Get Shaved!

Difficult to unpack and probably not worth it: A “small but growing number of men” (read: three people the writer knows) who enjoy the look of three-day stubble but who hate scraggly neck hair and are unwilling or unable to sculpt three-day stubble are opting for “laser beard sculpturing”. I swear to fucking god I’m not making this up:

The two-day beard is a modern classic. Both virile and casual, it bespeaks a man who needn’t bother to shave every day.

And it’s also a lot of work.

The truth is, most men who sport sexy, two-day growths end up spending more, not less, time in front of the mirror. That’s because facial hair has a way of meandering in unruly patches down the neck or up too high on the cheeks. If the look you’re aiming for is George Clooney relaxing at his Italian villa – rather than, say, Jack Nicholson on a murderous rampage in “The Shining” – you end up needing to trim around the edges. And that means wielding a razor very, very carefully.

“I love the look of going a few days without shaving,” said Charles Christian, 26, a part-time hair stylist and fashion designer who is a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. “But my beard hair was growing into my chest hair, and I’m really not into that.”

Kevin Hillaire, 29, a case manager for the New York City Department of Correction, likes the stubbly look, too. But the scraggly patches on his neck, dotted with ingrown hairs, ruined the picture.

No longer. Mr. Christian, Mr. Hillaire and a small but growing rank of other men are sporting neatly trimmed two- and three-day growth without extra grooming. A technique called laser beard sculpturing has helped them do away with unwanted areas of facial hair for good.

(This, by the way, basically proves that the Fashion Week Hangover exists.)

You Know Who I Am, Don’t You?

Late last Friday night, someone resembling Mick Jagger (yeesh!) scored a free bottle of Grey Goose (yow!) at a Chelsea nightclub, partied for an hour and a half (yeehaw!) and pulled it off without anyone the wiser:

A randy Mick Jagger impersonator got plenty of satisfaction at a Chelsea nightclub when the hoodwinked hot spot lavished him with VIP treatment — including free liquor, a personal security guard and lots of female attention.

The freeloading phony turned up at Spirit in the wee hours of Saturday morning with a lovely young lass at his side, and was quickly ushered into the VIP room by the doorman.

The faux Mick enjoyed a complimentary bottle of Grey Goose vodka, and beckoned over a bevy of beauties with the help of a bodyguard provided by the club.

In an impeccable British accent, he informed his awestruck admirers that he had just flown in by private jet from Columbus, Ohio, where the Rolling Stones had performed earlier that night.

“After about an hour and a half of partying with what became a large crowd, the fake Mick told the security guard that he was becoming overwhelmed by the crowd and the cameras . . . and needed to leave,” Spirit spokeswoman Claire O’Connor said.

“The security guard called for additional backup, and the clone was whisked, with three girls, down a back staircase. He asked to stop at the ladies’ room on the way out, and spent 10 minutes in the ladies’ room with the three girls.” When they came out, the impish imposter and his date bid farewell to the groupies and hailed a taxi outside.

Club officials realized they had been conned after examining a photograph of the phony Mick — who was, in fact, younger and heavier than the real Jagger.

Mugging Victim Now Obsessed With Shadows, Gets Gallery Commissions

A benign Travis Bickle? A less destructive Bernard Goetz? No, it’s a post-traumatically stressed former graffiti artist who has become obsessed with shadows:

On the streets of Brooklyn, stray bursts of color have been dotting the urban landscape, fleeting works of art that are impossible not to notice.

The chalk outlines – often of street fixtures such as fire hydrants, lamps or even buildings – are mysteriously signed “Ellis G. 2006.”

“My art has always been in the street,” said Ellis Gallagher, a former graffiti artist, as he surveyed a just-finished hot pink tracing of a lamppost with traffic box and street signage on the corner of Smith and Dean Sts.

He followed the arc of the street lamp into the street, darting into traffic and squatting barely a foot away from slow-moving cars.

“It’s temporal. And temporary,” the artist said, as cars tread over the pink lines.

Within minutes of completing a piece, the sun has moved the shadows. People can’t tell how much time has passed since the work was finished.

Gallagher’s artistic inspiration, however, sprang from a traumatic event.

Coming home late one night last month, Gallagher spotted a man lurking a block from his house. The man turned up his hood to cover his face, a sign Gallagher knew meant trouble.

As Gallagher fumbled for his keys, he saw the man’s shadow flicker across his front door. The man, wielding a 2-foot machete, demanded money.

Police caught the mugger that same night, but Gallagher was still rattled. He became nervous and jumpy, often reliving the moment when the thief’s shadow merged with his own.

“I became fixated with shadows,” he said.

Now he spends several hours each day and night on his shadow art, stopping only for work or sleep. He prefers late afternoon shadows that extend far down the street.

His work will be on display at Smith Street’s Apartment 138 until September 20, 2005.

The Great Cities Have Pie-Shaped Buildings

Las Vegas Casinoist Mark Advent, the one responsible for New York-New York, now plans to develop a retail-office-entertainment complex called the “East Village” just off the Strip:

And so, in true Las Vegas fashion, Mr. Advent has decided to remedy what he sees as the city’s lack of a neighborhood fabric by building one of his own. On the corner of Tropicana Avenue and Paradise Road, on a vacant patch of desert near the airport, will rise East Village, a retail-office-entertainment complex inspired by Manhattan’s strollable streets. The $250 million project is tentatively scheduled to open in 2007.

Playing fast and loose with geographical borders, the development will contain a scale model of the Washington Square arch, a meatpacking district and a diamond district, which, as New Yorkers know, is a good 30 blocks north of the East Village. “It’s not an exact replica,” Mr. Advent explained, adding that the complex was more an homage to great neighborhoods (which explains the part of the development based on Pike Place Market in Seattle). The name, he said, stems from the location, which is one mile east of the Las Vegas strip, and from the fact that “it really is like a little village.”

Crazy! It can’t possibly work! No way! Way:

For his latest project, Mr. Advent is determined to build the kind of richly appointed, idiosyncratic structures found throughout Manhattan. Facades will be brick, and in some cases, detailing will be wrought iron. “Other developers keep saying: ‘Your buildings aren’t square. You’ve got a pie-shaped building. That’s going to cost more,'” Mr. Advent said. “I’m going, yeah, it’s a pie-shaped building. When you go to great cities, they build pie-shaped buildings.”