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Laura L. Griffin

By Velvet Roper staff 7/27/12 1:12pm

Question of the Week

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Olympic Rings

Question of the Week: In What Olympic Event, Real or Imagined, Would Celebrities Most Like to Compete?

As you almost certainly know, the Olympics start today. (And thank god New York City didn’t win the bid seven years ago, right? Clearly Williamsburg didn’t need a brand new Olympic Aquatic Center/Beach Volleyball Arena when it could revamp McCarren!)

This week we trolled red carpets and parties probing celebrities with the following query: What Olympic event, real or imagined, would you most like to compete in?

Their answers were colorful (if not delusional), and include tidbits from Susan Sarandon, Zach Galifianakis, Calvin Klein, Audrey Gelman, a former Bachelor, the entire cast of Miss Advised, and many more. Click through for the slideshow. Read More

By Velvet Roper staff 7/13/12 10:30am

Question of the Week

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Take Us to the Movies

Question of the Week: What Classic Movie Deserves a Sequel?

It’s seemingly the summer of sequels: Spider-Man, The Dark Night Rises, Step Up: Revolution, The Bourne Legacy, Expendables 2… they’re everywhere. All week we pondered aloud what other classic films deserve the franchise treatment. What classic movie deserves a sequel?

We heard entertaining answers from the likes of Michael Ian Black, Meghan McCain and Aziz Ansari. And, with their respective replies to this pressing question, Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan proved once and for all that they are a very particular kind of match.

Click through the slideshow for all of these and more. Read More

By Velvet Roper staff 6/15/12 1:30pm

Question of the Week

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Summer camp cabin

Question of the Week: What Is Your Fondest Memory of Summer Camp?

The most American of all traditions: sending your child away to summer camp.

This week, we asked our friends on the party circuit that had been party to their parents’ brief period of summer freedom–Tinsley Mortimer, comedian Reggie Watts, philanthropist Jean Shafiroff and a couple of Broadway’s best, to name a few–about their childhood experiences in the great outdoors. Despite the bug bites, terrible food and the seemingly inevitable murderous rampage (a la Friday the 13th), what is your fondest memory of summer camp?

Click through to the slideshow for a few of our favorite answers. Read More

By Christine Chen 6/11/12 10:49am

food festivals

Pig pickin' with a powerdrill.

BBQ from around the Country Cheap and Plentiful at the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party

Out for a late lunch on Saturday, Joseph Bretner wanted something to “break up the monotony” of his usual foods.

So the doorman for a building on East 23rd Street strolled around the corner and into the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party where, with his grey uniform and measured gait, he stood out amongst the mad throng of people shuffling slowly up the queues on Madison Avenue.

The crowds were testament to not only the barbecues’ quality and variety, but also their affordability. A plate of barbecue and coleslaw, pickles, or a vegetable of some sort cost eight dollars, a cup of beer six, the fried pie and other desserts four. And, further distinguishing itself from the Great Googa Mooga festival, where a thimble of beer cost seven dollars, the block party invited barbecue teams from across the nation—Texas, Alabama, Missouri and more. Read More

By Laura L. Griffin 6/08/12 2:03pm

Fabulous at Any Age

Lina Plioplyte and Ari Seth Cohen: bankrolled!

Coming Soon to a Theater Near You: Kickstarted Documentary about Stylish Ladies of a Certain Age

Ari Seth Cohen, the proprietor of noted street style blog Advanced Style (whose recent book party was littered with incredible women in incredible accessories), and his filmmaking partner Lina Plioplyte moments ago achieved their Kickstarter fundraising goal of $35,000. They got over the top with two weeks to spare, and will receive (at least) $35,052 to help them complete the production of their documentary spotlighting the eccentric and exceptionally well-dressed elder ladies of New York City. Read More

By Aaron Short 6/07/12 12:32pm

Concerts

The crowd at Celebrate Brooklyn.

Wonderful World, Beautiful People: Celebrate Brooklyn Opens Its 30th Summer in Prospect Park with Jimmy Cliff

Summer doesn’t really begin in Brooklyn until a musical icon soothingly rocks throngs of Brooklyn’s gentrifiers and natives in the Prospect Park bandshell. This year was Jimmy Cliff’s turn.

“I look forward to most concerts and I’m certainly looking forward to tonight,” said Peter Aschkenasy, former mayor John Lindsay’s deputy parks commissioner and BRIC Arts’s vice chairman. “The fact that Cliff is still performing is pretty amazing. His hit song was 40 years ago. ‘The Harder They Come.’”

Mr. Aschkenasy and Celebrate Brooklyn executive director Jack Walsh were being honored at the concert’s annual gala on Tuesday night, where the borough’s royalty and BRIC Arts board members mingled before the show. Read More

By Lindsey Cherner 6/06/12 12:00pm

Broadway

Mikhail Baryshnikov, Liza Minnelli and Tony Danza. (Jonathon Ziegler/PatrickMcMullan.com)

Liza Minnelli “Suprised” to Receive Lifetime Achievement (from Mikhail Baryshnikov and Tony Danza!) at Astaire Awards

The Observer stood in front of a less-than-generous red carpet on Monday—more of a red doormat, really—flanked by photographers and awaiting the arrival of fashionably late Broadway dancers, choreographers and filmmakers.

We were at NYU’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts for the 30th annual Fred and Adele Astaire Awards, which recognizes outstanding achievement in dance on Broadway and film each season—the only award show of its kind, so they advertise. Read More

By Jenna Sauers 6/06/12 10:15am

shindigger

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Ashley Olsen, Tommy Hilfiger, Mary Kate Olsen

The Style Set: The CFDA Awards at Lincoln Center

John Waters will not officiate your marriage, no matter how nicely you ask. “I don’t do that anymore,” he said firmly, at the after-party for the Council of Fashion Designers of America Awards, held at Lincoln Center Monday night. “People expect me to write something. Besides, everybody’s in that church now!”

Mr. Waters became a legally recognized marriage celebrant of the Universal Life Church during the making of Cry-Baby, long before the Internet made ordination accessible to anyone with a wi-fi connection and $14.95. “If I’ve known you for 20 years, and it’s private, maybe I’ll do it.”

The director and author was in the unique position of accepting two awards on behalf of honorees in absentia—Johnny Depp (who was given the organization’s Fashion Icon Award) and Comme des Garçons designer Rei Kawakubo (who bagged the International Award). “Rei asked me first, so I said to Johnny, ‘You’re kidding! Rei asked me yesterday.’” Clad in an orange patterned Comme des Garçons suit jacket, Mr. Waters thus took the stage twice. “I was happy to be a double-feature for the evening.” Read More

By Laura L. Griffin 6/05/12 9:30am

Swag Bag

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Swag Bag: A Toolkit for Reviving the Algonquin Round Table

Last night, about 150 bookish folk raised their glasses to a new partnership. The refurbished and reopened Algonquin Hotel hopes to resurrect its literary reputation by hosting the Penguin Previews Series at the Round Table–readings and talks featuring Penguin authors held in the famed hotel lobby, where the wits of the Algonquin Round Table met and traded barbs through the 1920s.

After they’d had their fill of the thematic cocktails (The Penguin, a variation on a White Russian, and The Matilda, a liquored-up mimosa named for the housecat that lives in the lobby and serves as the hotel’s mascot, perhaps even more so than Dorothy Parker), partygoers traded in a postcard-size photo of the resident kitty for a gift bag. Below the jump, a catalog of the goodies contained therein. Read More