Yesterday was a beautiful late summer day in New York. There was a sense of the town having come back after the long hot summer, the summer which for many never seemed to take on its atmosphere. At first it was just hot and then dreadfully hot and then finally the heat went away, and it was over. I hear people saying how much they’re looking forward to the autumn as if they'll be relieved of the steaming inactivity.

The tables down at Michael’s were full up. I had lunch with Charlie Scheips who co-authored the book “Warhol, The Day the Factory Died” which was featured on these pages yesterday. Charlie who is an art historian by education and natural curiosity was explaining many things about the artist Warhol to me, all of which seemed self-evident once they’d been pointed out. He kept referring to Andy Warhol’s “Time Capsules” which he talks about in his text in the book.

Maybe you knew this, I didn’t. At the end of the day Warhol would throw everything he’d acquired from gum wrappers to receipts, to programs to various and sundry objects and pieces of paper into a box which would then be sealed and dated. These boxes are now in the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, and will soon be deposited. Already they can be seen on the museum’s web site. Charlie took me on the trip from the 1913 European Dadaists to Andy Warhol to our culture to the “15 minutes of fame” that the artist had said everyone will eventually experience. It sounded like a joke when he said it (I remember). But it doesn’t so much anymore.  Which led to our conversation down other alleyways of cultural detritus.

Anyway, also at the jam packed Michael’s were Lisa Birnbach (“The Preppy Handbook”) with Alexandra Trower, public relations executive Richard Rubenstein with Keith Glen Media president Ari Horowitz and Eric Gertler. At the table in the bay was Howard Rubenstein with the Milken Institute’s Betsy Perry. At his regular table, Peter Brown. In the corner was Barbara Walters and friend, next to her Joe Armstrong and House Beautiful’s Style Editor Steven Wagner. On the other side of Ms. Walters were Parker Ladd and Arnold Scaasi. Terry Allen Kramer back from her summer in St. Tropez was with Beth Ostrosky who with her companion Howard Stern has rented Terry’s Southampton beach house for a year. Also around the room, Stan Shuman, Allen Grubman (lunching with Alan Mnuchin), editor David Hirshey with Gil Schwartz and Dan Halpern; Jack Myers with Tom Scott, Christie Hefner with Playboy’s publisher, Lou Mohn; Pamela Keogh with Liz Aiello, Judy Price with Laurent Boidevezi from Moet-Hennessy. And on and on and on.

Last night at Swifty’s, different crowd, more the social crowd of course, and jampacked as well. Heirloom tomatoes (with Buffalo Mozzarella) and fresh corn-on-the-cob from the green market set up in Union Square yesterday.

Out in the Hamptons there were lots and lots of end-of-the-season parties. Henry Buhl, the sunflower king held a cocktail party with orchestra leader Alex Donner for lots and lots of friends old and new. Last Sunday a completely different crowd (same essential demographic of course), Kevin and Ulla Parker and Carlos and Ana Maria Perez hosted an end of summer White Celebration Party.

This was a summer where the party scene has become increasingly “managed” by commercial interests of one kind or another. Store parties are now far more commonplace than the average cocktail party. If it’s not benefiting a charity, it’s promoting a brand, or a restaurant or a movie or a club or a book, or something that is commerce pure and simple. Andy Warhol put it thusly: the business of art is business. You could also say the business of society is business. At least in these torrid times.

The previous two parties we mentioned (and for which we have photographic evidence on these pages) – Mr. Buhl’s and the Parkers’ and the Perezes’ – were by no means the only ones of their kind – along with the dinner dances and birthday parties and holiday parties – but they are growing rarer and rarer by the season. Although those are the ones that will remind us of the summer of 2006.

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