Fun_People Archive
22 Feb
WhiteBoardness - 2/21/96

Date: Thu, 22 Feb 96 01:32:40 -0800
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: WhiteBoardness - 2/21/96

[Here are two items from places on opposite sides of the country that have a  
lot in common.  Both places are commonly known by their initials.  Both of the  
articles sound like they might have been written by out-of-towners because  
they avoid the local names of things (see the note at the end).  In both  
articles we find rich people who let other people (servants, essentially)  
speak for them.  And the real clincher ... I lived/worked around each of the  
areas described.   -psl]

Excerpted-from: WhiteBoard News for Wednesday, February 21, 1996


Los Angeles, California:

Singer Barry Manilow was in a five car pile-up on L.A.'s Interstate 10
Tuesday.  No one was hurt, says publicist Susan DuBow.

While waiting for his damaged Range Rover to be towed, Manilow spent 90
minutes signing autographs for police and rubberneckers.

"It's his first accident," DuBow said.
==========

New York, New York:

You ascend the black Belgian marble double staircase, gripping the
upholstered rail, and finally reach the room you've come to see.  The
ceiling is 23 feet above, the fireplace 78 feet away, Fifth Avenue 42
stories below.

Your jaw hangs somewhere in between.

This is Lady Fairfax's living room.  For $35 million, it can be yours.

The "Grand Salon," as it is known up here, is the centerpiece of the
Australian heiress's triplex apartment atop the Pierre Hotel.  But it is
more than that, your guide says.

"I'm very familiar with all the great apartments of New York," purred Hall
Willke, "and I believe this is the most important room in private
ownership."

Willke is a broker trying to sell the place for more than twice as much as
any American apartment ever has commanded.

But Willke says there is nothing like the Fairfax apartment, a French
chateau that sits right under the Pierre's landmark copper mansard roof.
It has 12,000 square feet (about eight times your three-bedroom colonial)
and views of Central Park and virtually everything else in town worth
seeing.

The apartment has six master bedrooms, six wood-burning fireplaces, four
terraces, three kitchens, two powder rooms and eight baths.  Most of the
latter have refrigerators, and one also has its own fireplace, terrace and
heated marble floor.

Lady Fairfax, whose husband, the newspaper magnate Lord Warwick Fairfax,
died in 1987, never planned to spend more than two months a year in the
place.  But when she found she was spending only a few weeks, she decided
to sell.

Willke has been escorting visitors through in recent weeks.

They get an eyeful: the gilded sink basins, the lights that switch on
automatically when you enter a room, the walls covered with puffy
upholstery, the hidden panel off the library that swings back to reveal a
gleaming pantry.

The place isn't perfect.  The Grand Salon feels like the lobby of a grand
hotel, and the rest of the apartment feels a bit like a submarine in
comparison.  The maintenance and taxes are $31,440 a month.
==========


[Did you catch the non-local names of things?
    In LA, the names of all the highways take articles, so "Interstate 10" is  
really called "the 10."  Admittedly, it would have been hard to work "the 10"  
into the article.
    In NY, the hotel described is "the Hotel Pierre" -- I've never heard it  
referred to as "the Pierre Hotel" (but I prefer the neighboring Sherry  
Netherlands anyway).
-psl]
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