High life
Indelicate
Taki
Ihear those nice people at Private Eye have once again taken my name in vain and accused me of betraying a friend by chasing after his wife. What I want to know is how they dare write about friendship, a subject totally alien to them, purely on the basis of their knowledge of betrayal? I think it's time for a brief visit to Greek Street with my baseball bat, although a banana would be just as good. Mind you, Jeffrey Bernard said it all a short while ago when asked why he and the people at Private Eye did not see eye to eye any longer. 'Because I drink and fuck and they do neither,' was my colleague's answer, and I can think of nothing more appropriate to add, and certainly nothing more accurate.
But enough about oenophobes and misogynists. Gstaad time has finally arriv- ed, and by the time you read this, God will- ing, I shall be racing down the Wassengrat and enjoying a well-deserved holiday after the rigours of New York. Tina Brown, the new editor of Vanity Fair, managed to disrupt the pursuit of the good life by spik- ing my first column in what promises to be the magazine of Eighties. In retrospect, she wasn't wrong. I chose to review my own book but my little trick didn't come off. I don't know why it is, but whenever I have to write for someone I've never written for before, I get the jitters — the same kind one gets just before getting into bed with some- one very special. I never thought of sex and writing having anything in common until I got those jitters. Self-conscious prose is like self-conscious love-making, no good. After two weeks, however, I finally got it right, the writing that is, and now I can go skiing with a clear conscience.
And speaking of conscience, mine isn't as clear as it will be once I've finished writing about a certain Mrs Shirley Bernstein and a certain Mr Andrew Stein. The former is a lady of the modern school of manners, i.e. she is brassy, loud and rich. She also lives on Park Avenue and 75th Street, in the same building as the parents of Andrew Stein, a.k.a. Finkelstein. Andrew Stein took the 'Finkel' out of his name about 15 years ago, and has since been elected to various city posts, including assembly man, dog catcher and is, at present, president of the borough council (the equivalent of a big shot on the GLC). What Mrs Bernstein and Andrew Stein have particularly in common is a dislike of vegetables in general, and vegetables sold by Koreans in particular. Let me explain.
It started last week. Mrs Bernstein called a press conference and revealed that she and the Park Avenue Association had blocked the opening of a 24-hour delicatessen, better known as a vegetable market in places where people speak pro- perly. The villains turned out to be two hard-working South Korean immigrants, Mr Kyu Song Choi and Mr Cicheul Kim, both of whom had the audacity to buy a store on ritzy Park Avenue and turn it from a flower shop into a deli. Mrs Bernstein claimed that by opening a vegetable store next to her building, the value of her pro- perty would decrease, and, anyway, she simply didn't like to look out of her win- dow and see vegetables.
After her initial blast both Mr Kim and Mr Choi agreed to keep the vegetables well- hidden indoors. But then the Bernstein woman insisted that criminal elements would infiltrate Park Avenue if the store stayed open 24 hours. So the two Koreans relented again, and agreed to keep it open for only eight to twelve hours a day. But that wasn't good enough either. The two Koreans had their permit revoked, and the shop remained closed.
For once, however, the press did some- thing worthwhile. Noting that most neighbourhoods in the city mobilise against drug dealers, prostitutes and muggers but rarely against fruits and vegetables, all three major papers in town screamed out loud about the injustice. The first to switch rather than fight was Andrew Stein. His parents who live in the same building as the Bernstein woman have not changed their minds at the time of writing. When Mrs Bernstein evoked some obscure law about not having certain shops on Park Avenue, it was revealed that the flower shop the two Koreans had taken over had closed because their owners were all in jail... for selling heroin. It seems that selling smack is okay as far as Park Avenue residents are concerned, but vegetables are a no-no.
Eventually, the two embattled Koreans decided to call their shop 'Gourmet Foods' in order to please the snobs, and have sworn to keep the vegetables in the base- ment and away from the sensitive eyes of the. Finkelsteins and the Bernsteins. When some of those horrors came over and asked me to sign a petition against the two hard- working and honest Koreans I obviously sent them packing, and asked them if a boutique by, say, Halston would be accept- able? While they tried to work out what I was getting at 1 threw a designer tomato at one and now I'm afraid I'm in-trouble with the law. Good old Helvetia, here I come.
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