At the bar, a man who described himself as “someone who invests in things” explained that the reason the hotel could charge $28 for a cocktail is … because, after Sept. 11, many in the finance industry moved here from the Wall Street area.
This article about a new obscenely expensive hotel in New York City is echt-Don Delillo, with occult NYT argot only subscribers can understand (UD subscribes and — come to think of it — she doesn’t really understand the above sentence).
I approached two men in suits — one maybe 55, the other half his age…
What did they think of the hotel?
“Off the record, it’s fantastic,” said the older man.
When I asked for his name, he gave me a smile-smirk that seemed to imply that I should know who he was.
And this is a NYT reporter, so either she’s remarkably out of it not to know who he is, or she’s talking to someone who’s a legend in his own mind, someone with a deep need to say “off the record.” I’m thinking it was Devin Nunes.
But you see the theme in all the remarks – a paranoia which makes the elation of hiding out at a silent, closed, hotel with a servile staff the main feeling the place achieves in you. The people at the Aman New York don’t want anyone to know they’re there. People hate them because they’re obnoxiously rich; or law enforcement agents are after them because they’ve broken insider trading laws; or vindictive ex-mates have lately been showing up unannounced at charity events … Think Steven Cohen, Jacqueline Kent Cooke, Ron Perelman. New York’s clinically berserk billionaire class. The place takes their frenzied convoluted vileness, rolls it up into a ball, and transmutes it into a many-petaled temple offering.