telecommunications and Internet business to which his expertise helped bring in hundreds of millions of dollars. By one accounting, he made tens of millions for himself.

John Setaro, 57, did not finish high school, and has worked recently managing a fast-food restaurant in Seaford on Long Island. He generally wears neat but casual clothes, and lives in a modest, vinyl-sided, colonial-style house in Franklin Square. During a difficult period several years ago, according to his lawyer, he was making $2,400 a month.

But the two men nonetheless share an extraordinary bond, according to federal authorities: Both swore an oath to the Gambino crime family in a secret induction ceremony.

The striking disparities underscore a simple truth not always understood outside the ranks of the city’s five crime families: Some mobsters reap millions from rackets, and in some cases from legitimate enterprises, but many struggle to maintain a middle-class existence, and some are routinely broke. The impoverished gangster barely eking out a living is so commonplace that mobsters have a word for these poorer men of honor: brokesters.

. . .

No self-respecting mobster wants to be seen as a brokester — nor would he want his peers to think he struggles to keep up with his middle-class suburban neighbors. But the pressure is great as well to keep up appearances as a successful criminal. Mobsters have even been known to borrow money from loan sharks to throw it around on the street — and to pass it up as tribute to superiors — while at the same time scrimping in the privacy of their home.

“The hours are long, there is no benefits package, there is a high risk of prosecution, and very little job security,” said Gerald L. Shargel, a lawyer who has represented a number of mobsters, rich and poor, including several members of the Gotti clan.

Dance, Boy

As the haves and have-mores scratch their way into the top tenth of the top one percent, other portions of New York City’s labor pool have reverted to bartering for basic services:

In a groundbreaking program that’s been a runaway success since the Daily News profiled it last year, hundreds of uninsured artists across the city have signed up to barter their talents for health care.

“This was uncharted territory,” said Dr. Edward Fishkin, medical director at Woodhull Hospital and the brain behind ArtistAccess, which has enrolled more than 350 uninsured dancers, actors and painters.

“I honestly didn’t know what would happen. [But] we have exceeded expectations,” Fishkin said.

The artists like the idea of offering their services for health care, he said.

“They didn’t want to look like they’re getting charity,” he said.

The Williamsburg hospital now fields up to 30 calls a week from artists who want to participate, he said.

It also has caught on at other city hospitals. A dozen artists at Manhattan’s Bellevue Hospital have been bartering since March, and Kings County Hospital officials are looking into starting the program there.

After creating collages with pediatric patients at Woodhull, mixed-media artist Janet Olivia Henry, 59, banked enough credits for a physical.

“It makes a huge, huge difference, being able to get a doctor’s visit, just attending to keeping well,” said Henry of Jamaica, Queens, a part-time preschool art teacher who doesn’t have health insurance.

Watercolor painter Timothy Lunceford, 49, who lives in Greenwich Village, racked up $2,500 in medical bills after twice being hospitalized at Bellevue for heart problems.

“I didn’t feel like walking away,” Lunceford said of his obligations, adding that he couldn’t have paid his bills without the bartering program.

Good Thing They Don’t Do This With Police Officers (*Oh Wait)

For years now, colleges have found that hiring less-expensive adjunct instructors provides the same great level of education as full-time faculty:

A computer science lab instructor at La Guardia Community College has been charged with taking payments of cash or liquor from students to alter their grades, prosecutors said yesterday. The instructor, Elvin Escano, 46, of Glendale, is charged with taking payments ranging from $200 to $2,500 from 2004 until September, said Richard A. Brown, the Queens district attorney.

*See, for example.

And Were It Not For Generous Parents, We’d Have The Same Problem In The Publishing Industry

Of course the healthy wages are encouraging the best and brightest to commit to careers in municipal government:

Roughly 8,000 New York City employees — or 3% of the municipal workforce — earn such an abysmally low salary that they are forced to get food stamps to feed themselves and their families, the Daily News has learned.

And approximately 340 city workers are on welfare, according to the Bloomberg administration. Councilman Bill de Blasio, chairman of the Council’s Welfare Committee, said he finds the revelation troubling.

“The goal of the public sector should always be to pay people enough to feed their family and guarantee that that’s a living wage,” said de Blasio (D-Brooklyn). And if the city workforce mirrors the general population, he said, there could be thousands of others eligible for food stamps.

The city’s top welfare official, Human Resources Administration Commissioner Verna Eggleston, stunned the Council last week when she revealed many of her staffers go to food kitchens in-between pay periods.