On That Strange And Isolated Island, The Natives Have Developed A Language All Their Own, Little Understood By Outsiders

Voo-da-la:

Sometimes after a long day off-island, you just want to catch the boat back to the Rock and head for Town, maybe do a little train crawl along the way.

Translation: Upon returning to Staten Island by ferry from a long day elsewhere, a person might want to stop at a few of the bars that flank the stations of the Staten Island Railway, en route to an evening in downtown Great Kills.

As befits a place that can take pride in its otherness and even in its relative isolation, Staten Island has evolved, if not exactly its own language, then certainly a lexicon of words and phrases that require explanation to off-islanders.

And a linguistic journey into the heart of Staten Island leads inexorably to the Talk of the Town Tavern, a train-station bar on Great Kills’s very smalltowny main street, where Statenisms flow nearly as freely as the $2 draft mugs.

. . .

Eugene Machules, a locksmith who was feeding dollars into the Talk of the Town’s jukebox, offered one more local neologism: “Voo-da-la.”

“You say that like when you make a great shot in basketball,” Mr. Machules said. “When you hit the home run, the best shot — the top of the pinnacle, that’s it. Or if you toast someone who’s passed away, you say ‘Voo-da-la.'”

Voo-da-la, Mr. Machules said, was the signature phrase of Monte Vandenburg, a longtime bartender at another Great Kills watering hole, the Swiss Chalet.

“He’d just turn and say ‘Voo-da-la,’ and nobody knew what the hell it meant,” Mr. Machules said.

Mr. Vandenburg died suddenly in September at the age of 46. It is not clear how long Voo-da-la will survive him.

Location Scout: Talk of the Town.

Getting Off The Bruckner And Smearing An Artist Just Doesn’t Have The Same Resonance

Tom Wolfe’s “Bonfire of the Vanities,” 20 years later:

To some New Yorkers, Mr. Wolfe’s satire was bitingly accurate, nailing both a racist criminal justice system and the politicians who played on white fear and minority anger for personal gain.

To others, it was a cynical endorsement of racial stereotypes that did not so much critique white paranoia as cater to it.

Either way, though, the New York of “Bonfire,” to a degree that might well have shocked people in 1987, no longer exists. Not in reality, and not in the collective imagination.

New York is on track to have fewer than 500 homicides this year, down from 2,245 in 1990. The white population is no longer shrinking, and diverse immigration has made the city less black-and-white.

The crime drops that marked the Giuliani era — along with some divisive police confrontations with minorities — have continued under a Bloomberg administration that civil rights leaders credit with bringing more interracial respect.

More locally, the Bronx neighborhoods near the site of Sherman’s accident are now dotted with owner-occupied row houses and apartments. Artists have moved into Mott Haven lofts.

Gossip Girl: Stupid And Contagious . . .

And here they are now to entertain us:

You could tell the tribes apart by variations in dress: the tartan kilts and pleated skirts of Nightingale-Bamford, Sacred Heart and Spence; running shoes on the girls who had made their way over from Chapin and Hewitt; leggings and anoraks for students at Dalton, with its relaxed dress code.

Beyond that, the girls looked a lot alike, particularly when it came to accessories: pendant earrings, orthodontia, camera phones. All this week and part of last, the cast and crew of “Gossip Girl,” the CW network series based on the young adult novels, have been camped out on 93rd Street between Madison and Park Avenues. They are shooting an episode at the grand Georgian complex that in its workaday life houses the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.

. . .

Three from Hunter College High School, the public magnet school a block away, edged toward the gates of “St. Jude’s.” They said they had been taking all their free periods, plus lunch, here. “Not that we’re obsessed or anything,” Alexa Levy said.

“We saw the person who plays Dan,” said her friend Sophie Zucker. “He’s actually, notoriously, like, nice.”

“It’s really refreshing to see a star who’s like that,” said Charlotte Weiss.

“Because she knows so many, of course,” Miss Zucker said, teasing her.

“Do you want to know the honest truth?” Miss Weiss said. “It’s based on private school girls, and they’re very superficial. The woman who wrote the novels said it’s based on Nightingale. We go to Hunter. It doesn’t relate.”

“So these girls –” Miss Levy gestured around her. “These are the girls it’s making fun of.”

“And I think they’re proud of it instead of being ashamed,” Miss Weiss said.

Bill O’Reilly Visits Sylvia’s, Discovers That People Of Other Races Order Food, Just Like Us!

Buried lede — the researchers at Media Matters may be the only ones who pay attention to him:

After eating dinner at a famed Harlem restaurant recently, Bill O’Reilly of the Fox News Channel told a radio audience, he “couldn’t get over the fact” that there was no difference between the black-run Sylvia’s and other restaurants.

“It was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there and they were ordering and having fun,” he said. “And there wasn’t any kind of craziness at all.”

Mr. O’Reilly said his fellow patrons were tremendously respectful as he ate dinner with Al Sharpton.

The comments were made during Mr. O’Reilly’s nationally syndicated radio broadcast last week. The liberal media watchdog Media Matters for America called attention to them by distributing a transcript and audio clip on the Internet. Karl Frisch, a Media Matters spokesman, called Mr. O’Reilly’s comments “ignorant and racially charged.”

Let’s Go. We Can’t. Why Not? We Are Waiting For Moodle.

Untz, untz, untz, untz:

It was almost 3 a.m. last Thursday at the Guest House, the Chelsea nightclub. Vodka bottles stood on low tables, paired with carafes of cranberry and orange juice. People danced, D.J.s spun music, but one thing was missing. The models had yet to arrive.

The party was called “Fashion Night,” sponsored by RussianRadioNY.com, a five-year-old Internet-only radio station. Though the station had staged similar parties, this one was during Fashion Week and promised Russian models.

“They are coming from another party,” said D.J. Gio, the 28-year-old founder of RussianRadioNY.com. “They will be here. They are very beautiful.”

. . .

Gio and his fellow D.J.s have given parties at the Guest House on West 27th Street since April. To do so, they eliminated some party staples common at the Russian nightclubs in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, that they think don’t translate well across the river.

“Here, we are more upscale,” Gio said. “In Manhattan, people can afford more. They don’t want Russian food. Tonight, we have no pickles.”

He was referring to sour pickles, a traditional Russian snack used as a chaser with vodka. Brighton Beach parties have pickles. Manhattan parties do not. In Brighton Beach, people drink their vodka straight. In Manhattan, they mix it with cranberry or orange juice. And tonight was very Manhattan.

. . . This night’s crowd was not limited to Russians. A trickle of non-Russians have found a novel way to spend their weekends.

“This is one of the last places to play house music around here,” said Gene Khesin, a 30-year-old trader and a frequent visitor to the Guest House.

Mr. Khesin said he liked the Russian parties because they play the late-90s Euro-dance music that has fallen out of favor with most nightclubs.

“Nobody plays this stuff anymore,” he said. “Everywhere else is hip-hop.”