The New York Observer (New York, NY) back issues from January 2008:
In This Week's Observer...
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ George Mitchell, ex-Senator and steriod sheriff, sells his $6.6 million condo. Supermodel Jessica Stam buys in the Village for $1.9 million. How to break a Manhattan apartment sales record. Governor Eliot Spitzer talks development. ...
Confident, Cutting Obama Rallies the Youth.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa--A semi-hoarse Barack Obama told a sizeable crowd in this western Iowa town Tuesday night, "Washington is in its last throes, as my cousin Cheney would say." It was a notably pointed remark from Mr. Obama, who often gets more gently ...
Turkey Ponders Obama As Cure for Anti-Americanism.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ ISTANBUL--The young, well-educated, secular Turkish woman who hated Bush had never heard of the presidential candidate Barack Obama. I told her Obama was black and his middle name was Hussein. "Really?" she said, raising her eyebrows on cue. She understood why these ...
A Reporter Comes in From the Cold.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ BEIJING--"I think it's actually surprisingly easy for Americans to come here and feel like they can fit in," Joseph Kahn said, sitting in a coffee shop called Sequoia, a block north of the gate of the Jian Guo Men Diplomatic Compound. It was late December, and Mr. ...
McCain's Mad Foreign Policy, Straight Up.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ Just like the first time he ran for President, John McCain is presenting an enormously compelling case to free-thinking Republicans and independents. Eight years ago, he was everything that George W. Bush wasn't: a reform-minded, everything-on-the-record ...
Magazine Honchos Remember Steve Florio.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ Ron Galotti, the old Vogue, GQ and Vanity Fair publisher, was speaking on the phone from his home in the woods of eastern Vermont. "I have the most spectacular candles sitting on my fireplace right now. We put them out every Christmas and they are just ...
Former CBS Newser Defies Court, Won't Reveal Sources.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ When Jim Stewart stepped down from CBS News in November 2006 after some 16 years of reporting on a range of topics for the Tiffany Network, the longtime Washington-based correspondent retired to the warmth of Florida. Now, depending on a judge's ruling in an ongoing ...
Bloomberg's Exercise in Vanity.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ As political buzzwords, "bipartisan" and "non-partisan" and "independent" sound elevated and even virtuous, which must be why we so often hear them touted as remedies for our national ills. Every four years the promoters of these miracle cures seek a vessel for their ...
As Ennui Strikes 'Creative Class,' Self-Help Beckons.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ Megan Hustad was working as a book editor when she decided to reconsider her lifelong contempt for self-help and success literature. She was in her late 20's, and she had already fled New York City once, having moved here at 22 and failed to get a job in publishing ....
How to Break New York Apartment Records.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ Why did New York City's best-groomed real estate sit so pretty this year while the country sank into a grotesque housing crisis? How did a Fifth Avenue apartment that needs work go to contract for $46 million, higher than any New York co-op ever? And how did our mayor ...
Even Manhattan Nightclubs Take the Pledge On New Year's Day.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ New Year's Eve was a fleetingly spirited affair at swanky PM Lounge in the meatpacking district. Packed with revelers, the two-story, 3,900-square-foot building on Gansevoort Street heaved with thumping beats, as an advertised open bar approached its sixth ...
Ian McKellen's Member and Other Broadway Monuments of 2007.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ A year without a new play by Sir David Hare can't be all bad--and so it happily proved. Top of my list is the stunning, imaginative achievement of Gregory Burke's Black Watch--the first docudrama about war I've seen to successfully turn reportage into art, ...
The O.F.I. Moment.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[On a recent rainy morning, Alyse Grace was standing in the Trader Joe's on 14th Street, discussing her struggle to be ecologically conscious. "You get to this point where you feel so overwhelmed and so hopeless and so fed up with feeling small," said Ms. Grace, 29, who traded her ...
Clinton In Iowa Hits Frozen Poll, Spins To Finish.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ DES MOINES, Iowa--Counting down the last 10 seconds of 2007 in a local restaurant, Hillary Clinton's campaign staff did its best to end the year on a celebratory high note. Just hours earlier, as the press bus pulled in to Des Moines at the end of another ...
Houston Socialite, Commie Hater Joanne Herring Has No Bone to Pick With Charlie's Angels.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ Joanne Herring, the Houston socialite turned mujahideen fund-raiser currently being portrayed by Julia Roberts in the new Mike Nichols film Charlie Wilson's War, is at work on a book expounding on her experiences battling the Communists, and the significance the ...
Boulud-Vous Coucher Avec Moi Ce Soir? Dapper Daniel Chef Expands His Empire.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ On the evening of Monday, Dec. 31, 2007, the latest outpost of chef Daniel Boulud's mini-empire, Bar Boulud opposite Lincoln Center, opened with the very un-Boulud prix fixe of $150, meant to brand it a casual restaurant. (Yes, folks, this is what passes for "casual" ...
Times Says Goodbye to Regional Editorial Page.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ Those hyper-local opinion pages in The New York Times--lamenting global warming's toll on a Maplewood, N.J. lake, or complaining about traffic in southern Connecticut, or opposing a plan to impose tolls on the East River bridges--are now a thing of the past. Over the ...
City's Big Publicly Traded Landlords Bid Good Riddance to '07.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ It's been some tough times for REIT's. As 2007 closed out, Wall Street left the city's biggest real estate investment trusts and other publicly held real estate firms to wallow in their sorrows, as the rough market left almost all with 52-week lows in the ...
What a Boffo '07! But Was It Commercial Market Peak?
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ Ten building deals over $1 billion, midtown office rents slumbering above $100 a square foot and total investment sales of at least $51 billion closed or in contract by December: Without question, Manhattan's commercial real estate market, already rallying for years, ...
City Wants More Power Over Brooklyn Bridge Park As Project Slides Into the Red.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ As the city-and state-funded Brooklyn Bridge Park project breaks ground in coming weeks, the planned 85-acre parkland is facing substantial cost overruns, with a funding source yet to be found. The development, which seeks to transform the Brooklyn ...
You're Up, Larry! Port Authority Weeks Away From Ceding Tower Sites.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ With the Port Authority's announcement on Monday that it is facing four to six weeks of delays at Ground Zero, it seems Larry Silverstein will have to wait a few more weeks before his test begins. Assuming the Port Authority, which owns the site, finishes ...
Model Apartments! Jessica Stam Trades Up in Village For $1.4 M., Isabeli Fontana Snags Another Trump Condo for $3.3 M.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ By this time next year, Manhattan Island will be entirely occupied with very young and scrawny models, and, maybe, the well-fed executives who escort them. Isabeli Fontana, the 24-year-old top Brazilian model, just spent $3.37 million on a three-bedroom ...
Romney Flips on Iraq.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ Mitt Romney charged today that the Bush administration mismanaged the Iraq war after the initial invasion five years ago. "I think we did a less than effective job in managing the conflict following the collapse of Saddam Hussein," Romney said at a press ...
DJ AM Spins His Fine Philly Self Into $1.9 M. Condo at Balazs' One Kenmare Square.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ DJ AM, the celebrity-dating nightclub disc jockey, born Adam Goldstein, has a new home for his 1,000 pairs of sneakers. According to city records, he paid $1.995 million for a 1,147-square-foot apartment at One Kenmare Square, Andre Balazs' curvy-faced condo on ...
Sold! Steroid Sheriff George Mitchell Selling $6.65 M. Upper West Side Condo.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ It's been a grievous few weeks for septuagenarian ex-Senator George Mitchell. He released a 409-page report on baseball's colossal steroids problem, outing 88 drugged Major Leaguers--even gods like Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte. Critics accused him of McCarthyism ...
Where 'Even Nixon Could Get Laid': Dating Doyenne Joy Browne Sells Chelsea Pad for $3.2 M.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ Even though Dr. Joy Browne has written Getting Unstuck: 8 Simple Steps to Solving Any Problem (she also did It's a Jungle Out There, Jane: How to Understand the Male Animal In Your Life), and even though she has the country's longest-running call-in therapy show on the ...
The Media Mensch of the Year!
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ This time last year, it would have been difficult to fathom that as 2007 came to a rather inexorable end, there would be no new episodes of The Office or, hell, even Desperate Housewives to get us through what promises to be another long, cold, slushy New York winter; ...
Squirrel's Paradise.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ Anyone who has passed by the monstrously large residential complexes known as Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village on First Avenue between 14th and 23rd streets knows they account for a prison-block-like swath of red brick. Lesser known is the fact that the ...
Dear Guy.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ Guy is a single 41-year-old Manhattan man who has had several successful long-term relationships. Readers may send him their questions at DearGuy@Observer.com. Dear Guy, I am a 34-year-old professional woman. I have always considered myself to ...
Bloomberg '08: This Time, He Might Be Serious.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ The latest news about Michael Bloomberg's intentions toward a possible run for president, apparently, struck local lawmakers with the force of a revelation. At the very least, after a report in The Washington Post that the mayor will attend a meeting of ...
The Afternoon Wrap: Tuesday.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ Wierdest Houses of 2007. [BuzzFeed] Report criticizes low levels of state funding in 2007 for youth smoking prevention programs in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. [NY Times] The Republican mayor of Brookyn (Iowa that is), plans to vote for ...
Remains of the Day: Murakami, Righteous Brothers, Peter Pan.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ "There's already quite a bit of information available about the forthcoming Haruki Murakami work, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. A DuMont publicity page for the German edition offers a description of the book -- and notes that Murakami apparently wants ...
Events for Wednesday, January 2, 2008.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ 11 a.m. Michael Bloomberg makes announcement in the Blue Room at City Hall. 11 a.m. Council 1707 AFSCME and Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum hold a press conference along with public officials, union leaders and parents calling for a moratorium on closing ...
Elsewhere: McCain's N.H. Lead, Candidates' Iowa Goodbyes, Bloomberg's Polling Somewhere.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ John McCain leads Mitt Romney 31 percent to Romney's 25 percent in a new New Hampshire poll. Dan Janison reports that "test-polling of a Bloomberg candidacy has begun in some parts of the country." A reader points out there was a time not long ...
Obama Thanks Kucinich for Making Him Second Choice.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ Earlier today Dennis Kucinich sort of endorsed Barack Obama by encouraging his supporters to choose Obama as a second-place candidate on caucus night in Iowa, should Kucinich not make the "15 percent threshold." The Obama campaign just responded with a ...
On Georgia Trip, Loden Dager Designers Find Models, Steinbeck's Ghost.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ The fashionistas behind men's wear collective Loden Dager are this week's guest bloggers on T Magazine's Web site. Today, the New York-based designers--Melissa Vail, Matthew Sandager, Oliver Helden, Paul Marlow and Alex Galan--wrote in during their road trip to ...
Are Longer Commutes Driving the Young From New York?
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ The bad news spread through the train. The 7:35 p.m. Amtrak regional from New York to Washington on Dec. 13 would be late because of signal problems along the tracks. Every train north of Philadelphia, including New Jersey Transit ones, would have to lumber through ...
A Clinton-Eye View of the Obama Campaign.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ Here's Barack Obama's campaign bus, seen from inside the Hillary Clinton campaign plane, according to Jason ...
Robert Frost Won't Mind Us Stopping Here to Drink Beer and Set Fires.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ Robert Frost's former summer home in Vermont was invaded by partying teenagers, who set fire to his wicker furniture, discharged two fire extinguishers and puked in his living room. Amazingly, they left a gift outright by sparing a small cabin where the famous poet is ...
Times Foreign Reporters Having a Busy New Year's.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ Not an easy New Year's in Africa. Jeffrey Gettleman, The Times' East African correspondent, has two breaking--and unrelated--stories above the fold today on nytimes.com: one on the continued unrest in Kenya that led to the burning of more than 40 people inside a ...
Kelly Killoren Bensimon Adores Cars, Jack Russell Terriers, R&B.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ Open-access Facebook profiles are totally hot--primarily because they can be viewed without going through the whole 'friending' rigmarole. In fact, one needn't even 'poke' them! And that's sweet, because 'poking' is completely out of the question. So we ...
De Blasio Ready to Shovel for Hillary, Doesn't See Room for Bloomberg.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ Bill de Blasio is prepared for anything on caucus day. "I am in our meeting room at the Clinton headquarters, on Fifth Avenue South, in Clinton County, with my hand on our group of six shovels," said the manager of Hillary Clinton's 2000 Senate campaign, ...
Eliot Spitzer, Builder.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ Location: Can you talk about the West Side rail yard bids--are the financials in a range that you expected them to be? Mr. Spitzer: We are pleased with the bids as they came in--in terms of the magnitude financially, the scale of the proposals, the ...
Why McCain Has Stuck Around.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ A year ago the smart money was on John McCain to be the Republican nominee. He had the biggest and best campaign operation, plenty of George Bush's supporters and moneymen and healthy poll numbers. The combination of conservative fury over immigration reform ...
Another Bush Legacy: The Powder Keg in Pakistan.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ As the bromides and bunkum of primary season lurch into caucus-eve overdrive in Iowa, the rest of the world has upstaged the election-addled news cycle. A new Osama bin Laden video, a Colombian hostage crisis and--most of all--the assassination of former Pakistani ...
The Shape of 2008.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ Hold on to your seats, here comes 2008. This year comes packed with the promise of great news stories waiting to be unearthed and told. Just look at what lies ahead ... In politics, the growing prospect of Michael Bloomberg entering the presidential race ...
Levy Conjures Cuomo for Cautionary Tale on Bloomberg Bid.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ Larry Levy thinks there's a limit to what can be learned from all the Bloomberg '08 news stories. "Even if you had a source saying Michael Bloomberg said he is running, the best thing you have is a source saying that Bloomberg has said he is running," the ...
Spitzer's New Year.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ It's hard to know who was happier to see 2007 disappear--Governor Eliot Spitzer, or Madison Square Garden's James Dolan. For both men, the past 12 months have been dreadful. But for Mr. Dolan, the new year does not mean a new season: His Knicks did not get a clean ...
In 'Painful Decision,' WGA East President Rallies Troops to Picket Leno, Kimmel, O'Brien.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ Today, in a letter to members, Writers Guild of America East President Michael Winship wished everyone a happy new year, admitted that he was recently "momentarily overcome with frustration and annoyance," and professed to be sustained by "the nationwide unity and the ...
Fox's Explanation for Excluding Ron Paul Doesn't Pass.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ Fox News Channel has listed almost every presidential candidate as appearing in the Republican forum it is holding two nights before the New Hampshire caucus. But they have not listed Ron Paul. Paul's supporters aren't happy, and Fox hasn't been forthcoming ...
Fidler on Bloomberg's 'Nassau County' Foreign Policy.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ "I don't have the vaguest idea where Michael Bloomberg stands on issues of foreign policy," Councilman Lew Fidler told me recently when I asked what he thought of the increasingly loud talk of a Bloomberg '08 bid. "There are a dozen other issues and I don't know what ...
WLIW-21 Presents The Jews of New York.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ On Jan. 9, PBS stations around the country will begin airing a new three-part documentary called The Jewish Americans, narrated by Liev Schreiber, chronicling 350 years of the Jewish American experience of immigration and assimilation in the U.S. from the 17th century ...
Oscar Peterson to Anna Nicole Smith: Influential Figures Lost in 2007.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ 2007 brought us many new and marvelous things--the iPhone, 'ceWebrities,' Conde Nast Portfolio--but it also took with it the lives of numerous personalities, people who, in their own ways, changed the world forever. In a tribute to these late, influential ...
Wednesday, January 9th.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ Are you scared of those Spring Louis Vuitton bags? The ones created by Richard Prince and Marc Jacobs? If so, you'd be forgiven for forgetting that Mr. Prince is an actual artist, not just edge-for-hire for the fashion industry (see also his W magazine covers!) and ...
Tuesday, January 8th.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ It's Tuesday: let's learn something! First up, foodies' heads explode as occasional hunter and suspiciously prolific writer Michael Pollan--Michael J. Fox's brother-in-law to you, pal!--who has been on some kind of tear with those ethical eating books, including his ...
Monday, January 7th.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ Dave Eggers in the flesh? The literary pied piper appears at the 92nd Street Y with 30-year-old Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Sudanese refugee Valentino Achak Deng (phew!)--the subject of Mr. Eggers' fictional biography, What Is the What, currently ...
Sunday, January 6th.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ The early birds at the New York Film Critics Circle rush to dole out the first awards of the year, which they've already announced will be won by No Country for Old Men (best picture), Daniel Day-Lewis (nope, can't escape him!), Javier Bardem (best supporting actor), ...
Saturday, January 5th.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ Speaking of hot and bothered, as we await the inevitable Oscar for Daniel Day-Lewis, New York goes Paul Thomas Anderson crazy, as the director of There Will Be Blood (and lots of it!) gets his very own retrospective at the Museum of the Moving Image (the guy was born ...
Friday, January 4th.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ Into the media wasteland that is the first week of January plops One Missed Call, a horror film starring Ed Burns--Mr. Christy Turlington to you, pal!--which is unworthy of even a marketing campaign (Mr. Burns is still hot, but apparently no longer making movies fit ...
Thursday, January 3rd.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ Frenchmen are on a roll! Monsieur Sarkozy trades in the ole ball and chain for tarte tatin Carla Bruni, a younger model (at Euro-Disney, no less: Can you smell the envy emanating from a certain ex-U.S. President?) while jovial master chef Daniel Boulud goes casual with ...
Wednesday, January 2nd.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ Twenty-four hours until we know who wins the Iowa caucuses! If Hillary wins, the big plus: the writer's strike won't matter anymore because we'll all be treated to the greatest reality TV show ever, as the sleaze-packed, scandal-scented, dysfunctional marriage program ...
Hillary's Pakistan Gaffe, Nader's Edwards Endorsement.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ Hillary Clinton calls Pervez Musharraf a "candidate" in the upcoming Pakistani elections, even though he isn't. [Ben Smith] Ralph Nader supports John Edwards. [CNN] ...
Last Words.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ As a member of the New York Film Critics and the National Society of Film Critics, I submitted the following selections by proxy to both groups: BEST PICTURE 1. Juno 2. Atonement 3. Lust, Caution BEST ACTOR ...
Primo Preminger.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ Otto Preminger (1905-1986) is the subject of a 23-movie retrospective of his controversial career at Film Forum from Jan. 2 to Jan. 17. I have been graciously quoted in the publicity release as having once noted: "Otto Preminger is still the most maligned, misjudged, ...
Juno, Juno, Juno! A Movie That Delivered.
Jan 01, 2008 ... <![CDATA[ I strongly suspect that in the year 2007, there were more interesting pictures and, almost certainly, more interesting acting performances than I had time to see. After all, there were more than 500 films released in the New York area this year, not unlike most recent ...