QUOTE
You Bring Leo, I’ll Bring Diddy
By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM
Published: December 2, 2007
BEYOND a teak doorway on an unremarkable stretch of far West 17th Street, a hallway is faintly aglow. Carved into its black ceiling and walls are lines of nearly indecipherable script, each word painted with gold leaf, forming an excerpt from Darwin’s “Origin of Species.” At the hallway’s end, curvy leather banquettes outline a fanciful room where light fixtures fashioned from recycled bicycle tires evoke wizard’s caps, walls are upholstered in ostrich leather and mirrored open-air decks beckon from behind a fireplace.
This, pleasure-seekers, is 1 Oak, the approximately $3 million lounge that plans to open in the next two weeks. Named for its primary raw material and the almost-acronym “one of a kind,” it is a fitting place to contemplate what Darwin called “the struggle for life” — or, in this case, night life.
Financially, New York City’s night-life scene is thriving. Bars, lounges and dance clubs generate nearly $10 billion in revenue annually, according to the New York Nightlife Association. But the impresarios behind 1 Oak say the scene has become too crowded, corporate and homogenous. Even some of their competitors concede there are too many places and too many operators trying to do the same thing. In this volatile state of nature, it was perhaps inevitable that four veterans would combine their clout with the hope of ensuring their survival.
With a 250-person capacity, 1 Oak is intimate. Its opening, or rather nonopening, is being closely monitored by journalists and would-be patrons. New York Magazine has been publishing updates about the community board meetings. Its latest blog post said “according to an unbiased source, the lounge with full kitchen looks ‘beautiful.’” A post on Guest of a Guest, a New York culture and style Web site, reads: “Hopefully they can get things sorted out soon. We are anxious to head to 17th Street.”
It was during a family-style dinner in September at the Greenwich Village restaurant Butter that Richie Akiva, Scott Sartiano, Jeffrey Jah and Ronnie Madra, the owners of 1 Oak attempted to explain how their new venture would be a refuge from the bridge-and-tunnel marauders, gossip-column interlopers and Wall Street masters of the universe accustomed to buying their way past velvet ropes.
But it was Fashion Week and tableside distractions were frequent, and fetching. Models bent down for double-cheek kisses. Staff members materialized with seating queries.
“I need Djimon and Kimora to sit down 100 percent,” said Mr. Akiva, who along with Mr. Sartiano is an owner of Butter. “And Jay-Z is coming, too. I’ll put Jay-Z with me.”
Mr. Akiva, 30, met his 1 Oak business partners in the late 1990s when he was working at the Greenwich Village nightclub Life, where Mr. Jah, 38, was a promoter. Mr. Jah, who is also an owner of the nightclub Lotus, said Mr. Sartiano, 33, was hired as a promoter while Mr. Madra, 35, helped with special events. In 2002 Mr. Akiva and Mr. Sartiano partnered to open Butter. In 2006 they created G Spa & Lounge at the Hotel Gansevoort. Though there is an obvious strength in numbers, they were also drawn together by shared personal and professional goals.
For one thing, they are older and have been craving a kind of boutique space where bathrooms do not evoke frat houses, drinks are not served in plastic cups and fewer "little kids" crowd the room. The demitasse- and gold-hued 1 Oak has seating for about 150 beneath a curved wooden ceiling that looks like the belly of Noah’s Ark. The menu, created by Alex Guarnaschelli, the executive chef at Butter and a judge on “Iron Chef,” includes shrimp cocktail, pressed sandwiches, hot entrees and desserts like Richie Akiva’s Famous Cookie Plate With a Glass of Milk ($8).
“We’re looking to the future,” Mr. Madra said. “We want to have families and settle down.” This is true, at least, of Mr. Madra, who became engaged last spring.
Additionally, they all think there is an energy missing from after-hours New York, that it has gone astray from the days of Spy Bar and Moomba, where transvestites, starving artists and celebrities could rub elbows with a measure of privacy.
Other owners also acknowledge that the scene has become too diluted, and that clubs themselves are too commonplace. “There’s a lot of capital available by all the hedge funders, all the Wall Streeters,” said Noah Tepperberg, who has been in the business for 15 years and is an owner of Marquee. “They’re all making money and have nowhere to spend it.”
Noel Ashman, an owner of Plumm, agreed. “There are four places that have a decent thing going on,” he said, “but then you literally have 133 that don’t.”
The owners of 1 Oak said that it required a team to create the kind of environment they wanted. Mr. Jah, the most seasoned principal, said Mr. Sartiano excels at finance, Mr. Akiva has a knack for design and Mr. Madra is the music man. Their combined database of V.I.P.s including Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Combs and Paris Hilton is “the sickest,” according to Mr. Madra. “This is like our ‘Field of Dreams,’” he said. “If we build it, they will come.”
Demolition for the lounge began in the spring. In short order came the pails of Sheetrock, the coiled wire, the dilapidated radio that crackled with “Fly Like an Eagle.” By mid-September a man in an orange New York County Jail T-shirt smoking Marlboros and eating cheese cubes was creating 1 Oak’s three-dimensional wall of golden letters that look as if they were pried off blocks in King Tut’s toy chest.
The black lacquer wood bar took at least 100 hours to embellish, said Robert LaVecchia, a general contractor. “My carpenter from Croatia did this,” he said, holding up a weighty bar leg as if he were a character in a game of Clue, clutching his murder weapon.
Seemingly mundane details were often a result of group decisions. In determining whether rope lights should be used to illuminate the underside of the bar, the partners and their designer, Roy Nachum (who worked on Justin Timberlake’s Southern Hospitality restaurant), experimented by skulking around in the dark by the glow of their BlackBerrys until Mr. Jah impatiently called out in the manner of the unseen director in “A Chorus Line”: “Can we have lights?”
Naturally, they have their differences. “We’re used to having things our own way,” Mr. Madra said. “You just have to scream at each other sometimes.”
What they all agree on is a policy of velvet egalitarianism at the door. People will have to earn their way past the ropes with an appealing personal style or disposition, Mr. Jah said, not a promise to pay for bottle service, as is the norm in many places.
“A class system is being instituted, and I don’t like it,” he said one autumn afternoon wearing a yellow T-shirt with the slogan “I’ve Got a Black Belt ... in Keepin’ it Real” and sipping ice tea in his meatpacking district restaurant, the Inn LW12.
Mr. Jah helped popularize bottle service in the early 1990s, but he said the practice began as a way to keep people at tables from having to cross a packed dance floor on the way to the bar. It was not intended, he said, to be a golden ticket into a tony lounge.
Mr. Sartiano lamented that in the days of Spy Bar, for instance, if someone approached you, “you knew they were cool because they got in.” No more.
So while 1 Oak will offer bottle service, “first you need to get in,” Mr. Sartiano said. “Then you need to be cool enough to get a table. Then you can get bottles. Somewhere it got switched.”
Mr. Ashman thinks 1 Oak’s partners will do “a great job” but said that “every year things happen it just gets harder and harder because there’s so many clubs and so many openings, the public just tunes out at a certain point.”
On a drizzly gray day last week a heater was keeping the chill out of 1 Oak. The floor, a Zebra-like zigzag of black and white wood, was still covered. There were gold Kohler faucets in the black tiled bathroom stalls, some of which twinkled with gold-flecked grout. Most were still in need of the gold-plated handgun artwork. The V.I.P. room was without its gold bullet art installation. The Louis XIV-inspired chairs were awaiting placement on a tiered seating area from which to see and be seen. More significantly, the chairs were awaiting bodies.
This is what limbo looks like.
The owners of 1 Oak had hoped to open in September but still lacked full approval from the community board and the city buildings department. This month, Mr. Akiva and Mr. Sartiano learned they are being sued by a developer, Emilio Barletta, who claims he holds the lease to 453 West 17th Street, home to 1 Oak. Mr. Sartiano and Mr. Akiva said they intend to countersue. Mr. Sartiano promised he would be open this month.
He touched a silver nailhead on one of the banquettes. He had tried to bang in a few himself, but quickly discovered the process was far more difficult than he had anticipated.
He looked at Mr. Akiva: “I’m retiring after this.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/fashion/...amp;oref=slogin
By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM
Published: December 2, 2007
BEYOND a teak doorway on an unremarkable stretch of far West 17th Street, a hallway is faintly aglow. Carved into its black ceiling and walls are lines of nearly indecipherable script, each word painted with gold leaf, forming an excerpt from Darwin’s “Origin of Species.” At the hallway’s end, curvy leather banquettes outline a fanciful room where light fixtures fashioned from recycled bicycle tires evoke wizard’s caps, walls are upholstered in ostrich leather and mirrored open-air decks beckon from behind a fireplace.
This, pleasure-seekers, is 1 Oak, the approximately $3 million lounge that plans to open in the next two weeks. Named for its primary raw material and the almost-acronym “one of a kind,” it is a fitting place to contemplate what Darwin called “the struggle for life” — or, in this case, night life.
Financially, New York City’s night-life scene is thriving. Bars, lounges and dance clubs generate nearly $10 billion in revenue annually, according to the New York Nightlife Association. But the impresarios behind 1 Oak say the scene has become too crowded, corporate and homogenous. Even some of their competitors concede there are too many places and too many operators trying to do the same thing. In this volatile state of nature, it was perhaps inevitable that four veterans would combine their clout with the hope of ensuring their survival.
With a 250-person capacity, 1 Oak is intimate. Its opening, or rather nonopening, is being closely monitored by journalists and would-be patrons. New York Magazine has been publishing updates about the community board meetings. Its latest blog post said “according to an unbiased source, the lounge with full kitchen looks ‘beautiful.’” A post on Guest of a Guest, a New York culture and style Web site, reads: “Hopefully they can get things sorted out soon. We are anxious to head to 17th Street.”
It was during a family-style dinner in September at the Greenwich Village restaurant Butter that Richie Akiva, Scott Sartiano, Jeffrey Jah and Ronnie Madra, the owners of 1 Oak attempted to explain how their new venture would be a refuge from the bridge-and-tunnel marauders, gossip-column interlopers and Wall Street masters of the universe accustomed to buying their way past velvet ropes.
But it was Fashion Week and tableside distractions were frequent, and fetching. Models bent down for double-cheek kisses. Staff members materialized with seating queries.
“I need Djimon and Kimora to sit down 100 percent,” said Mr. Akiva, who along with Mr. Sartiano is an owner of Butter. “And Jay-Z is coming, too. I’ll put Jay-Z with me.”
Mr. Akiva, 30, met his 1 Oak business partners in the late 1990s when he was working at the Greenwich Village nightclub Life, where Mr. Jah, 38, was a promoter. Mr. Jah, who is also an owner of the nightclub Lotus, said Mr. Sartiano, 33, was hired as a promoter while Mr. Madra, 35, helped with special events. In 2002 Mr. Akiva and Mr. Sartiano partnered to open Butter. In 2006 they created G Spa & Lounge at the Hotel Gansevoort. Though there is an obvious strength in numbers, they were also drawn together by shared personal and professional goals.
For one thing, they are older and have been craving a kind of boutique space where bathrooms do not evoke frat houses, drinks are not served in plastic cups and fewer "little kids" crowd the room. The demitasse- and gold-hued 1 Oak has seating for about 150 beneath a curved wooden ceiling that looks like the belly of Noah’s Ark. The menu, created by Alex Guarnaschelli, the executive chef at Butter and a judge on “Iron Chef,” includes shrimp cocktail, pressed sandwiches, hot entrees and desserts like Richie Akiva’s Famous Cookie Plate With a Glass of Milk ($8).
“We’re looking to the future,” Mr. Madra said. “We want to have families and settle down.” This is true, at least, of Mr. Madra, who became engaged last spring.
Additionally, they all think there is an energy missing from after-hours New York, that it has gone astray from the days of Spy Bar and Moomba, where transvestites, starving artists and celebrities could rub elbows with a measure of privacy.
Other owners also acknowledge that the scene has become too diluted, and that clubs themselves are too commonplace. “There’s a lot of capital available by all the hedge funders, all the Wall Streeters,” said Noah Tepperberg, who has been in the business for 15 years and is an owner of Marquee. “They’re all making money and have nowhere to spend it.”
Noel Ashman, an owner of Plumm, agreed. “There are four places that have a decent thing going on,” he said, “but then you literally have 133 that don’t.”
The owners of 1 Oak said that it required a team to create the kind of environment they wanted. Mr. Jah, the most seasoned principal, said Mr. Sartiano excels at finance, Mr. Akiva has a knack for design and Mr. Madra is the music man. Their combined database of V.I.P.s including Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Combs and Paris Hilton is “the sickest,” according to Mr. Madra. “This is like our ‘Field of Dreams,’” he said. “If we build it, they will come.”
Demolition for the lounge began in the spring. In short order came the pails of Sheetrock, the coiled wire, the dilapidated radio that crackled with “Fly Like an Eagle.” By mid-September a man in an orange New York County Jail T-shirt smoking Marlboros and eating cheese cubes was creating 1 Oak’s three-dimensional wall of golden letters that look as if they were pried off blocks in King Tut’s toy chest.
The black lacquer wood bar took at least 100 hours to embellish, said Robert LaVecchia, a general contractor. “My carpenter from Croatia did this,” he said, holding up a weighty bar leg as if he were a character in a game of Clue, clutching his murder weapon.
Seemingly mundane details were often a result of group decisions. In determining whether rope lights should be used to illuminate the underside of the bar, the partners and their designer, Roy Nachum (who worked on Justin Timberlake’s Southern Hospitality restaurant), experimented by skulking around in the dark by the glow of their BlackBerrys until Mr. Jah impatiently called out in the manner of the unseen director in “A Chorus Line”: “Can we have lights?”
Naturally, they have their differences. “We’re used to having things our own way,” Mr. Madra said. “You just have to scream at each other sometimes.”
What they all agree on is a policy of velvet egalitarianism at the door. People will have to earn their way past the ropes with an appealing personal style or disposition, Mr. Jah said, not a promise to pay for bottle service, as is the norm in many places.
“A class system is being instituted, and I don’t like it,” he said one autumn afternoon wearing a yellow T-shirt with the slogan “I’ve Got a Black Belt ... in Keepin’ it Real” and sipping ice tea in his meatpacking district restaurant, the Inn LW12.
Mr. Jah helped popularize bottle service in the early 1990s, but he said the practice began as a way to keep people at tables from having to cross a packed dance floor on the way to the bar. It was not intended, he said, to be a golden ticket into a tony lounge.
Mr. Sartiano lamented that in the days of Spy Bar, for instance, if someone approached you, “you knew they were cool because they got in.” No more.
So while 1 Oak will offer bottle service, “first you need to get in,” Mr. Sartiano said. “Then you need to be cool enough to get a table. Then you can get bottles. Somewhere it got switched.”
Mr. Ashman thinks 1 Oak’s partners will do “a great job” but said that “every year things happen it just gets harder and harder because there’s so many clubs and so many openings, the public just tunes out at a certain point.”
On a drizzly gray day last week a heater was keeping the chill out of 1 Oak. The floor, a Zebra-like zigzag of black and white wood, was still covered. There were gold Kohler faucets in the black tiled bathroom stalls, some of which twinkled with gold-flecked grout. Most were still in need of the gold-plated handgun artwork. The V.I.P. room was without its gold bullet art installation. The Louis XIV-inspired chairs were awaiting placement on a tiered seating area from which to see and be seen. More significantly, the chairs were awaiting bodies.
This is what limbo looks like.
The owners of 1 Oak had hoped to open in September but still lacked full approval from the community board and the city buildings department. This month, Mr. Akiva and Mr. Sartiano learned they are being sued by a developer, Emilio Barletta, who claims he holds the lease to 453 West 17th Street, home to 1 Oak. Mr. Sartiano and Mr. Akiva said they intend to countersue. Mr. Sartiano promised he would be open this month.
He touched a silver nailhead on one of the banquettes. He had tried to bang in a few himself, but quickly discovered the process was far more difficult than he had anticipated.
He looked at Mr. Akiva: “I’m retiring after this.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/fashion/...amp;oref=slogin
to me, sheeshhh...sounds like it's gonna be a lotta fun to be an employee there...
