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Delphine Barguirdjian

By Carson Griffith 5/07/12 2:52pm

As Seen in SCENE

ACME, 9 Great Jones Street

Hot Spot: Inside ACME

When ACME restaurant shuttered its doors for a full renovation by orders of its new owners, past patrons of the former grubby Cajun eatery went into a tailspin. What would happen to their beloved menu of chicken wings and fried everything, complemented by a wall of assorted hot sauces?

When the New Nordic eatery, which consists of a main restaurant on the top level and a lounge and sitting area downstairs, re-opened its doors for a VIP friends and family tasting last December, only glimpses of the former venue could be found. Co-owner Jean-Marc Houmard says while they did a “gut renovation” on the place after taking over the lease in April of 2011, “the walls had history and we tried to keep that feeling of a lived-in restaurant with all the imperfections that give a good space its personality.”

And ACME is not a restaurant short on personality, especially in its decor. With an imaginative atmosphere that’s high on variety and low on precision, the art darlings of New York City and beyond have been flocking to the venue for dinner and late nights since before the restaurant’s official opening. Read More

By Kristian Laliberte 4/05/12 11:30am

As Seen in SCENE

Anderson Cooper and Kelly Ripa at the screening of Bully (Patrick McMullan)

SCENE & Heard: Hashtags and Hot Toddies

It’s our big launch party for SCENE and Desmond’s, the chic spot on the Upper East Side that feels part Brit private club, part downtown lounge, is packed with PYTs like Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, Dani Stahl, June Ambrose, David Lipke, Charlotte Ronson, Ali Wise, Euan and Lucy Sykes Rellie, Andrew Saffir and Daniel Benedict, Anh Duong, Page Six’s Emily Smith and Erika Bearman(aka the prolific and much-followed Tweeter, “OscarPRGirl”) to name just a few.

Hot on the heels of the Oscars, the bon mots are all about the best-dressed, and really, this crew is a little better equipped to judge the sartorial prowess of Hollywood stars than say, Giuliana Rancic. Stacy Keibler‘s gold Marchesa? “A little too Oscar,” observes Bearman, and she wasn’t referring to her own boss, Mr. Oscar de la Renta. Read More

By Jared S. Baumeister 4/05/12 11:00am

As Seen in SCENE

Screen shot 2012-04-03 at 3.35.07 PM

Get Out of Town: Midnights in Paris

If you’re looking for wine in Paris, I like your odds. While there is no shortage of cafés, bars and restaurants for the transient oenophile to pop into for a drink, La Compagnie des Vins Surnaturels offers more than just a great selection of wines by the bottle or glass, fluctuating month to month between 20 to 30 euros by the glass and 300 to 400 euros by the bottle.

The bar’s slick interior was designed by Dorothée Meilichzon and has a jazz age vibe with white tin ceilings accented by Louis XVI pieces as well as mid-century furniture. Patrons can sit on high stools at the long mahogany bar that occupies the left side of the room, or snag a cozy table by the backroom fireplace if all the spots in front of the picture windows facing the street have been taken. Read More

By Delphine Barguirdjian 4/05/12 9:00am

As Seen in SCENE

Keith Haring, Untitled, 1982. Sumi ink on paper, 107 x 160 inches

Exhibit A: Keith Haring Off the Street

 An exhibition devoted to Keith Haring opened this past month at the Brooklyn Museum where the artist’s drawings, videos, archival objects, rarely seen sketchbooks and journals are all on display until July 8th.

Chronicling Haring’s career from its very beginning when he left Pennsylvania to attend the School of Visual Arts in New York, the exhibit follows the artist’s development as he introduced socially and politically charged art to the streets and subway walls of New York City.

As an artist whose life was devoted to making public art, Haring’s move to New York City proved to be a key point in his career—exposing him to the alternative art community that was developing and the musicians, performance and graffiti artists who populated the streets of Downtown Manhattan in the 80s. Read More

By Carson Griffith 4/05/12 7:30am

As Seen in SCENE

The team behind Super Linda

Haute Spot: Inside Super Linda

Getting a table at Super Linda is not the same name-dropping process that careening the ropes of the Beatrice Inn was before the beloved nightclub shuttered its doors in  2009. Despite both establishments sharing an owner, the Latin American eatery doesn’t involve bulky bouncers or pesky passwords to gain entrance into the two-story restaurant and lounge.

“We want to take care of our friends, but we want to take care of our neighbors. The people who are most likely to come visit us,” co-owner Matt Abramcyk explains, adding that there are numerous reasons for Super Linda’s West Broadway location but the “local, tight knit community” in Tribeca plays a major factor.

Serge Becker agrees with his business partner. “We’re keeping a lot of the tables open to the public. We don’t want it to be a private club. It’s pretty simple stuff,” Becker added, saying the lounge, which is called El Jockey and located below street level, “is pretty relaxed so far.” Becker also says Super Linda’s focus will be on Tribeca’s locals. “We have a lot of friends and ties in the neighborhood. We hope to create a real meeting place for them.”

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep your eye on the door for some of the high-profile celebs and fashionable New Yorkers who once hung at “the Beatrice,” as regulars fondly referred to it. “Those people come to all of our places, truthfully,” Abramcyk says. “We get our share of neighborhood people and our share of notable people.” Read More

By Delphine Barguirdjian 4/04/12 8:00am

As Seen in SCENE

5 Photos

Third Wheel, 3-D photographic lenticular, 30 x 40 inches

Behind the SCENE: Out of the Box

Margeaux Walter is quite the chameleon. She’s posed as a teenager, a bride, a club-goer, a dad, a jogger, a child, a commuter—and has the wigs to prove it. “I like to figure out who the characters are before I start photographing,” says Walter. With a background in photography, Walter uses digital media to create lenticulars—prints that move when looked at from different angles. Forcing viewers to sway back and forth in calculated motions, the most intriguing aspect of Walter’s lenticulars is the viewer interaction they rely on. With some pieces showing three or four different images, observers can easily spend more than a few minutes trying to grasp each of the characters’ movements. Her Crowded series featured images of groups of up to 50 people in various social settings; in line to get into a club, at a sporting event, a concert, a graduation. For this series, Walter photographed herself as each of the characters (sometimes taking up to 150 photos per character) and later collaged the photos together to create a crowd of incognito Margeaux Walters. Read More

By Peter Davis 3/02/12 8:30am

As Seen in SCENE

Charlie Campbell's gambling games. (Camille Shimshak)

School Daze: Campbell’s Casino

“I demand that your son return my wife’s diamond necklace,” shouted Mr. Tomesen as he commanded the front hall of my parent’s apartment on East 72nd Street. My mother and father were mid-dinner party and their guests—which included the flamboyant gay walker and gossip Swizzy Ziegler, rail-thin fashion plate Nony Martin and fashion editor Divina Fields—watched in horror and amusement as Mr. Tomesen tried to shove his way past my father who mumbled and wobbled in his brown suede Belgian slippers. Read More

By Delphine Barguirdjian 3/02/12 8:00am

As Seen in SCENE

Anne Morgan’s War: Rebuilding Devastated France. (Wally Findlay galleries)

Exhibit A: An Heiress at War

Previously shown at The Morgan Library in New York and The Woodrow Wilson House in Washington, D.C., Anne Morgan’s War: Rebuilding Devastated France has traveled far from its home at the Franco-American Museum, in the Château de Blérancourt in France. On view at the Wally Findlay gallery in Palm Beach for the month of March, the exhibit is dedicated to philanthropist Anne Morgan, daughter of financier J. Pierpont Morgan (yes, the J.P. Morgan) and chronicles Morgan’s efforts to help rebuild post-war France with her organization, the American Committee for Devastated France. Read More

By Kristian Laliberte 3/01/12 1:00pm

As Seen in SCENE

16 Photos

Christian Louboutin and Patricia Field

SCENE and Heard: Fashion Fix

Fashion Week started with a pill: a giant, 500mg capsule. I am not sure what it did exactly, but seeing as the factory of Christian Louboutin created it, I can only imagine that when it hit me, the rush amped up my next two weeks. I wasn’t actually popping uppers. The “pill” was a Louboutin Read More

By Elise Knutsen 3/01/12 1:17am

As Seen in SCENE

One57 (Courtesy of Extell Development)

Trading Places: Record Breakers

A Tale of Two Sales

We’re only three months into 2012, but the year has already proved rich with real estate surprises. Of note thus far, Dmitry Rybolovlev’s record breaking purchase at 15 Central Park West and Robert Bass’ $42 million fixer-upper.

Although the news broke last year, Manhattan’s most expensive residential deal finally closed in early February. A trust in the name of Russian businessman Dmitry Rybolovlev’s daughter, 22-year-old Ekaterina, purchased Sandy Weill’s former home at 15 Central Park West for $88 million. Mr. Rybolovlev, a Russian fertilizer kingpin, and his daughter had been seen touring the apartment months before the news broke. Ms. Rybolovleva is an avid equestrienne, and competes in shows across the world on her prized jumpers.

Meanwhile, Robert M. Bass was behind a substantial, but significantly smaller sale, in one of New York’s most pedigreed buildings. Read More