Quite a lot of value for Wilkes-Barre readers when an editor talks about her carpet.
Saturday, February 03, 2007
The TL's Sandy Snyder goes on (and on, and on) about her house
Quite a lot of value for Wilkes-Barre readers when an editor talks about her carpet.
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Yeah. It looks like she read an article on the exact same subject (red v.s. clear drinks) in homes with new carpet.
Thing is, the NYT story had acutal reporting and was a rather funny account of what hosts will mandate from guests.
And here I've been bemoaning the lack of hard news in the T-L.
Lesbian Alert!
She talks about Carpet ... She licks the RUG ...
She's also got a big head. You KNOW what THAT means ...
Yep ...
Lesbian
Here's the NYT story.
Welcome Oh, but Don't Sit There
By JOYCE WADLER
Published: November 30, 2006
ELLEN BRESLOW-NEWHOUSE, whose TriBeCa loft is done all in beige and pale gold and caramel, knows of no one whose party rules are stricter than hers -- but if she did, she said laughing, she'd probably adopt them. How strict is she? The rules for the potluck dinner she held for the parents and teachers of her child's school forbade red or brown food -- no red wine, no beets, no chocolate.
''I had freaked people out so much I found my guests were huddled in one little corner of the floor,'' Ms. Breslow-Newhouse said. ''They weren't standing on the rug, thank God.''
For her evening housewarming party a few months later, Ms. Breslow-Newhouse, whose renovation had taken two years, got even tougher. She instituted a no-shoe rule, providing embroidered Chinese slippers for her guests, and had waiters make sure people put them on.
''These are new floors, newly refinished, the old original flooring,'' she said. ''I just didn't want heels clanking on it. I had this thing, quite honestly, where I'd reached this new level of 'I don't want New York City gunk' -- by that I don't mean my friends and family, I mean the stuff on the bottom of my feet -- 'on the floors.' ''
Compliance was not universal. This was a dress-up event and one woman said the slippers would ruin her outfit.
''You have to sympathize -- like anyone else, I would have labored over what to wear, and then the hostess breaks it up,'' Ms. Breslow-Newhouse said. ''Who cares that I labored two and a half years on my renovation?''
And what did the hostess wear on her feet?
''I bought new Roger Vivier flats that I hadn't worn outdoors. But then I felt guilty. I felt I was thumbing my nose a little and I felt bad.''
So did she kick off her shoes and put on the slippers?
A little voice that could almost make one believe Ms. Breslow-Newhouse will change her ways:
''No,'' she said.
Remember the old days, when the contentment of the guests was all that mattered? It was an innocent era, when the host offered up red wine to those who wanted it and if it ended up on the new white carpet, the host just sucked it up. (The pain, not the wine.) But that was when a floor was just a floor, not an investment equal to your child's first two years of college; when a kitchen counter could be had for less than two weeks at the George V. Today's host has good reason to protect his home, and goes bravely where few hosts ever dared, no matter the risks.
Think of it as Extreme Hosting.
Say a guest brings a gift of red wine into your cream-colored living room and asks that it be uncorked. Do as Richard Kirshenbaum, one of the founders of the Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners advertising agency, does; tell him if he writes you a blank check to cover any damage, you'll be glad to offer the wine. Note that this maneuver is not for the beginner: you've got to be able to deliver it with a smile, as Mr. Kirshenbaum does.
Worried about water marks on the furniture? Follow the lead of John Yakubik, a classical musician who works in marketing at Sony BMG: cover all wooden surfaces in plastic wrap. Yes, plastic wrap. Mr. Yakubik and his partner, Marc Berman, have been doing it for parties for the last few years. The top of the baby grand can tilt up, making glass plopping impossible, but the bits that are exposed are wrapped, as are the sideboard and the end tables. Guests tease them, Mr. Yakubik said, but when those guests return a few days after the party, they can't believe how neat the place is.
Granted, this kind of behavior has its risks. Luke Janklow, a New York literary agent, did a major renovation on his Greenwich Village town house; the walls of the parlor floor were lacquered white, there is a white grand piano. When Mr. Janklow gave a book party for Tom Sykes's memoir, ''What Did I Do Last Night? A Drunkard's Tale,'' last month, and guests who wanted to climb the white marble staircase were told they would have to wear white paper booties, an item ended up on Page Six.
Mr. Janklow's actions might have been attributed to Post-Renovation Anxiety (similar to New Couch Angst, below), had not Mr. Janklow had an at-home birthday party a few weeks earlier, at which guests were not compelled to wear booties. Did Mr. Janklow, who declined to be interviewed for this article, feel that a party for a book with the word ''drunkard'' in the title posed a particular risk? Had some misfortune -- perhaps a red wine stain? -- befallen the staircase at the first event? Whatever the reason, guests at the bootie-compulsory event were befuddled; there was even one report of an irate guest having words with the staffer charged with bootie enforcement.
''It's off-putting,'' a male guest said. ''It's especially awkward if you're short. Suddenly, you've lost some of your protective armor.''
Mario Buatta is no fan either. ''Puh-leeze,'' he said. ''I've never heard of such a neurotic thing. What are floors for, except to be walked on? I do have clients who have workmen wear booties, but for guests for dinner, it's idiotic. Especially for long dresses, the dress will be dragging the floor and dusting the house. Maybe it's a cheap way to get your house cleaned.''
Cut to Evelyn Lauder, founder of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. She asks guests at casual get-togethers at her ski house in Colorado to wear brightly colored booties in order to protect a delicate 18th-century rug. She's never done it in New York, but she warms up to the idea quickly. ''I was at somebody's house and I was wearing shoes with pointy heels and I went right through the floor. I was mortified.''
''The Japanese always remove their shoes, always,'' she added.
Martha Stewart (latest instruction manual: ''Martha Stewart's Homekeeping Handbook'') said she never permits guests to walk on the wood floors of her country houses in Bedford, N.Y., and Maine.
''I didn't start it, the Japanese started it,'' she said. ''I ask people to take their shoes off if they are cleated or if they have spiked heels or shoes that bring in gravel. I have a basket of nonskid little Crescent Moon slippers, they make wonderful little stretchy socks, nonskid. They're $10 a pair, but cheaper if you buy them by the gross.''
''Please reflect that I'm laughing about this,'' Ms. Stewart added. ''It's not fanaticism. It's just practical.''
Cut to Takeomi Yamamoto, press secretary to Kenzo Oshima, the Japanese ambassador to the United Nations: ''If we are in New York, especially the mission to the U.N., which is rather international, we don't normally ask people to take off their shoes.''
But we digress from the important matter, the roots of this kind of Extreme Hosting. It is not, as many believe, prompted by the belief that stuff comes before friendship. It appears to result, rather, from household traumas, very often involving one of the host's first good pieces.
The medical term for the condition is New Couch Angst, sometimes also called New Stuff Angst: the state of hyper-anxiety in which the owner of a new home furnishing is so fearful of damage that his or her expression becomes fixed and normal discourse halts.
Consider the case of Ms. Breslow-Newhouse, of the no red or brown food rules: In the early years of her marriage, as she tells it, ''some kid smeared chocolate across the couch, while the mother was standing there.'' Despite the existence of her dry cleaner, who makes house calls, who cannot feel her stain?
And what of Mr. Kirshenbaum, who will not open a bottle of red wine at a party? He is not, as youmight think, some sort of demented cleanliness compulsive. He wants his young children to have a good time and if they spill things, he said, it's a ''non-event.'' When, after taking his 4-year-old daughter to a Joan Mitchell exhibition at the Whitney, the girl drew a mural on her bedroom wall in crayons and paint in order to emulate Ms. Mitchell, Mr. Kirshenbaum was so delighted he gave her a hug. Grown-ups at parties, he regards differently.
''I don't think people in social settings are as particular with other people's apartments as they are with their own,'' Mr. Kirshenbaum said. ''They're, what's the word, loosened up.''
The man has clearly been hurt in the past. The item that took the hit?
''A very nice wool sisal rug that I had in my apartment before I was married. Someone literally dropped a glass of red wine in the middle of the carpet and it was disastrous, it was really ruined. And from that moment on, I said no red wine.'' A moment's reflection. ''Maybe if it had been two years old, it wouldn't have mattered, but I'd gotten it that week.''
A classic case of New Stuff Angst.
R. Couri Hay, the gadabout society editor of Gotham Magazine, has no patience at all for hosts who make guests take off their shoes. If you can't open your house up and let people walk in their normal footwear, have the party somewhere else, he said.
If, however, you find that you are being constrained by a new household purchase, do as he did when he bought a new cut-velvet sofa: he ordered his two Cavalier King Charles spaniels on the couch and made them jump all over it. That takes care of any of the when-will-the-spill-come tensions.
''It's only perfect when it's imperfect,'' Mr. Hay said.
Plus, the downstairs of his home is covered in print rugs.
''This is a trick I got from C. Z. Guest,'' Mr. Hays said. ''Leopard-print carpet. It hides everything. And Nina Griscom told me that there's a spray you can use when the dog does his number on sisal that will take the stain out. You just have to plan ahead. No matter how chic your guests, I think dogs and people are much the same.''
I worked with sandy for two years at the T-L.....and all i can say is yikes......she makes Renita Fennick look like Edward R. Morrow.She is the prime example of the useless journalism that reigns supreme in the wyoming valley...
It's a column for the homes section. You people take life too seriously. It was a nice little piece.
Obviously a personal vendetta against Ms. Snyder. Get a life.
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