New York – October 3, 1997 (Full Issue)

In this issue:
Flatiron Partners’ new offices
Baldwin and D'Caprio–and new media?
Russian Web Girls 850th Celebration

October 3, 1997

Flatiron Partners’ new offices

Unveiling a stunning new office suite straight out of the pages of Architectural Digest that looked like it cost as much as many Silicon Alley companies have for seed money, the Flatiron Partners opened a real-world monument to their cyberspace business last week that does everything but shout “class” up and down Broadway.

Stepping out onto the 12th floor landing at 257 Park Avenue South, visitors to the Partners’ new digs were greeted with calming green and beige tile mosaic framing the historic Flatiron building. The smooth blond wood floors pulled you toward the massive glass doors, washing up onto a hard grey corian-like floor balanced with dark grey monochromatic checkerboard clipped carpeting.

Right at the entrance of this sleek new airy office space, was @NY editor Jason Chervokas chatting with Evan Goetz of Edelman PR. After announcing his recent promotion from senior account executive to account supervisor, Evan divulged that Jeff Ratner (Vice President, Associate Director, Brand Dialogue) used to be a very generous baby-sitter and let him watch Night Rider. Awwww.

The crowd was thick with stylishly clad notable new media types including the partners themselves, Fred Wilson and Jerry Colonna; some of the folks they’ve invested in, including Yoyodyne honcho Seth Godin and eShare chief James Tito.

While Citysearch was having a party the same night to celebrate the redesign of their site–and Metrobeat founder Mark Davies flew in from the west coast with newly-dyed bleach blond hair–I couldn’t pull myself away from the sleek black filing cabinets clustered near desks separated by low folding screens of hard-frosted plastic with black frames. As beautiful as a seven-figure SoftBank check…almost.

Outside the glass-enclosed conference room, with its revolutionary ironing board room table, I met Jeffrey Phillips, director of Sales and Marketing for Rhizome Internet L.L.C., who talked about the objects in StockObjects‘ new media stock library. Similar to a stock library of photos, StockObjects licenses 3D models, Java, Shockwave, gif animations, VRML, flash and other Web development objects for developers.

Ed Bennett greeted me enthusiastically and I told him about all the fun I had traveling across the country and riding a motorcycle at Burning Man. He had many good stories too about his travels to beautiful Vietnam, which is hooked up to the world…sorta. Not the Internet, but “NamNet” is owned by the government where apparently all e-mails stay for several days on the server. Whether these are actually read or not is still up to speculation.

Ed also spoke lively of his days at VH1 in 1991. Inundated with calls from record labels who were sending him bucketsfull of demos, Ed decided to try and make something more useful with all this money being poured into producing music videos. During a typically beautiful Napa Valley evening at Francis Ford Coppola’s, Ed and he planned a series on VH1 of long format programming. No shortage of film students knocking on Mr. Coppola’s door, they decided to reroute the undiscovered talent from the typical arduous path of getting a job as a director of music videos to commercials to big movies (if lucky). Coppola would find the grads and they would use the record lable company’s money to produce something worth the great director’s time (not your average 4 minute video). The first one was William Burrough’s “A Junkies Christmas” done by a Yugoslavian director who was an animation genius.

These days Ed is busy with “10 different things” ranging from radio syndication, a new cable network launch that is niche driven to foreign languages. He told me how the US is really one of the only countries that is so niche driven in its marketing, and outside the US “its mass marketing.” For instance China is installing 14 million cellular phones a year, and the demand is increasing.

To give due credit to the very talented team who worked so hard on this wonderful space:

Architect: Doug Cutsogeorge of Cutsogeorge & Tooman
Interior Designer: Michael Foster of Michael Foster Designs
Some furniture designed and built by David Levin (including the “Ironing Board Room Table”).
Ceramic tiles: Annie Chere (sister of Jerry Colonna)
Contractor: ARCO Contracting

Baldwin and D'Caprio–and new media?

The party was still in full swing as I left to go uptown to an opening at the Sally Mann gallery. There was a hip crowd mostly dressed in black mingling outside smoking cigarettes and getting fresh air from the very packed show upstairs. While waiting Alec Baldwin and Leonardo D’Caprio briskly walked past, regrouping before a dinner out at a sushi-restaurant.

Russian Web Girls 850th Celebration

* Pictures compliments of Ken Schaffer and his Olympus Digital Camera 320DL. Legend at end of article

Cut-crystal and silver buckets filled with mounds of fresh caviar were passed around at the Russian Web Girls second party at the Gallery at 678 Broadway (owned by Sean Gibbons and Kumar Kalantri). In true celebration of Moscow’s 850th birthday, and all things extravagant and Russian, there was a fur fashion show by Levenson Furs models Alla Goldshetyn and Julia Livinov, Soprano Anay Fidelia with accompanist Alla Katchan and comic singer accordian performer Yury Lemeshev. RWGs Tanya Aleksa (Executive Producer), Alona Makeeva (Art Director) were sporting their domain name address painted down full length clingy shimmery dresses — original creations from designer Anya Elia. Vica Vinogradova, Creative Producer, and Artist Marianna Trofimova were all boogie-ing to the loud pumping music while Vodka Boy pouring shots of Kremlyovskay for thirsty dancers. Next to the kiosk selling St. Peter’s styled Faberge eggs, ikon e ikonka (icons and miniature icons), and posters was a mini bar with piles of Russian chocolates and drinks.

Ken Schaffer and his famous Russian actress wife Alla Kliouka were donning typical Soviet military caps, scarfs, and jackets. They were just back from Moscow where Alla won the Russian equivilent of the Oscar (“Green Apple”) in 1995, and the Sochi Film Festival in June, both as “best actress.” Back in NYC at Carnegie Hall last Tuesday she emcee’d the “850 Years Moscow” spectacular, with all the ambassadors and lots of Russian stars of stage, sceen, TV, ballet, opera, and pop! There were 6 pages on Alla in September’s Premier (Russian edition, same publishers — Filipachi). Ken, not anyone to sneeze at either, has been to Russia approximately 65 times since 1985. After planning on retiring from Russia a couple of years ago, when he married Alla, sold his satellites-over-Russia company to Comsat, and had a baby … But when he visited in August, just to see friends in Moscow and Almaty — he got hooked again. Currently Ken is working with some companies back in Kazakhstan (11 times zones) to solve some impassees/disconnects with their partners.

We were compared notes about Moscow from ’91 when I’d been there originally. Boy has it changed! The Arbat — Moscow’s “Bleeker Street” — has gone from slightly seedy, with small tables set up by Ukrainian Babushka’s, street-smart urban youth selling watches and underground paintings to a typical cobblestoned street in Paris or Soho. Not the “looking for a spouse” crowd of last year, well dressed people sit at cafes sipping cappuccinos while beautiful people parade by.

Legend to pictures:
1. Vodka Boy and Alla Kliouka 2. Alla and Me 3. Me with the “Moscow 850” mask 4. Ken Schaffer and Alla 5. Vica Vinogradova and Alla 6. Tanya Aleksa 7. Alla, Vica, AlonaMakeeva 8. Me and Tanya Aleksa

CORRECTION: From last week’s piece on FreQ: Josh Harris (President of Pseudo) was the blue-faced dancer, not Thomas.