Unpaid workers arranged folding chairs for the Monday evening poetry reading as Prince’s apocalyptical party anthem “1999” played softly in the background.

Viva la revolución!

“This is a place where people can come and engage,” said Travis Morales, 56, a sort of nonobligatory manager at Revolution Books, the all-volunteer, nearly 30-year-old not-for-profit retailer of radical literature, T-shirts and “cute red-star earrings,” which has lately benefited from an uptick in foot traffic in its new location at 146 West 26th Street.

“Obviously, what’s happening in the financial sector is raising big questions for people,” asserted the friendly, bespectacled, ponytailed shopkeeper.  read more »

“So this is what all the fuss is about,” said alluring restaurateur Danae Cappelletto, standing in the plywood doorway at 19 Kenmare Street in Little Italy on Monday morning.

“You’ll have to use your imagination,” she added, as the two-level, roughly 2,800-square-foot space has sat empty for more than a year—and yet, so full of controversy.

Ms. Cappelletto, 27, is the third brave soul to attempt to do something with the site—which formerly housed longtime neighborhood institution Little Charlie’s Clam House—but only the first of them to so far survive the regulatory gauntlet that opening a downtown restaurant, or any business that serves booze, has lately become.  read more »

Ask anyone around Wall Street these days: Are bankers still buying ties? Inevitably, someone will respond, “What, to hang themselves?”

“Isn’t this a cool tie?” gushed an eager saleswoman at the chic Hermès boutique at 15 Broad Street, conveniently across from the New York Stock Exchange.

It was a lustrous, sky-blue tie, made of 100 percent silk, with undulating aqua-colored oval shapes and tiny gray floral patterns. (And it would just look great with my jacket, she added.)

This tie was something unique, she explained, the only one of its kind across the entire 4,000-square-foot selling floor.

Turned out someone else had returned it earlier that day for a refund.  read more »

On Sept. 11, Matthew Moinian pulled up outside his sales office on West Street, hopped out of his chauffered Mercedes and was promptly accosted by police.

The sidewalk was off-limits, he was blunty informed, to keep the path clear for presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama, who were in town to mark the seventh anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks on the nearby World Trade Center.

Little did the cops realize, however, they had another powerful VIP on their hands.

“Hey,” said the fresh-faced, dapper-dressed Mr. Moinian, pointing to his family firm’s new hotel nearby, “I own that building.  read more »

“What do you think of this ceiling?” asked Josh Boyd.

Overhead, a vaulted expanse of freshly coated silver paint was already peeling.

“I think we should all just scratch our initials into it,” he joked in a husky smoker’s voice. “We flew in a specialist from Canada and this is what we got. … You should write a story called ‘Hoodwinked by Canadians.’

“Where was she from, Toronto?” Mr. Boyd asked his partner, a tall, lanky fellow dressed in an untucked pink oxford shirt, jeans, and a pair of flip-flops emblazoned with the Brazilian flag, who was standing beside a nearby piano.  read more »

After working security at the exclusive Studio 54 and later reigning over his own unruly crowd at the legendarily lawless dive bar Siberia, Tracy Westmoreland isn’t the kind of guy to be intimidated by a few little raindrops.

And he expects the same waterproof attitude from his real estate partners.

“Right now, I’m dealing with this friend of mine who’s a very serious motherfucker,” said the imposing 6-foot, 250-pound nightlife impresario, as he headed out from his midtown apartment one stormy Friday afternoon last month. “The guy’s hard-core. He’s like me. So we’re going walking. In the rain, we’re going to go walking around Brooklyn.  read more »

Michael Lockard hustled around Arthur Ashe Stadium on Thursday afternoon, discussing strategy on his cell phone and checking off a “hit list” of final preparations for what he called “probably the most extreme event” in his especially cutthroat field of competition.

The big event was still four days away, but after a whole year of training, he could already see the finish line: “I feel like I’m sliding into home plate.”

“Plate” being the operative word: Mr. Lockard, 35, is the top-ranked chef at this year’s U.S. Open tennis tournament.

And if you thought the action on the courts was intense, check out what goes on in the kitchens, where scores of cooks from around the country scramble to feed some 650,000 people in just two weeks.  read more »

It was a scene straight out of an American Apparel ad: A half-dozen or so good-looking guys and gals in their 20s, sporting beachy garb and body piercings, lounging around on an unmade bed, while two skinny dudes made out on a leopard chair in the corner.

It was almost sunrise and there was no more beer. Empty bottles lay scattered around the room, along with some glasses full of cigarette butts.

On the nightstand, beside a white lamp shaped like a cockatoo, a shiny new iPod docking station blasted out an eclectic mix of dance hits, ranging from the contemporary (the Killers’ “Somebody Told Me”) to the classic (Neneh Cherry’s 1989 smash “Buffalo Stance”).  read more »

Editor's note: There are corrections for this story at the end of it. 

Manhattan has a mind-boggling number of Irish bars—at least 85, according to Zagat—and Stephen Ceol has staked a claim in many of them.

“I’m the king of the Irish bars,” Mr. Ceol said proudly, standing by the bar at one such Gaelic-themed gastropub in midtown in the wee hours of a Wednesday night last month.

Upon arrival, the self-proclaimed king, bejeweled in Prada eyeglasses and a shiny necklace with a purple skull pendant, had received the royal treatment. Lingering patrons were told to leave, thus granting his excellency exclusive use of the premises.  read more »

Hotelier Jason Pomeranc has been eagerly looking forward to opening his posh new lodge, the 143-room Thompson Lower East Side at 190 Allen Street. “I think it’s going to be a moment in time that will be remembered as kind of when the Lower East Side came of age,” said Mr. Pomeranc, 37, co-owner of Thompson Hotels. “I mean, it’s been a process, with gentrification and change and growth over the last several years. Usually, that process culminates with a luxury project—like what I believe the Thompson Lower East Side will be—where it integrates the vibe and the flow of the neighborhood but introduces a new audience as well.  read more »