LiLo is tardy to the party. Gabourey Sidibe says 'no' to Oprah. Nicole Kidman loses a role to a 17-year-old Disney star. Sandra Bullock prepares for the Oscars by stocking up on tissue. Saturday gossip deals with rejection.
• Rumor has it Danny Meyer and Ian Schrager are currently in "advanced talks" to open a restaurant on the roof of the Gramercy Park Hotel. [P6]
• Will we see the classic tiki bar make a comeback in 2010? [NYT]
• Minetta Tavern introduces brunch service this weekend. [UD]
• New Tavern on the Green operator Dean Poll…
Super-publicist Peggy Siegal is turning 62 today. David Hasselhoff turns 57. Donald Sutherland is 74. Producer Mark Burnett is 49. Phyllis Diller is 92. Defense attorney Peter Neufeld is turning turns 59. Linda Gibbs, the Deputy Mayor of Health and Human Services, is turning 50 today. Comedian Beth Littleford is 41. …
• Carlos Alejandro Pérez Dávila, an heir to one of the richest families in Latin America (his cousin is Andrès Santo Domingo, husband of Lauren) has sold his four-story townhouse at 176 East 75th Street. The 5,800-square-foot mansion, which had been listed for $10.9 million, was purchased by Keith Meister, the son…
Because clearly there aren't enough hotels in NYC to satisfy the swarms of tourists looking to spend $500 a night on a room, Ian Schrager is building another one. And it's not going to be a plain, old five-star hotel either. Schrager is planning to convert 1414 Avenue of the Americas—currently an office…
• Ian Schrager is bringing in some firepower to the Gramercy Park Hotel: Danny Meyer's Union Square Hospitality will take over space formerly occupied by Wakiya, and David Rockwell will handle the design, although the "Italian-inspired" restaurant doesn't have a chef or name just yet. [NYT]
• In a chat with the …
• Adam Platt's annual "Where to Eat" guide is now online. [NYM]
• Ian Schrager may be talking to Scott Conant about taking over the Wakiya space inside the Gramercy Park Hotel. [Eater]
• Daniel Boulud shares a few of his fave places to eat in NYC. [Independent]
• The NYT asks the months-old question: Is Chloe the new…
Some people dream of owning a castle; Calvin Klein wants to tear his down. Five years after the designer paid nearly $30 million for a gaudy 50,000-square-foot Southampton estate known as Dragon's Head, Klein filed an application this week to demolish it so he can replace it with a more modest (and much more…
♦ Kim Cattrall and Sarah Jessica Parker are apparently incapable of getting along: A day after Kim confirmed that there will be Sex and the City sequel, Parker told fans "not to get their hopes up" and that "Kim is excited, but all the deals are not yet done." [Daily Star, People]
♦ It looks like spending time in …
The man responsible for Studio 54 and the "boutique" hotel, Schrager no longer manages the collection of properties he created in the '80s and '90s, but remains an influential figure in the hotel world.
Ian Schrager's 40 Bond Street still isn't anything like sold out. The building's unit 5A was listed for just under $6 million a year and a half ago—and there are still A-line units in the building available. Right now, unit 9A is still on the market, for $9.95 million. 7 of the 27 units were sold by early 2006, so…
Since the Catholic Church began offloading some of its properties, the city's been in need of an weird religious organization with a shady past to fulfill the role of Real Estate overlord. Happily, we found a replacement in Lev Leviev's Africa-Israel corporation. The Israeli Lubavitcher diamond dealer has been doing a…
Studio 54, now a theater company, turns 30 this year. New York magazine sent aged historian Philip Nobile to kick around the entrails of Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager's 70's hotspot. Have the intervening three decades yielded any insight? Why yes, they have!
• Gays, hold on to your pants, because the ugly is about to get uglier: David Gest, estranged husband of Liza Minnelli, is requesting that the court disregard the duo's prenup, as Liza failed to disclose that she was a herpetic alcoholic with violence issues. Even more horrifying: this implies that Gest learned the…
The press release for the opening of AGO at the Shore Club in Miami, hosted by Robert De Niro, chef Agostino Sciandri, and Ian Schrager hotels, has a short list of "celebrities" scheduled to make an appearance. The list includes Desiree Gruber, the publicist for Ian Schrager. I was under the impression that the only…
Miami residents Audra and Mark Cherry are obsessed with hotelier Ian Schrager. So much so that they've named their daughter "Hudson Sky" after the hotel and the bar, respectively. Which is very interesting, as we were going to rename our intern "Carlyle St. Regis," until we realized that it made her sound like a gay…
