Results tagged “plazahotel”

Frank Bruni at the Times really wants to love the newly renovated Oak Room (photos), but the food is so erratic that dining there amounts to a very costly coin toss. His review is nothing like Steve Cuozzo's recent excoriation, but in this economy, it's not what the Oak Room needed: "It has been meticulously and gorgeously restored. An acclaimed French-born chef was recruited to supervise the kitchen. And those developments combined, on the best of the nights when I dined there, to produce a lovely experience of a rarefied sort.

Writing for the Post, Andrea Strong feasts at Broadway East (pictured), the chic new Lower East Side organic restaurant with the dainty carbon footprint: The restaurant composts, filters and carbonates its own water, uses a green linen company, and donates waste cooking oil to the Environmental Energy Recycling Corp. Oh, and the food? Strong calls it “a brilliant compromise” between carnivores and vegetarians, “showcasing veggies along with organic meat and sustainably harvested and locally procured seafood.”

At the beginning of March, the Plaza Hotel welcomed the public back after a three-year, $400 million makeover, which transformed part of the 1907 landmark building into private condominiums – where the super-rich tenants are complaining about how lonely and desolate their lives are. (Seriously.) And now reviews are trickling in for the famed Palm Court (pictured) and the new Champagne Bar, both under the auspices of chef Didier Viro.

It's another story of emotional duress from a resident of the super expensive Plaza Hotel residences! This time, it's not about being lonely, it's about a resident being stuck in the trash room for seven hours.

The NY Times' Styles section describes the lonely existence of new residents of the Plaza Hotel condos. Why lonely? Well, if you can afford the pricey digs ($6,400 per square foot!; an owner interviewed paid $5.8 million for a two bedroom), your neighbors are also rich people who probably have other residences and don't live there very often.

Andrea Schwartz, the Brazilian ex-pat who settled in Manhattan and became a madam with powerful clients, is back in the news. And she's as saucy as ever, this time denying that she's a lesbian. Tell us more!

Arthur Emil, the man behind the late Windows on the World and The Rainbow Room, has won the coveted contract to operate the famous Oak Room and Oak Bar (pictured) in the Plaza Hotel, which is near the end of a three-year, $400 million makeover. The 18 story landmark building opened in 1907 and operated as a hotel until 2005, after being sold for $675 million. After delays blamed on “red tape”, the Plaza is expected to open by the end of March as an upscale condominium with retail space and a smaller hotel.

As noted earlier today, a number of consumer activists, sweatshop protesters and anti-capitalist agitators have for years been working to turn Black Friday into Buy Nothing Day. Spearheaded by the anti-advertising gadflies at Adbusters, the event calls on individuals to suspend purchases for 24 hours and engage in creative activism to highlight the unsustainable patterns of mass consumer culture. Naturally, New York’s anti-corporate performance icon Reverend Billy is all over this. We spoke with...

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a shooting on Sutter Ave. in Brooklyn, a water rescue off the Breezy Point Jetty in Queens, and a missing child on East 178th St. in the Bronx.
• Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum is upset that Coney Island native and Knicks star Stephon Marbury donated 3,000 pairs of his new Starbury basketball shoes to male high school basketball teams, while ignoring the female players.
• The Brooklyn Paper reports that the Lincoln Plaza Hotel, which was advertised as a bed and breakfast but in reality was a by-the-hour brothel, is being renovated into luxury condos. Well-heeled eventual residents should not be expecting a welcome wagon, because neighbors are complaining they'd rather have a whorehouse on their street than rich condo-owners.
• Leona Helmsley moved into her final residence today: a 1,300 square foot space that featues stained glass windows with skyline views and 12 granite columns. The mausoleum is located in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Westchester.
• The Dept. of Health reported that of the 800,000 smoking New Yorkers who tried to quit the habit in the last year, only 17% were successful. Quitting aids like nicotine gum and patches will be distributed at the Whitehall Ferry Terminal Tuesdays through Thursdays from 3pm to 6pm for the next five weeks.
• The Gowanus Lounge has an update on the state of negotiations between vendors at the Red Hook ballfields and the Dept. of Health.
• SPIN has a page of photos and video of this summer's McCarren Park Pool Party concert.
• The manufacturers of Krasdale Gravy dry dog food are saying that some of their 5 lb. bags of dog food may be contaminated with salmonella. They are instructing to toss the food out and bring the bags back to the point of purchase for a refund. The tainted food was sold in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania and the packaging has the UPC code 7513062596.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: A large fight at Heritage High School in Manhattan, a trench rescue in Queens, and a suspicious substance at Canal & 6th Avenue
• Aw, Hakan Yalincak, the NYU student who conned people out of millions, filed an ethics complaint against his lawyer; his lawyer's lawyer told Yalincak (who faces prison time), "You are the ultimate evil person. Have a good time in jail. Watch out for the bathrooms."
• Peter Rivera, assemblyman from the Bronx, wants to make "An Inconvenient Truth" required viewing for k-12 students, but there are many questions from the Empire Zone, like will kindergarteners understand and does this mean kids will have to see it every year for 13 years?
• Christopher Street at night is a "hell hole," according to Curbed readers hashing out what to do when youths hang out in and around the building
• Awesome: The NY Post Photoshops McGreevey into a priest's outfit as news that the former NJ governor may be headed to a seminary catches on
• State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver censured a Republican assemblyman from Buffalo after it turned out the married-with-two-kids Michael Cole spent the night in an intern's bedroom; Cole says he slept on her floor because he walked her home from a sports bar and felt too drunk to drive home
• Chinese authorities have arrested the head of a company that added melamine to wheat gluten that eventually ended up in pet food
• Spider-Man sold out? Go see Barbara Stanwyck at BAM!
• Staten Island police say that a man exposed himself to a woman in Silver Lake Park earlier this week, but the suspect, Russell Farriola, who happens to be the "number one graffiti vandal" on SI denies it

THEATER: Obie Award winner Adam Rapp has just unwrapped (sorry) his new play Essential Self-Defense at Playwrights Horizons. Set in a mean Midwestern town called Bloggs, the play has, fittingly, been generating big blog buzz. The “grim fairy tale” revolves around a disgruntled misfit “who takes a job as an attack dummy in a women’s self-defense class and finds himself mysteriously drawn to the repressed bookworm who’s beating on him. But all’s not well in Bloggs: with local children vanishing at an alarming rate, our hero, his lady friend, and a motley assortment of poets, butchers, and punk librarians prepare to battle the darkness on the edge of town.” With rock n’ roll karaoke! - John Del Signore

In an effort to keep the United Nations in NYC, Mayor Bloomberg may revive an old plan to create more office space that could benefit both the U.N. and other city developers. The NY Sun reports that the plan would involve building "swing space" for the U.N. during the renovation of the Secretariat building. One possible place for the swing space: Long Island City. Picture it, ferries of U.N. employees across the East River!

Moon over Orchard, by Goggla.

-- And some sad news to end the day: another biker was killed today, this time at 9th Avenue and 29th Street by a truck making a right-hand turn. This follows an accident last night at S4th and Roebling in Williamsburg that left a biker "severely injured." Please be careful out there!

This is what a hot real estate market has wrought: One of the city's oldest Jewish cemeteries has had construction debris fall onto dozens of tombstones in Chelsea. Congregation Shearith Israel built three cemeteries in Manhattan, and the Chelsea location, at 21st Street between 6th and 7th Avenues, was in use in 1828-1851 (one is at 55 St. James Place and another is at 76 West 11th Street). It seems like mortar from The O'Neill Building, which faces 6th Avenue between 20th and 21st Streets, fell in the cemetery, and experts have been called in to see how it can be carefully removed. The O'Neill's developer, Elad Properties (which is also renovating the Plaza Hotel) was told by the landmarks commission that it would need to "bear responsbility" of the cleaning and repair tombstones. Elad is working with the congregation to "monitor" the situation; the NY Times reports that protective scaffolding was set up to "cover the tombstones closest" to the O'Neill building. [Another interesting thing: The congregation agreed not to build anything in the cemetery that would block O'Neill residents views.]

Well, perhaps it's not a wise idea if you have a studio. Today is the last afternoon you can view various objects on sale from the Plaza Hotel at Christie's (the viewing is open until 5PM), but you can look at the catalog online and get ready for tomorrow's auction. Gothamist imagines some restaurant or hotel - or maybe a props department - will go for the furnishings, as well as some people who may have gotten married or engaged or met at the Plaza, because most of the stuff is really rococo - gilded, clunky and big. Maybe the buyers will have a 30,000 mansions they need to furnish. There are bellman uniforms available ($200-300), as are some red shoes from Eloise and even towels, while a Louis XVI style table is the most expensive (starting bid at $12,000). Want a Savonnerie style carpet? You got it. But what's certain is that none of this stuff will appear at Fishs Eddy.

After yesterday's massive freaking downer of a mashup, we thought today's map should be on the lighter side-- so here's The Geography of Seinfeld. Most of the action predictably takes place around the Upper West Side, but there are some outlier points in the Bronx (Yankee Stadium), Queens (the scene of the Kramer late-pickup episode), and Coney Island (Nathan's). Amusingly, the map was obviously programmed by someone who has never been to NYC: at least a third of the points are wildly off (West End Avenue located in Coney Island, the Plaza Hotel in Red Hook, etc.) It's actually sort of fun to spot the mistakes.

The 2006 Zagat guide to New York City restaurants comes out today. First, the stats: Over 30,000 people surveyed 2,003 restaurants. The average meal cost in New York is $37.61, making it the most expensive in the U.S. The most popular restaurant list looks quite a bit like last year's: Gramercy Tavern, Union Square Cafe, and Babbo knocking Daniel out of it's previous number three slot. Top food rankings go to Le Bernadin, Daniel, and per se (which got the top ranking for service), while three Brooklyn restaurants, Tempo, Stone Park Cafe, and Applewood, made it into the top end of the newcomers' list.

Here's New York magazine's handy Weddings issue that lets you know how much different venues cost. Clearly, the Hillmans really really really wanted a Fifth Avenue wedding, as there are many cheaper alternatives. More on weddings at the Pierre. And a famous recent Bridezilla: Star Jones (Gawker on her wedding website).

It's the passage of time, sure, but there's something a little less romantic about the notion of the Plaza; there had been something deliciously old New York about it. To get over it, Gothamist will read the Eloise books by Kay Thompson, and watch North by Northwest again, for Roger O. Thornhill's fateful drinks at the Oak Room. Plus, there's Plaza Suite and our favorite Baldwin, the fat one, had a cocaine-induced psychosis while at the Plaza.

Joel Sherman, Professional Scrabble® Player

Plus the week in full.

Since aerial shots are a little tougher for photobloggers to capture, Gothamist is thankful for the local news choppers, which are taking a break from traffic reports to show images of the protest banners on New York City rooftops. WNBC's RNC coverage page has these photos (above and below) of what some people have put on their roofs for passing planes. Welcome to NY, folks.

The United for Peace and Justice's march will end in Union Square on Sunday. Marchers will meet at 7th Avenue and 14th Street at 10AM, make their way up and around Madison Square Garden, and then down to Union Square.

This morning, a protest group, Operation Sybil, had members rappel down the side of the Plaza Hotel and display a huge anti-Bush banner. Gothamist received some photos that the intrepid Lucie Eber took before the protesters were arrested. Hopefully more details will emerge on how this was orchestrated, because we're curious if they needed to reserve rooms or just walked into the hotel and made their way to the roof. It's just really stunning.

Local media's convention coverage:

Donald Trump, who had previously owned The Plaza, was surprised that it was losing money. "No kidding. That's one I did well with. It's a wonderful building." Gothamist is surprised that Donald Trump is going about feigning surprise at money losing ventures when his hotels are going belly up. Trump sold the hotel to the prince and the hotel group for $325 million.

Our favorite Baldwin brother is Daniel Baldwin (reasons: starred in Homicide; does not own annoying 'hip' restaurants; does not bother us with his political views; does not seem very boring; is the "fat" Baldwin), who is now going to star in a new cable series called "The Strange Detective". The show, according to the Hollywood Reporter, is about a "San Francisco detective who, during a car chase on the Golden Gate bridge, plunges into the ocean; he survives, but begins to experience 'rips in time,' having visions of events that have occurred in the places he visits, which are sometimes related to the cases he is working." Which makes us wonder about Baldwin's "cocaine psychosis" at the Plaza Hotel a couple years ago, where apparently the police found a "naked, bloodied, incoherent Baldwin 'acting irrationally'" with a porn film at full blast no less, and whether Baldwin experiences any rips in time from that experience.