Miller started dating the Wiz (born Geroge Barker) this summer after a controversial relationship with Getty started and ended in 2008 when Getty was estranged from his wife (there were even topless photos of them together) and a relapse this June. The rumor was that Sienna and Slinky broke up while she is in New York on Broadway and Mr. Slinky is spinning away in London, but now Page Six has them back together.

"They seemed very much a couple," said our snitch. "George was talking about how he was excited about their plans for the night."

We don't know who's right, but our snitch says she also saw Sienna shopping at the Only Hearts store in SoHo, but she wasn't with Nobody Beats the Wiz, but with Balthazar Getty. We don't know who is right, and actually it is kinda hard to tell them apart. Either way it makes for some juicy gossip, so we're going to make this one a choose your own adventure. If you want Sienna to start dating Slinky again, turn to page 23. If you want her to get back with Getty, turn to page 53.

[Images via Getty, no relation to Balthazar]

The man who's supposedly dated Vanessa Carlton, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Jessica Simpson, Minka Kelly, Cameron Diaz and Jennifer Aniston called on Giorgio Armani to design his SoHo apartment. "After I finally figured out how to behave, and how to dress, I wanted to get the next thing — my apartment — right," he tells Elle Decor. Mayer wore an Armani suit to the Grammys and it blew his mind or something. "For the first time in my life, I understood what healthy messaging was all about." Armani's translation: Shades of gray.
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"I make fantastic fajitas after a late night out," Mayer says. "I can rock a skillet." We've heard that both Jen Aniston and Jess Simpson like Mexican food, so maybe they perched at this very counter, watching John whip up some culinary delights?
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Here's the master bedroom, with what the magazine describes as a "low, shapely Botticelli bed framed in gleaming lacquer and set against walls the color of candlelight." Translation: Zen, with a side of meh. Other than the bed being GIGANTIC, it doesn't really seem like a snare lair. How come the room is not strewn with the underthings of starlets? Where's the "Jessica wuz here" graffiti? In Touch said he keeps a guitar by the bed, for spontaneous serenades! Oh well. At least we know what his sex faces look like.


Seriously, the polka dot guitar is the most exciting thing in his apartment.

Earlier: Jessica Stam Does Elle Decor: A 22-Year-Old Should Not Live Like This

There he was on Mercer between Spring and Prince, shaking hands and waving. People were going crazy cheering.

What's the Model Lounge, you ask? Well it's this place downstairs, like, underneath this other place in SoHo called Delicatessen, which is just like this other place called Cafeteria, but whatever, and it's, like, a private club for models only. You have to have a membership card that says "Model" on it to get in, so models and only models can go down there between castings and text message the dudes they met at Avenue last night and accidentally sucked off in the back of a cab, or fix their makeup, or talk about how so and so is such a bitch and they just can't stand her. You know, model-y stuff.

The Model Lounge is a really cool place because before the Model Lounge opened, back in the old days, models would have to go to the Starbucks at the corner of Spring and Crosby to kill time between castings and then be around all those gross non-model type people and the hobos shooting up in the bathroom, holding up the freaking line all damn day, not to mention the fact that there's this creepy, gay, British new media overlord who has an apartment across the street, and he's always just lurking in the shadows.

But not anymore! Now they have the "Model Lounge," and the New York Post sent the intrepid Justin Rocket Silverman down to investigate and now he's the only human with a penis who will ever get to enter the Model Lounge in the history of the world.

Cat (Walk) Club [New York Post]
Pic via Nikola Tamindzic/Ambrel

Yes, that's a real, live raccoon you see in John Varvatos' SoHo shop, on the corner of Spring and Greene. According to the nice lady I talked to when I called, animal control sadly took him away before they had time to name him, after a significant crowd had gathered outside. She had no idea how he got in, and no idea where Animal Control took him to.

I also inquired if they sell fur, and she said they didn't, that some of their items had shearling on it, and I was like, is that fake fur? And she was like, no, but it's like, wool. So I concluded that the animal was not going to be hastily skinned and used for a John Varvatos product.

Varvatos' trademark streak of rock and roll aesthetics in his work goes uninterrupted. After using guys like Iggy Pop in his fashion campaigns, using rock photographer Danny Clinch to shoot them, and most significantly, saving CBGB from becoming a Chase branch by turning it into one of his high-end fashion boutiques to much controversy and outcry by angry people who still thought CBGB meant something besides its status as a relic - which he preserved by keeping much of the original rock club intact - this isn't surprising. He's embracing some punkass animals looking to stir up some shit in his stores! Rock. More of this, please.

[Special thanks to our tipster Cheryl Tan, who has a blog and who is having an awesome day.]

The mural was painted in the early 90s, at the height of DKNY's ascendancy, and over the years became less an advertising tool and more of a dramatic everyday icon of downtown Manhattan. Not as memorable or institutional as the tele-screens of Times Square or the Domino Sugar factory over in Williamsburg, sure, but still a visual presence that now cedes to the neighborhood's near-complete suburban mall makeover.

So it's been painted over a drab gray-brown, awaiting a big emblazoned Hollister logo. A beacon calling the youngs in need of pukka and cargo to come and devour.

[top pic via BoweryBoogie, bottom via]

Along 34th Street between Fifth Avenue and Avenue of the Americas, 15 stores flooded the sidewalk with their air-conditioning. On a three-block stretch of Broadway in SoHo, from Houston Street to Broome Street, the number was 29. Among the energy wasters were major retailers like Steve Madden, H & M, Foot Locker, Aerosoles, Lane Bryant, Ann Taylor Loft, Arden B., Aldo, Uniqlo, Esprit and Zara.

Not Lane Bryant! There's a proposed law to fine retailers that do this, but it doesn't look too popular politically. More effective is the "asshole customer" route. Think of it as a free chance to berate Steve Madden.

[NYT]

[Gothamist]

[www.nydailynews.com]

[www.nydailynews.com]

First of all, just how authentically artistic is the space at 151 Wooster? "The Heart of Soho... The art of so many. Ten luxury lofts, two extraordinary penthouses... a loftier way to live," intones the website.

Last night there were lots of people dressed in puffy Reeboks and neon spray-paint print shirts, listening to a DJ playing 80s music. Everyone was drinking free vodka like there was no tomorrow and ignoring the art, which included works by Fab 5 Freddy, Keith Haring, Kenny Sharf and Ero.

As for the mural, it was there—sort of. About a quarter of the original wall was on display, and the rest had been, well, Xeroxed. A photo had been taken of the original wall, printed onto vinyl and stretched across the wall. It's possible that the original was too fragile to be moved, as it had been bisected by pipes over the years.

Perhaps this was a statement about using art to create a feeling of authenticity that sells overpriced lofts, or maybe a remark about the loss of originality in a city where no place is safe from gentrification?

The program (which is riddled with typos and punctuation errors) had an interview with Fab Five Freddy. He says it all: "Twenty years later it's the preverbal [sic] mark on the wall."

Edit: We have been informed that the majority of the mural is currently on the 8th floor, where it was discovered, undergoing a conservation process so that it can be donated to a local museum. The gallery exhibit was on the second floor, where the copy of the mural (and a small part of the original) was on display.

[Photo: Robert Wright]

Danny A and Bar Martignettis Don't Jive [Guest of a Guest]

In June, our crack videographer/reporter Alex Goldberg happened upon one Whoopi Goldberg on the streets of Soho, waiting in line to buy an iPhone. He asked her about becoming the host of The View. And then look what happened today! We'll never believe anything else she says!

Conceptually libraries are a much more appropriate place to pick people up than say, McNally Robinson, the nearby, overly clean and far too quiet bookstore. At a library, the whole point of the thing is that you breeze in, check out a book, take it home for the night, and return it the next day. Compare this to the predominate ethos at a bookstore where you shell out for a volume before you read it, then are saddled by the thing until you either guiltily "lose" the book at the gym or shelve it up next to those Castaneda books you were into in high school.

The interior of the library expands downward from the ground floor to basements and sub-basements that, happily, don't feel claustrophobic. There are easy chairs and tables and sofas. And you can be sure the romance section (176 Dewey Decimal, yo) will be well-stocked.

Mulberry St. Public Library

While Balthazar embodies a fetishized version of fin de si cle Paris, FR.OG aspires to a late 1990's chic. There's wavy plaster, lots of pink, and circular booths shrouded in what seems like a shower curtain. When we walked in, a Buena Vista Social Club-esque version of Lady Marmalade played, inexplicably followed by Chopin's Nocturne No. 2 in E Flat, Op. 9, No. 2. For some reason, I imagine it is a lot what the bathroom in the summer home of Renee Montaigne looks and sounds like: "Sexiness," dim lights, fusion. Down a spiral staircase, a large lounge area contains another bar and more tile. There was a bathroom attendant and a Schillerian unisexiness to the commodes.

What was served of the vaguely Asian food was uniformly excellent. Tomato soup came with a dollop of curry cream; pork and shrimp spring rolls offered crunch and spice. The exhaustive cocktail lists includes well-done standbys as the Ginger Martini with a rose twist. New York's the Robs have a better idea of the full menu but it is safe to say, fans of cuisine traditionnelle fran aise will be better served by sticking with the ten-year old Balthazar while more adventuresome diners might want to stop by the fresh meat. —Josh

Earlier: Fr.og tempts fate, Balthazar

The inside is going for a slightly cheesy Uptown vibe: pink iridescent tiles, pink stools (never a healthy sign, according to our nurse practitioner), and swirly plaster. Down a mosaic'd stairwell, a lower level seats 40 people, half as many as upstairs. FR.OG, which stands for French Origin, concerns itself with the nexus of Mediterranean and French cuisine. Though its menu shares few similarities with McNally's beleaguered-of-late flagship Balthazar, FR.OG aims to share ever fewer customers. Nearly all of the PR shouts "It's right across the street from Balthazar!" Ah, the French, never ones to shy away from a fight. Oh wait, yes they are. —Josh

FR.OG, 71 Spring Street