Is It Really Fashion Week’s Fault That Guy Trebay Feels All Guilty?

The Times’ Guy Trebay takes note of preparations for Fashion Week and asks whether anyone is thinking about New Orleans. Answer — barely:

And so, even when much of the nation’s attention is focused on the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, there are those this week who will cling to their determination to put across the wonders of the Maidenform Dream Bra. (Tagless, made of two-way stretch foam, it has a sweetheart neckline and is available in sizes 32A to 40DD, just so you know.) They will doggedly push the latest Robb Report findings on the highest end of the luxury market (as divined by Carol Brodie, the publication’s chief luxury officer) at a Chelsea Piers event offering a select group (the only kind, really) a chance to smoke hand-rolled Zino cigars, to try on $1 million worth of jewelry and to ride in a Grand-Craft mahogany runabout and a Rolls-Royce Phantom.

And they will be pleased to explain to passers-by who stop at the Evian Pop-Up Spa on Fifth Avenue at 43rd Street how important indulgences like a hot-stone massage using only rocks soaked in pure imported Evian can be in the aftermath of tragedy.

“Especially in troubled times, when people are suffering, and you are thinking of water,” said Marjan Mehrkhast, an Evian spa consultant, “it’s crucial to think about your health.”

Don’t You Know Who I Am?

Now that they don’t have to worry about black people, restauranteurs are discovering new ways to accommodate everyone’s inflated ego:

For there to be good seats, there must, after all, also be bad seats. These days, however, even the most au courant restaurateurs have a good reason to avoid that toxic combustion of self-important diner and questionable seat: money. Faced with an increasingly competitive marketplace and ever-savvier diners, the owners of many new restaurants have taken pains to maximize the number of appealing seats.

“We just try to seat everybody in the way we feel will make the maximum numbers in the dining room,” said Amy Sacco, the owner of Bette, who has built a groovy reputation as the impresario of places like Bungalow 8.

An optimist might call this quest quixotic; a realist might call it mendacity. Human nature being what it is, you can put three tables in a room and one – the closest to the window or the one where Nicole Kidman sat last week – will become more desirable.

Restaurateurs, then, must figure out how to cultivate the glow of celebrity without alienating the bulk of their paying clientele. This is easier to do at small places (merely getting into Serge Becker’s La Esquina is enough), and the exhaustive focus on food at places like Per Se can effectively sublimate status anxiety.

A Full Recovery

How do we know New York has returned to normal four years after the Sept. 11 terror attacks? The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council is organizing an exhibit to commemorate Sept. 11. One of the pieces features an image of Bush with a gun to his head. The Daily News is outraged! And no one involved with the exhibit understands why (“we’re not out to make political statements”).

All The Eminent Domain Fit To Condemn

The Village Voice gleefully and snarkily notes that the new New York Times building on 40th Street seems rather restrictive on who or what constitutes an acceptable tenant, kind of strange for a building constructed on land supposedly taken for a “public purpose”:

When The New York Times and Forest City Ratner Companies open their grand new office building on Eighth Avenue, it won’t have a Taco Bell, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, or Nathan’s, because they are specifically forbidden under terms of a land deal with the state. But a Starbucks or Cosi would be just fine.

The lease, which is on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, also bars renting space in the 52-story building for “a school or classroom or juvenile or adult day care or drop-in center.” It forbids “medical uses, including without limitation, hospital, medical, or dental offices, agencies, or clinics.” It gives the New York Times Company “the sole and absolute discretion” to reject United Nations or foreign-government offices, including any “considered controversial” or that are potentially the focus of demonstrations. It bans any “employment agency (other than executive-search firms) or job training center” and auction houses, “provided, however, the foregoing shall not apply to high-end auction houses specializing in art and historical artifacts.” Discount stores are forbidden. And the deal bars “a welfare or social-services office, homeless shelter or homeless assistance center, court or court-related facility.”

In fact, any government office is excluded from the building if it would attract people who arrive “without appointment.”

Lease restrictions that exclude the public may not be unusual in luxury office buildings, but there is an irony in this case. The Pataki administration, acting on behalf of the New York Times Company, condemned the property for a so-called “public purpose.” This is the standard the Fifth Amendment sets for the state to invoke the immense power of eminent domain.

No wonder the Times editorial board came out in favor of Kelo v. New London!

See also: Reason’s “Hail Seizers: The New York Times cheers on the land grabbers”.

Their Rabbit-Ass Mind

The 24-hour-a-day MTA pays clerks to sit in stations that don’t provide service all night. Daily News notes outrage:

The TA spends more than $100,000 a year to keep people in booths around the clock at the 145th St. and 148th St. stations on the No. 3 line – even though the last train leaves 148th at 11 p.m. on weekdays.

The first train doesn’t pull out until after 5 a.m. the next day.

Yet unharried clerks sit in their cubicles during those quiet hours, as well as on the weekend, when trains run even less often.

That’s 45 hours a week per station when clerks can sell you a MetroCard – but you can’t catch a train.

“It’s very quiet, and that’s how I like it,” a clerk at the 148th St. station said just past midnight one recent morning. “I get paid by the hour, not by commission, and somebody has to mind the store.”

The top rate for a token booth clerk is $22 an hour.

And for that investigative touch, the News stayed up all night monitoring the scene:

A night spent in the station revealed a few interesting characters in predawn New York. It also was a battle against boredom that the clerk had mastered. He mixes a small amount of paperwork with listening to the radio, reading newspapers and talking to other clerks on the telephone.

. . .

12:35: The last No. 3 train to Harlem pulls into the station about 10 minutes late. Seven riders get off. They pass two men on a bench on the otherwise vacant platform.

One man is hopelessly drunk, his head cocked so far back that if his eyes were open, he would be staring at the ceiling.

The other is Alexander Martin, who takes out a Styrofoam container of fast food and proceeds to have an early-morning snack in the sweltering heat.

1:00: Martin shuffles up the stairs from the platform and pushes through a turnstile and stops with a look of total confusion. A subway car cleaner just told him the next southbound train wasn’t pulling out until 5:03 a.m.

Martin, meanwhile, explains that he fell asleep on a train and missed his stop.

1:25: Martin is still outside waiting for a shuttle bus. “And for this they want to raise the fare,” he said. “The gotta be out of their rabbit-a– mind!”