The Leisure Class

Looking up at The Empire State Building from 32nd Street between 5th and Broadway. 10:30 PM. Photo: JH.

July 14, 2009. Yesterday was another perfect summer day in New York -- sunny and mild with a cool breeze occasionally sailing through the streets and avenues.

Notes on the Leisure Class; Hardy Boys to the Rescue. Yesterday’s Financial Times had a story on the front page by Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson about a 15-year-old summer intern at Morgan Stanley in London named Matthew Robson who wrote a “research note” on his friends’ media habits.

The executive in charge of the adolescent self-expression Edward Hill-Wood, age 35 (a very old person) described Mr. Robson’s report as “one of the clearest and most thought-provoking insights we have seen. So we published it.”

The Robson “note had generated five or six times more feedback than the team’s usual reports,” reported Mr. Edgecliffe-Johnson, adding that while “elderly media moguls like Barry Diller and Bill Gates gathered at the Allen & Co. conference in Sun Valley ... to fawn over Twitter and fret over their business models, Mr. Robson set out a sobering case that tomorrow’s consumers are using more and more media but are unwilling to pay for it.”


	Barry Diller and DVF at Allen & Co. conference in Sun Valley. Photo: Rick Wilking, Reuters.

So there is a free lunch after all?

Furthermore, as the very junior man on the Morgan Stanley summer totem pole so clearly articulated: “Teenagers do not use Twitter” (because the updating costs) and “they realize that no one is viewing their profile, so their tweets are pointless.” Makes sense.

Robson also said his contemporaries do not bother much with TV, can’t stand the advertising, and prefer to listen to their music on advert-free radio on line. Although even online Mr. Robson’s contemporaries find “advertising extremely annoying and pointless.” And to think all those billions spent on ads were geared for teenagers. Such is life.

Oh, these teenagers also “can’t be bothered to read pages and pages of text” so they don’t read newspapers. A quickie on the telly will do it quite nicely. Just like most adults I know. Mr. Robson said his contemporaries don’t read much because they can’t be bothered, however. The adults are just lazy.

Mr. Robson’s world prefers cinema, concerts and video games which now can be used for chatting with friends on the phone (through the internet) for free. That, the adults are still not onto. But soon Mr. Robson and his contemporaries will be adults, so there.

The question remains, and it is, no doubt the question on everyone’s mind in Sun Valley: who’s gonna pay? Ask Matthew Robson. He must know something.

Last night I grabbed a quick bite with Charlie Scheips at Swifty’s. Karole Armitage, the brilliant modern dance choreographer and dancer, was having dinner with a couple of her foundation’s board members.

Also at Swifty's: Charlie Scheips back from his European Art Tour, and my nephew, Stephen Columbia and his wife Sarah.

After Swifty’s I went down to 58th and Fifth Avenue to get some pictures of the new Bergdorf Goodman windows. Like a lot of New Yorkers, I’m a big fan of Bergdorf’s windows. I’m not a shopper and only enter the place when going to a party or reception, but I admire the creativity and industry that goes into using their windows to speak to the city. They are often brilliant, beautiful, witty and the result of thousands of hours of concealed effort.

These new windows are labeled: Bergdorf Goodman presents Visionary Artists From the Collection of the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore. Bergdorf Goodman/Visionary Art; it’s a natural.

I also like watching the passers-by stop and look. They linger and stare. They inspect, discuss, and photograph. These windows express the essence of community that all New Yorkers feel at times, such as on a spot like this, the stuff that amazes, that lights the magic – and with the Pulitzer fountain across the way and through the trees, and the Apple Cube shining opposite on the other side of the avenue – all it, all of us, surrounded by the floodlit, gilded and glistening Manhattan towers. There’s a thrill there.

Last Friday night out in East Hampton, ARF (the Animal Rescue Fund) held its annual summer East Hampton fundraiser. Big crowd, such as Barbara Goldsmith, Dan and Estie Brodsky, Elizabeth De Cuevas, Achille and Dudith Guest, Duane Hampton, Roy Kean, Emilia Saint Amand and Fred Krimendahl, Cynthia and Dan Lufkin, Jim and Ellen Marcus, Robin and Joel Kasimir, Christy Ferer, Virginia Coleman, Charles and Sue Bullock, Danny Marentette, Judy Ney, Pat Patterson and Wharton Shober, Billy and Kathy Rayner, Anna and Bill Mann, Sandra McConnell and Chris Obetz, Pamela Ferrari and Jarvis Slade, Valerie Smith, Carl and Kari Tiedemann, Frank and Victoria Wyman, Dorothy Lichtenstein, Wendy Vanderbilt Lehman and Sylvius von Posadowsky, Lisa Arliss, Elizabeth and Patrick Gerschel.

A couple of ARF sweeties hoping for a warm home.

ARF party decorations.

NYSD readers know we’re big supporters and encouragers of animal causes. ARF has its hands full with those people who cannot, would not, could not, will not care for the lives of these little ones. Those of us who adopt pets (the same ones others bought and threw away) know the challenge we create for others by not taking care of our own. I’m always reminded of the bumper sticker: People who want to breed should first rescue.

Barbara Goldsmith and Wendy Vanderbilt Lehman.

Kristen Thompson and Jane Walkowicz.

Elizabeth Fondaras.

Chad Conway, Emilia Saint-Amand, and Mark Drendel.

Judy Auchincloss and Lou Miano.

Alvin Topping and Sarah Davidson.

Katherine Bryan, Bill Flaherty, and Maurice Sonnenberg.

Alexis Tobin and Asher Simcoe.

Anya Robertson.

Anna Mann, Richard Thompson, and Judy Ney.

Alvin and Patsy Topping.

Danny Marentette and Judith Guest.

Duane Hampton.

Valerie Smith and Chad Conway.

Victoria Wyman and Sandra McConnell.

Ivana Lowell and Mark Langrish.

Kathy Rayner.

Billy and Kathy Rayner.

Scott DeMarco and Pamela Harris.

Kari Tiedemann.

Peter Duchin.

Pietro Cicognani, Estie Brodsky, and Steve Mazoh.

Supporters of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park gathered at the Manhattan residence of Dutch Ambassador Frank Majoor for a reception to inform supporters of anticipated Park construction details. The Park, designed by Louis I. Kahn, will be built on Roosevelt Island. Guests at the Dutch residence had a spectacular view of the Park site from the East side of the River.

Co-Chairs Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., Ambassador William J. vanden Heuvel, Vice-Chair Kathy Sloane and President and Chief Executive Officer Sally Minard, board members of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park, LLC.

After thirty-six years -- the design for the Park was commissioned by Governor Nelson Rockefeller in 1973 – construction is beginning on the Park. Dedication is appropriately planned during the 2009 General Assembly of the United Nations, with invitations extended to President Obama, Governor Paterson, and Mayor Bloomberg.

In his annual message to Congress sixty-eight years ago in 1941, President Roosevelt articulated America’s commitment to a “world founded upon four essential human freedoms: Freedom of Speech and expression, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Fear, and Freedom from Want.”