We are celebrating!! Eliot Hess’s children’s book is available for presale. Art work by Jayda Knight. Genius Cat Books, ,Kayppin Media— Amazon, Walmart, Target, Barnes & Noble and we pray for Books & Books. Official launch March 26, 2024. Steven Ekstract made it happen.
(I love real estate stories. This one really gives you the inside track as to what’s going on in NYC) —LWH
There just aren’t enough billionaires, and no one wants to live in Hudson Yards.
By Kim Velsey, who is Curbed’s real-estate reporter
Photo: Douglas Elliman Real Estate, Corcoran Group, Serhant LLC
If you want views of Central Park and at least 6,000 never-before-lived-in square feet from which to admire them, you’ve got a lot to choose from right now: Central Park Tower’s 17,545-square-foot penthouse — “a once-in-a-generation residence” — is on sale for 22 percent off its original asking price of $250 million. An 8,000-square-foot duplex at MoMA Tower, an asymmetrical crystalline skypiercer designed by Jean Nouvel, has been trying to get $63.18 million for the past five years. Over at 111 West 57th, $54.6 million will buy you a “spectacular, one-of-a-kind” duplex with “breathtaking, unobstructed 360-degree vistas.” (IMMEDIATE OCCUPANCY is plastered atop the building’s StreetEasy listings.)
An image of the “grand salon” with 27-foot ceilings at Central Park Tower, which was featured in the initial $250 million listing and the reduced $195 million one.
While the low-interest-rate-fueled buying spree of the past few years burned through most of New York City’s residential inventory, it barely touched Manhattan’s newly built trophy apartments. On Billionaire’s Row, 23 percent of sponsor units remain unsold, according to an analysis by appraisal firm Miller Samuel. And that’s not counting all the people looking to offload the ones they previously bought, which likely brings the total percentage of trophy apartments seeking buyers closer to 50 percent.
“Many people thought the super-luxury market was wider and deeper than it actually was,” says Jonathan Miller of Miller Samuel. There just aren’t as many billionaires looking for real estate to park $30 or $40 million as developers thought there were.
Things started sunnily enough: The first few ultraluxurious skyscrapers — 15 Central Park West, One57 (at first, at least), and 432 Park (pre leaks, creaks, and elevator entrapments) — seemed to coast on some combination of FOMO among the megawealthy, bragging rights, and the promise of a sweet return upon flipping. But then more went up.
And more. “For a while it was like, ‘Oooh, 18-foot ceilings,’” says one broker. “Now it’s like, ‘Oh, you also have 18-foot ceilings.’” Suddenly, an Extell Tower penthouse was not, as investor Bill Ackman once said, “the Mona Lisa of apartments,” but more like a mid-range Caravaggio. One57, in particular, where Ackman bought, developed a bad resale track record: One penthouse there traded at 30 percent less than the buyer had paid a few years earlier.
An image of the MoMA Tower’s penthouse, which has open city views and has been featured in the several listings since 2019. Photo: Douglas Elliman Real Estate
Mostly, though, stuff just sat, gathering dust. At 111 West 57th Street, also known as Steinway Tower, which launched sales in 2019, less than half of the 60 units have sold, according to Miller Samuel. This summer, one of the project’s lenders, Apollo Commercial Real Estate Finance, wrote off $82 million in debt tied to the project, citing sluggish sales, Bloomberg reported. “While there has been a modest pickup in foot traffic and buyer interest … the velocity of unit sales remains behind expectations,” the CEO told investors in an earnings call.
A photo of 100 E. 53rd St, Apt. 55A, shows the “stunning great room and kitchen and dining area with three sprawling exposures with luminous floor-to-ceiling windows.” This apartment just went on the market, but the building has been selling slowly. Photo: Corcoran Group
Which has meant discounts on Billionaires’ Row (comparatively speaking). This fall, Gary Barnett dropped the price of the 17,500-foot penthouse at Central Park Tower to $195 million. Otherwise, the tower, which launched sales in 2020, is 59 percent sold, according to Miller Samuel’s analysis, with units selling at about a 25 percent discount. The Real Deal has reported that the building’s expected $4 billion sellout is now closer to $3 billion. But what, Barnett argued, was wrong with a little showmanship, if dealmaking followed? “The original pricing on these units were headline prices,” he wrote in a statement to TheReal Deal after dropping the penthouse price. “We have recently sold a significant amount of inventory at the top of the building and now want to get serious about selling these two showcase homes.”
There were a lot of “headline prices,” as it turns out. Closings at MoMA Tower this year have averaged about a 20 percent discount, according to an analysis of sales data on StreetEasy. The building is now 61 percent sold. The more modestly priced Foster + Partners–designed luxury condo down the street, the Selene, is about 59 percent sold, according to Miller Samuel. At this rate, buildings in this rarefied market will average about a decade to sell out.
A photo of Steinway Tower’s pool, one of the building’s many amenities, which was featured in a recent listing. A slower-than-expected sellout led one of the project’s investors to write off some of the debt this summer. Photo: Corcoran Group
Another issue is the lackluster appeal of many newly created luxury districts. Stephen Ross’s fantasies about the allure of the far (far) West Side have been collapsing, to all appearances: At 35 Hudson Yards, only 50 percent of the units have sold in four years, The Wall Street Journal reported this summer, with some of the larger units trading for discounts of more than 40 percent. Discounts were even steeper — up to half off — for active listings. (It’s worth noting that the exception to the ho-hum billionaires’ trophy market — 220 Central Park South, which seems to have snagged much of the available buyer pool for this kind of thing — is actually onCentral Park.)
A photo of a living room at 35 Hudson Yards that showcases the development’s city views. Photo: Corcoran Group
There’s very little urgency for buyers to buy anything right now, one broker told me, even for much more desirable real estate, like, say, a townhouse on the Upper East Side. Of course they’re not scrambling to snap up penthouses in Hudson Yards. “It was supposed to be the fashion, the media, the retail center of the world. It was going to be where Google and LVMH were headquartered. It’s very far from that vision,” he says. “Can we stop calling all these things trophies? It’s in the middle of nowhere.
Bankman-Fried’s Parents Stand By Their Sam—And Face Their Own Legal Perils
The couple, longtime Stanford Law professors, have an uphill battle ahead in trying to overturn their son’s conviction
Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried attended their son’s trial and often took notes. JOHN TAGGART FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Barbara Fried wanted to get close to her son.
During breaks in the monthlong criminal fraud trial of her firstborn child, Sam Bankman-Fried, she would sometimes leave her seat and walk up to the railing that separated him from the gallery. Watching him and his lawyers, often in silence, she was just inches away yet no more able to intervene on his behalf or prevent the conviction that many saw coming.
Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried had hovered nearby when their son soared to prominence as the crypto industry’s biggest star, and advised him as his company collapsed and the government made its case against him. And after a federal jury delivered a guilty verdict that could send him to prison for decades, his parents are trying to prepare him for what comes next.
The couple maintain their son’s innocence and are helping formulate grounds for an appeal. They visited him at a Brooklyn, N.Y., jail on Tuesday to assure him he has a life worth living, even if much of it stands to be spent behind bars. His conviction carries a potential maximum sentence of 110 years, though defendants rarely receive the most severe punishment.
Their unwavering support isn’t all that unusual.But Bankman, 68 years old, and Fried, 72, aren’t like most parents. The luster of their careers as beloved Stanford Law professors helped pave the way for the stunning rise of their son’s crypto exchange, FTX. And their direct dealings with that company, and the perks they received from their son before FTX filed for bankruptcy, have opened them up to legal headaches of their own.
Bankman worked for a time as a paid employee at FTX. Fried had no formal position there, but FTX alleges that she helped direct her son’s millions of dollars of political donations. The company, now under new management, has sued them both, arguing they pocketed millions that should be returned.
The couple’s lawyers have said the allegations are “completely false” and “a dangerous attempt to intimidate Joe and Barbara.”
FTX cryptocurrency exchange founder Sam Bankman-Fried, wearing prison clothing, speaks to his mother, Barbara Fried, across the low partition between the courtroom well and the galley after a hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn in New York City, U.S. August 22, 2023 in a courtroom sketch. JANE ROSENBERG/REUTERS
In this courtroom sketch, Sam Bankman Fried’s parents Barbara Fried, left, and Joseph Bankman react to the jury verdict in Manhattan federal court, Thursday, Nov. 2, 2023, in New York. A New York jury has convicted FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried of fraud charges. ELIZABETH WILLIAMS/ASSOCIATED PRESS
If the parents harbor any regrets about their actions, or their son’s, they haven’t shared them, several friends said.
“I would think this is not the time for recriminations,” said Bob Gordon, a longtime colleague at Stanford Law, where Bankman and Fried met and taught for decades. “For either their children, or themselves.”
The couple raised Sam and his younger brother on the Stanford campus, near a student house known for its vegan food and nude parties. They often spoke to their young sons as if they were adults and encouraged others to do the same, friends and colleagues said.
Respected legal minds, the couple had a deep reserve of powerful friends from Silicon Valley to Wall Street. Their reputations served as a credential for Bankman-Fried when he was building his crypto empire, opening doors to investors, regulators and politicians.
FTX was a crypto giant valued in the billions of dollars when the company moved to the Bahamas in 2021. Both Bankman and Fried applied for permanent residency there, according to the lawsuit. Bankman went on leave from Stanford to work for his son.
Bankman became a key decision maker, FTX said, managing tax issues and advising on job hires. He was supposed to be the adult in the room at a company populated with young high achievers.
FTX agreed to pay Bankman a $200,000 annual salary, according to the lawsuit, and in early 2022 he lobbied for more. Bankman-Fried sent his parents $10 million shortly afterward.
“We are so touched by this gift,” Bankman wrote to his son, according to the lawsuit. “Mom is announcing retirement, which she would not have done otherwise.”
There were other benefits, too. Bankman got a cameo in an FTX Super Bowl ad starring Larry David.
An FTX Super Bowl ad last year starring Larry David had Joseph Bankman in a cameo role.
Soon, the lawsuit said, the company bought the couple a $16.4 million house in a gated community near its headquarters. Their names were on the deed.
A spokeswoman for Bankman and Fried said that the house “was used as temporary housing while Joe worked in the Bahamas” and they never believed they owned it.
She said that FTX’s outside lawyers had assured the couple “that FTX would have all beneficial ownership of the house and agreed to document that in writing.”
When FTX unraveled in November 2022, Bankman tried to remain upbeat for his son. Bankman-Fried soon stepped down as CEO, and FTX filed for bankruptcy. Within weeks, Bankman-Fried was arrested.
Bankman-Fried lived with his parents for much of the year, under house arrest. Two Stanford friends of his parents had put hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line to secure his release on bond, allowing him to stay out of jail.
From his parents’ home, Bankman-Fried continued to speak openly about his case. In August, the judge revoked his bail and sent him to jail to await his trial.
For most of the year, both before their son was sent to jail and afterward, the couple tried to hold on to a semblance of normal life. They hosted their regular Sunday night dinners with friends. Bankman hasn’t taught at Stanford since late 2021, but he attended faculty luncheons and was often spotted walking around campus with their German shepherd, Sandor. The family got him after FTX collapsed, for security.
Bankman-Fried’s trial started in New York last month. His parents arrived most mornings around 8:30. The two often took notes. Fried was sometimes allowed to speak briefly to her son during lunch breaks or before U.S. marshals returned him to jail at the end of each day.
When Bankman-Fried first testified, without a jury present, his mother held her head in her hands as a prosecutor asked a barrage of rapid-fire questions.
Sam Bankman-Fried, who founded and led FTX , was escorted from court in Nassau, Bahamas, last year after being charged by U.S. prosecutors following the cryptocurrency exchange’s collapse. PHOTO: DANTE CARRER/REUTERS
On the day that closing arguments began, Bankman and Fried sat out the morning, when the government started its final pitch to the jury. They returned when the defense argued in the afternoon. They left court that evening, their arms around each other’s shoulders.
The next day, a federal jury convicted Bankman-Fried on all seven criminal counts. Bankman slumped forward when the verdict was read. Fried put her palms against her cheeks as tears streamed down her face.
Throughout the trial, Bankman-Fried had rarely turned to the gallery to search for his parents. As he was led away from the courtroom, he looked at them and smiled.
A hearing to set the length of Bankman-Fried’s sentence is slated for March 28. He also faces additional charges, including allegations of conspiracies to commit bank fraud and bribery, that could go to trial in March. His parents are gearing up for an appeal.
“Criminal appeals are always an extremely uphill battle,” said Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor and a partner at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner in Chicago, who isn’t involved in the FTX case. “When there’s overwhelming evidence and sweeping charges, you need a potential game-changer. And there wasn’t one.”
Bankman and Fried returned to California on Wednesday, people familiar with the matter said.
Bankman, who is also a clinical psychologist, has continued seeing some clients over the past year. He plans to resume his full practice.
People close to them say that their network of friends remains intact. They said they expect Bankman to start teaching again, possibly within the next year. A Stanford spokeswoman declined to comment.
Paul Brest, a former Stanford Law dean, said he sees no reason the university wouldn’t welcome back his friend. “I can’t imagine why any institution would take a position on the child of a faculty member,” he said.
Interviewers shy away from asking Susan Warner what it’s like to be intimate with a man after being widowed from her storybook marriage of 38 years. I decided to ask her sensitive questions that are often posed to me.
Let me remind everyone that longer explanations are beautifully answered in Susan Warner’s newly released book, “Never Say Never, Never Say Always.” Her answers are meaningful, insightful and poignant based on her tragic experience of losing her son to suicide, six months prior to the death of her magnificent, young husband to a brief, virulent cancer.
In episode 30 of Susan’s podcast she explains that she doesn’t suffer from guilt. She has made up her mind to continue living and to live life to its fullest- making choices that are exciting and fulfilling.
Question:
What was it like the first time you were intimate with a man other than your husband? Were you thinking about your husband during sex, comparing and making notes? What was going on in your head?
Susan Warner
The first time, and every time after that, the experience was completely separate from the relationship with my husband. I never experienced three of us in the room. I am in the moment.
Interestingly, I have had men tell me that they felt guilty. I am fortunate. I had a wonderful relationship with my husband, and I know he wants me to be happy and fulfilled. That made me want to go forward. Men have told me they felt guilty, like they were cheating. There may have been some history to their feelings, however it didn’t stop them from pursuing new relationships.
I didn’t date until over a year after my husband died. So, I was well into my journey of finding myself. At that point I removed myself from any intimacy with my husband. A year is a long time. A lot of men I know dated far earlier. Some dated a couple of months after their wives died. Distance from death helps make a difference.“
Question:
How comfortable were you and your companion removing your clothes? Was it a total embarrassing experience?
Susan Warner:
Everyone has to do what is comfortable for them. We are not 25 anymore. All of our bodies have aged. The body that you present in a new relationship is the only body he/she knows. There is no mourning of past anatomy-it is the here and now. That is freeing and exciting. Intimacy is a personal experience and can occur any way you want it to. Some men and women prefer keeping their t-shirt on or turning the lights off. Whatever the case may be, comfort and freedom is ultimately the most important.
The biggest surprise is that many men and women, who are divorced or widowed, use this period of their life to embark on a journey of sexual discovery. After you have been married to the same person for 30 or 40 years sex can become more routine. Now they want to try different things. It’s like going into a candy store. You want to look around and decide what you like. You might act differently or say new things, all without history or past expectations.
This whole new life that you and your new partner figure out is what works for you. The right companion changes everything. Personal growth is the silver lining to experiencing loss and thengrowing and experimenting.
Yusef Salaam, who was one of five Black and Latino teenagers convicted in the 1989 rape of a jogger in Central Park and exonerated decades later, was elected on Tuesday night to represent Harlem in the New York City Council.
Mr. Salaam, who ran unopposed, had won a commanding victory in a contested Democratic primaryin June, when he defeated two sitting members of the New York State Assembly. The Democratic incumbent who currently holds the Council seat, Kristin Richardson Jordan, dropped out of the race before the primary.
Mr. Salaam, 49, spoke frequently during his campaign about his conviction, exoneration and persecution by former President Donald J. Trump, who took out full-page ads in The New York Times and other papers calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty in response to the case of the Central Park jogger.
Mr. Salaam said Tuesday night that it was ironic that as he was elected to the Council, Mr. Trump was facing multiple criminal charges.
“Karma is real, and we have to remember that,” Mr. Salaam said in an interview.
He said he harbored no ill feelings toward the former president, only a desire for justice.
“I hope he gets treated the way we did not,” Mr. Salaam said. “They judged us guilty before we had a fair trial.”
Speaking from his crowded victory party, Mr. Salaam said the story of his wrongful conviction, the nearly seven years he served in prison, his exoneration and his efforts to reform the criminal justice system were why Harlem residents connected with him.
That life experience, he said, “guides me and informs me and allows me to be a humble servant for the people.”
He added: “Our participation in the greater good can move us to be a community that works together, organizes together and has a vision that is inclusive, rather than exclusive.”
The Literary Life with Mitchell Kaplan is by far the best podcast available today. If you don’t believe me listen to this one with John Grisham. If you ever wanted to write a book, or get tips on how to sell your book, listen to Mitchell get secret tips from Grisham.
On this edition of The Literary Life, John Grisham is live at Books and Books in Coral Gables for a great night with a room full of readers, basking in the brilliance of a master storyteller. John’s new book is The Exchange, and he brings back Mitch McDeer, the hero of The Firm — and he talks with Mitchell Kaplan about this new book and much, much more.
The tall guy, Robert Armada, made a dinner party for the six of us last Friday night that was fit for royalty. The two middle women, Susie Proenza and Lucrecia Boullon, entertained us with stories about their swinging years. The rest of us, Steve Greenberg, Eliot Hess, moi, laughed so hard that our sides hurt today. Thank you Robert and Steve.
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Three women in media. Advertising agency owner Joanne Davis, moi, and the head Tomato http://www.thethreetomatoes. Onward with Eliot and Stu to Joe’s Stone Crab which was packed last night like old times. Early season crabs, delicious.
Married billionaire Eric Schmidt launched Steel Perlot with 29-year-old entrepreneur Michelle Ritter while they were dating — a venture that has blurred his professional and personal life.
Since leaving Google as chairman, Eric Schmidt has wielded a $20 billion fortune to build an ecosystem of influence, overseeing a vast constellation of companies and investments and taking on prestigious advisory roles that have cemented his reputation as Silicon Valley statesman and AI policy whisperer to the Pentagon.
And for the past two years, the 68-year-old has extended that clout — and committed at least $100 million, according to three sources — to a startup accelerator called Steel Perlot, which he leads as executive chairman with CEO Michelle Ritter, a 29-year-old entrepreneur who he has been dati
Schmidt’s funds were intended to support the accelerator’s business, launching and investing in new ventures under the Steel Perlot umbrella. But just over a year after it launched, the company was asking Schmidt’s family office, Hillspire LLC, to pay its bills.
In a January 2023 email to Hillspire, a Steel Perlot executive requested nearly $2.5 million to meet payroll and credit card debts racked up by the company and its subsidiaries that month. “Eric, copied, has the context,” wrote Gal Treger, Steel Perlot’s head of VC funds, according to a copy of the email seen by Forbes. Hillspire covered the payroll costs, said people familiar with the matter. (Treger didn’t respond to a request for comment.)


Schmidt’s extramarital relationships have been splashed across Page Six for years, though he remains married to his wife of four decades Wendy Schmidt. But his role in Steel Perlot appears to be the first time he’s publicly entered into a major business relationship with someone he is dating. (Wendy Schmidt declined to comment.)
The former Google CEO is typically quiet about the degree of his involvement in the sprawl of funds, foundations and LLCs with which he is associated. Steel Perlot is an exception: He has publicly stated his role as Steel Perlot’s executive chairman, and sources in a position to know recalled Schmidt participating in business operations, such as deciding which startups to look at for potential investment. He would occasionally appear in meetings alongside Ritter. He is a “very, very active chairman,” Ritter told Forbes. “We have a very typical CEO-chairman relationship.”
Schmidt has made it clear to employees that Steel Perlot is Ritter’s company and she has full autonomy to run it. But in her role, Ritter appears to have overstated financial commitments and overhyped involvement from industry leaders in Steel Perlot, according to documents and interviews with 11 former employees and people linked to Steel Perlot.
In an interview with Forbes, Ritter claimed the company has multiple backers beyond Schmidt. She added that Steel Perlot now also manages a total of $450 million on behalf of institutional investors and high-net-worth individuals, and had been deploying that capital “since April.”
But Forbes was unable to find evidence that anyone other than Schmidt had provided significant funds to Steel Perlot, and Ritter declined to identify other investors. When pressed for more details on the asset management portfolio, Ritter clarified that Steel Perlot had only received a “preliminary [letter of intent]” from institutional investors, including a family office and sovereign wealth fund. She declined to comment further.
“We were sold this bill of goods that we were participating in Eric Schmidt’s concept to fund the future. Instead it was a vanity project.”
According to multiple employees who worked with her, Ritter also implied that tech elite including Jeff Bezos and Michael Bloomberg, with whom she and Schmidt attended social events, were “committed” or “involved” in Steel Perlot projects. Other times, employees said Ritter implied that Steel Perlot had financial or business commitments from Middle Eastern investors, such as the Emirati sovereign wealth fund Mubadala. Bloomberg and Mubadala did not respond to a request for comment; a spokesperson for Bezos declined to comment.
In a statement, Ritter said that Steel Perlot had discussions with Mubadala, but the sovereign fund is not a “formal partner.” Regarding Bezos and Bloomberg, she added: “Steel Perlot leadership regularly engages with business leaders across the technology industry, including these individuals, though they are not formal partners.”
“We were sold this bill of goods that we were participating in Eric Schmidt’s concept to fund the future,” a former Steel Perlot employee told Forbes, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation from Schmidt and Ritter. “Instead it was a vanity project.”
Schmidt declined to respond to questions about Steel Perlot, his relationship to Ritter and his investments. When asked, spokesperson Matthew Hiltzik told Forbes that any relationship between Schmidt and Ritter isn’t related to the success of the business and the billionaire intends to continue supporting Steel Perlot financially.
“We have built something within two years that I’m proud of, and there are things that I would edit,” Ritter told Forbes. She added: “I’m really, really grateful for the great talent that we have. I’m also very grateful for the funding that I’ve gotten from friends and family, but also from Eric, who is a very significant investor at the top.”
Ritter, who graduated from Columbia Law School in 2021 after completing stints as a cybersecurity research assistant at the Department of Homeland Security and a summer intern at the law firm Skadden, told Forbes she was introduced to Schmidt via a law school connection. The same year she graduated, it was reported by the New York Post they were romantically entangled when they attended the launch of Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic rocket plane in New Mexico.
A few months after Branson’s event, the pair launched Steel Perlot, which has offices in New York and Los Angeles, at a party at Manhattan’s swanky Zero Bond club. Schmidt later described it as “an AI and analytics company of companies” that would invest in a fruit salad of verticals from virtual reality to space. Elaborating on that mission to some employees, Ritter invoked the empires of Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk as an array of world changing companies run under the aegis of a single person, according to three former employees.
Steel Perlot’s name is something of a mystery, and several former employees said they still don’t know its origins. Forbes found an image of Ritter standing next to a small teak sailboat, named Steel Perlot. She described it as a gift from a friend that she named after the company, not vice versa. Beyond that, she would say only that she uses the name’s origins as an interview question for prospective hires. “It’s a secret no one knows other than me,” Ritter said. “I let people guess.”
To date, Steel Perlot has invested at least $20 million into more than a dozen startups, such as the AI company Pryon, a crypto trading company called Tristero and payments platform Keeta. It has also launched two companies, including a decentralized banking platform called Knox Networks, which Ritter claimed has pilot programs with the Bank of England and the World Bank (neither responded to a comment request).
She told Forbes that another company, StarX — of which she is founder and CEO — recently signed an agreement with FIFA (International Association Football Federation) to beta test “a cohesive global football community through various technologies to be developed by StarX.” In a statement, FIFA said it is “exploring with StarX new ways of fan engagement across our tournaments.”
But lines between Steel Perlot and other Schmidt outfits seemed to blur at times. In one case, Ritter told Forbes a stealth AI moonshot called Future House was “spun out” of Steel Perlot and funded through a philanthropic arm of the company. A document addressed to Ritter from Future House, and obtained by Forbes, thanked her for backing them and proposed naming one of its “early discoveries” after Steel Perlot. However, two sources close to the AI project claimed its founders received only a small sum from Ritter in consulting fees. These sources additionally claimed that Future House, Inc. received more than $10 million from entities controlled by Schmidt. Future House declined to comment.
Closer to home, multiple employees told Forbes that they were required to meet Ritter for business meetings at several of Schmidt’s estates, where she was residing at the time. That included a $60 million former Hilton compound in Los Angeles’ Holmby Hills, a penthouse in Manhattan and a sprawling lakeside estate near East Hampton that Schmidt purchased for $47 million in 2021, according to sources and property tax records. (The purchase has not been previously reported.)
Two former employees said that some Steel Perlot staff received salaries from another entity, Audem Management, LLC, which was established in 2021 after Schmidt and Ritter started dating and is managed by Ritter’s father. The company serves as a contractor of a Schmidt-owned entity and is used to pay a staff of butlers, housekeepers, maintenance and construction workers at properties owned by Schmidt and at times occupied by Ritter, including the Holmby Hills residence. Ritter said Audem is a “personal endeavor”; a person close to Schmidt said Audem had saved the billionaire approximately $5 million in costs at his properties.
In recent weeks, it appears to have been business as usual for Schmidt and Ritter. The former Google CEO gave a talk at Harvard University about AI and national security, and this month a venture capital firm he co-founded, Innovation Endeavors, raised $600 million for a new fund. Meanwhile, on Instagram, Ritter posted a photo of her posing between tennis star Maria Sharapova and former Hillary Clinton advisor Huma Abedin; another shows her standing with Barack Obama on a golf course.
As for Steel Perlot, Ritter told Forbes she is planning several announcements in the next six months. She added that she is currently in talks for a new cash infusion into the company (though she declined to identify the potential investors).
When asked, representatives for Schmidt and Ritter declined to discuss the current status of their relationship. However, a person close to the situation said they are currently spending “less time together.”
One of the smartest guys in advertising wants to know why anyone would not understand why Israel must protect itself. If Mexico attacked the United States the way Hamas attacked Israel would you call for a cease fire? Click and scroll down for interview.
Back to the future. Photo taken yesterday of the Trick or Treaters on the rooftop of our former NYC co-op building on 62nd and Second Ave. We are thrilled that life is still so vibrant in the building we lived in for 40 years. The children who now live in our apartment are pictured here too. Pretty amazing.
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Hint! It’s not where you think.
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Thank you Jonathan Scull for sharing these thoughts!
(I was so happy to read this article in The New York Times. This is where we went with clients over the years when we wanted to feel like big shots. We sat next to DeNiro, Rushdie, Wintour, and Karan. It was thrilling). —LWH
For decades, Silvano Marchetto’s Greenwich Village trattoria was a celebrity haven, serving Brad Pitt, Beyoncé and Jay-Z. Then he vanished. What happened?
Alex Vadukul reported this story from Florence, Italy.
One recent morning, in the bustle of Florence’s ancient central market, Silvano Marchetto, a stout 76-year-old man with a mane of white hair, sat nursing a Negroni as he considered what he wanted to cook for dinner. The butchers and fishmongers who walked by threw respectful nods his way.
The silver bracelets on his wrists jangled as he polished off his drink. Shuffling past meat displays and fruit stands as he went deeper into the market, he grunted reminiscences about his old life in New York City, back when he ran a celebrity haven in Greenwich Village, Da Silvano.
“Lou Reed always said I served the best branzino.”
“Rihanna loved my taglierini contadina.”
“Anna Wintour’s ex-husband used to love my rabbit.”
Mr. Marchetto liked the look of some fresh porcini, so he resolved to cook monkfish with mushrooms. His next stop was a vegetable stall. Its operator, Elena Popa, gave him a look.
“Are you famous or something?” she asked in Italian.
“I ran a restaurant in New York called Da Silvano,” he said. “Closed now.”
“Why?”
“Because. The rent. My knees. Divorce.”
“If it was successful, couldn’t someone have just kept running it for you?” she asked.
“Someone else run Da Silvano?” he said. “Absolutely not!”
In certain New York circles, Da Silvano needs no introduction, and neither does Mr. Marchetto, who for four decades ran his trattoria as one of the city’s reigning downtown canteens for the art, fashion, film and media crowds.
That reign ended when he closed Da Silvano with little warning in 2016. Then Mr. Marchetto vanished from public view.
This summer, when I started making calls in an effort to track him down, some of the tips I heard were outlandish: He was on the run in the South of France; he’d opened a beach pizzeria in Cyprus; he was operating a tiny, one-man trattoria in rural Italy; a Vogue photographer I spoke with had heard he was dead; and the designer Isaac Mizrahi, a onetime regular, said he had “no idea what happened to him.”
“Da Silvano now represents a lost era of downtown New York, and he was its rustic host,” Mr. Mizrahi said. “I’m still mourning it, and I still glance at its old address whenever I go up Sixth Avenue and think, ‘Where did he go?’”
Mr. Marchetto opened the restaurant in 1975 with the idea of serving New Yorkers the rustic cuisine he had grown up with in Tuscany. Italian fine dining in the city was then typified by spaghetti and meatballs served with Chianti from straw-covered bottles, so his preparations of liver crostini and tripe stew proved revelatory.
“I was just cooking what I knew to cook,” he said as he drove from the market back to his villa in the Tuscan hills. “Early on, I even served birds off-menu. I bought robins at a pet shop on Thompson Streetand served them roasted with bacon.”
The art dealers Leo Castelli and Mary Boone were starting their galleries in SoHo around the same time that Da Silvano opened, and they soon made it their hangout. “Castelli used to go crazy for my polenta,” Mr. Marchetto said. Gradually, the patio tables beneath the yellow awning became prime seating for those who wanted to be seen. Paparazzi posted up to document Sarah Jessica Parker eating steamed artichokes and Jay-Z and Beyoncé on one of their first public dates.
The crowd came to include Calvin Klein, Yoko Ono, Lindsay Lohan, Joan Didion, Harvey Weinstein, Madonna, Salman Rushdie, Uma Thurman, Stephanie Seymour, Susan Sontag, Graydon Carter and Larry Gagosian. While Gwyneth Paltrow and Brad Pitt were engaged in 1997, they left notes in Da Silvano’s guest book: “Thank you for letting us smoke,” she wrote. “And smoke and smoke,” he added.
Da Silvano also provided endless fodder for The New York Post, which covered the trattoria as if it were the White House. A typical 2013 itemfrom its Page Six column reported that the art dealer Tony Shafrazi shouted at Peter Brant and Owen Wilson, while Wilson ate a dandelion and heirloom tomato salad, because they hadn’t been returning his calls. In 2014, while Rose McGowan was having a meal, a man emergedfrom a subway grate and tossed a smoke bomb at Bar Pitti, the Italian restaurant next door. The tabloid speculated that the incident was connected to the feudbetween the trattorias.
“Page Six covered us so much people asked if I owned The New York Post,” Mr. Marchetto said. “But it was good for Da Silvano, whatever they wrote.”
Mr. Marchetto became a downtown celebrity in his own right, and a cartoon logo of him wearing sunglasses was branded onto Da Silvano’s espresso cups and olive oil bottles.
He lived a block away with his wife, Marisa Acocella, a New Yorker cartoonist and graphic novelist, and he went home for midday naps. He parked his Ferraris ornamentally outside the restaurant. He wore scarves, yellow pants and Hawaiian shirts.He hired young Italian waiters who flirted with the models and actresses.
But as blogs and social media began to rival Page Six as a source of celebrity gossip, his restaurant lost some of its luster. And as smartphones ushered in an era in which a celebrity’s nightlife indiscretions could be documented, the machismo-fueled party at Da Silvano began to look a little dated. In 2013, a rival Italian restaurant, Carbone, opened nearby to praise from critics, who welcomed the swing back to red-sauce recipes, and became a haunt for Drake, Jennifer Lopez and multiple Kardashians.
Around the same time, Mr. Marchetto’s life turned tumultuous. A manager at his garage filed a sexual harassment suit, claiming that Mr. Marchetto had grabbed his genitals after dropping off one of his Ferraris; waiters filed a class-action lawsuit, claiming that he had withheld wages. Mr. Marchetto denied the allegations, and both caseswere settled out of court. In 2016, after 12 years of marriage, his wife filed for divorce, leading to a contentious trial.
Mr. Marchetto abruptly closed Da Silvano on the night of Dec. 20, 2016. His explanation was straightforward: The rent had spiked to $42,500 a month. “A fortune, I couldn’t handle it,” he told The New York Times that week. “Everybody is sad; it’s been 41 years and 51 days exactly since I opened, but I don’t care.”
Celebrities mourned its closing. A few stayed in touch.
“I visited him in Florence because I was playing a show, and he was living outside the city with his olive trees,” Patti Smith said. “I think Silvano’s heart was broken when he had to close his restaurant, so he needed to leave New York. When I saw him, he looked like he was finding happiness out there.”
When I finally reached Mr. Marchetto in Italy by phone, he hastily explained that he hadn’t received my numerous messages because he does “not really check email,” and instructed me to meet him outside Florence’s train station in three days.
That afternoon, he drove me to a hilltop hotel, Villa San Michele. A doorman, Paolo Greco, greeted Mr. Marchetto and announced him to a young hostess, saying: “Do you know who this is? He’s a myth. Back in New York, he knew them all: the angels and the scoundrels.”
In the courtyard, Mr. Marchetto savored a vermentino and described his life now: “I let the days go by. I have a drink for lunch. I go home and nap. Then I go out again. I’ll sit in a piazza for hours. I grow figs and bottle olive oil from my trees.”
Do you look back?
“Once in a blue moon. I miss the action, but I never feel sorry for myself.”
Any gossip?
“Donald Trump came in once. Wanted spaghetti and meatballs. I said, ‘We don’t do that here.’ He said, ‘But that’s what I eat.’ So we made it for him.”
Do you remember your last night of service?
“I bought two kilos of caviar and handed it to people,” he said. “I told them, ‘Tonight is our last evening.’ They looked at me like I was joking, but I was crying inside.”
Coldplay blared as we drove to his hillside villa near Bagno a Ripoli. While he took a nap, I perused the relics of his old life: a framed letter from Barack and Michelle Obama wishing him a happy 70th birthday; some Da Silvano business cards; a portrait of him from the 1970s in Greenwich Village in which he has flowing dark hair and is riding a Honda motorcycle.
That evening, at a restaurant on a lonely piazza, he was joined by an old friend, Aldo Antonacci. Over Sangiovese, they reminisced about how heads would turn when Monica Bellucci walked into Da Silvano, and Mr. Antonacci said he still dreamed about the fiori di zucca.
For dessert, Mr. Marchetto ordered Gorgonzola. Then he leaned forward to tell Mr. Antonacci: “Did you hear about my restaurant in Cyprus? It was un casino.”
The Italian term un casinomeans a disaster.
The precise details of the recent reboot of Da Silvano on the island of Cyprus are somewhat opaque, because the restaurant is now closed and its existence was barely publicized. But for a moment Mr. Marchetto got back into the game this summer, opening a beachy version of his trattoria in Ayia Napa, a resort town known for its nightlife.
For four months, Da Silvano Cyprus served British and Swedish tourists and young women who stopped in for Instagram selfies before going clubbing. The cartoon logo of Mr. Marchetto appeared in a sign above the entrance and was branded onto menus and place mats. The restaurant offered Da Silvano hits like spaghetti puttanesca.
According to Mr. Marchetto, the restaurant came into being after a longtime former Da Silvano regular, Stephen Conte, a radiologist from New Jersey who vacations in Cyprus, pitched him the idea.
“He said he could make me good money if I lent my name, so I figured why not,” Mr. Marchetto said. “So I went to Cyprus to teach them how to make osso buco and my signature pastas. I noticed problems, like it was hard finding good ingredients and cooks, but I was just excited to get back into a restaurant.”
By midsummer, Da Silvano Cyprus was struggling. There were kitchen staffing troubles, and the restaurant started selling mostly pizza.
“We tried doing something this summer, it didn’t work out, but it was an honor working alongside Silvano,” Mr. Conte said. “I plan to try opening again next season.”
“It’s not easy running a restaurant,” Mr. Marchetto said. “The experience reminded me I should follow what I’m good at more. If someone asked me to open a place tomorrow, now I probably would.”
After the next day’s afternoon nap, Mr. Marchetto poured himself a Montepulciano and started preparing the monkfish with porcini. As the glow of a sunset crept into his villa, he chopped the mushrooms and skinned the fish, setting aside its head for a stew. He swatted away a fly as he tossed the porcini into a sizzling pan filled with the monkfish fillets, grape tomatoes and shallots.
As we ate at his kitchen counter, he took out his phone and pulled up a video posted to Da Silvano’s Facebook page in 2013. It showed Rihanna, wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap during a busy night at the restaurant.
“Hello Mr. Silvano, it’s your favorite customer, Rihanna, wishing you a happy 38th anniversary,” she said. “You’ve been here since 1975. That’s a big deal to be here in New York City at the same spot. This place is legendary. I love coming here. And I will always come here as long as you are here.”
He smiled as the clip finished. Then he poured himself another glass of wine and stepped outside to take in the silence of the Tuscan night.
Alex Vadukul is a city correspondent for The New York Times. He writes for Styles and is a three-time winner of the New York Press Club award for city writing and a three-time winner of Silurians Press Club medallions for his feature writing. He was a longtime writer for Sunday Metropolitan and has been a reporter on the Obituaries desk.More about Alex Vadukul
The Miami-based couple on how a Keith Haring work started their journey
‘We met in New York in the early 1980s and became immersed in the East Village scene with Keith Haring and his generation of artists. We moved in together after about 3 weeks of dating and hung our first piece: a Keith Haring print from his ‘Fertility’ series (1983). That was the catalyst. It’s a small community and we met a lot of gallerists and artists, and later, collectors like Susan and Michael Hort who helped widen our horizons. Hilary is right: it does take a village.
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Left: Serge and Ian Krawiecki Gazes. Courtesy of the collectors. Right: Keith Haring, from the ‘Fertility’ suite, 1983. Courtesy of the collectors.
There are many artists from whom we’ve bought very early works. We bought one of Rashid Johnson’s signature mirror reliefs when we visited his studio and we’ve also collected work by his wife, Sheree Hovsepian. There has to be a mutual interest in what we purchase. We really enjoy the back-and-forth discussion it creates between us.
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Artwork by Rashid Johnson presented by Hauser & Wirth in the Unlimited sector of Art Basel in Basel 2018.
‘We have lots of collector friends and mentor younger collectors. Of course, they are going to think about whether an artwork will appreciate, there’s nothing wrong with that. But you must buy what you love and be capable of living with it.
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Artwork by Emily Mae Smith presented by Perrotin at Paris+ par Art Basel 2023.
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Artworks by Wolfgang Tillmans presented by David Zwirner in the Unlimited sector at Art Basel in Basel 2016.
Skye Sherwin is an art writer based in Rochester, UK. She contributes regularly to The Guardian and numerous art publications.
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