Club House Arrest P

opularity is fickle. We’re often warned that spots at the top are never secure. But how do you account for those who fall, only to rise again?

Only a few years ago Anna Delvey was making headlines as a fake heiress who scammed hundreds of thousands of dollars out of banks, hotels, and former coworkers. Now, her new East Village pad—dubbed “Club House Arrest,” which she is literally under—has become a party hot spot for society figures both uptown and downtown.

In December, Delvey (née Sorokin) threw a holiday bash attended by actual heiress Ivy Getty. But her gatherings didn’t make headlines until her January birthday party, which required guests to submit their SSNs (not that anyone did), and sign NDAs (which stopped absolutely no one from talking to Page Six). But most baffling was the crowd: revelers included socialites like Cynthia Rowley and daughter Kit Keenan, model Teddy Quinlivan, writer Rachel Rabbit White, and even Avenue’s former editor-in-chief, Ben Widdicombe.

The very social circles she lied to were now lining up to get into her home. What sparked this mass acceptance?

“Obviously Anna is controversial. [But] I’m an instinct person,” says writer Cat Marnell, who was also in attendance. “I have instincts about her and I feel like other people might as well, that there’s positive energy around her, and that’s what I came to the party to scope out.”

Marnell was invited through another person in the East Village scene. She went into it with ambivalent feelings towards Delvey, but left a fan. Apparently, Delvey is nothing short of a perfect hostess, charming and polite. “No one likes a person who steals or does things to others,” Marnell clarifies. “I have no idea what kind of trauma she went through in incarceration and with the media stuff…I hope the best for her. But really, I think my message is that I think she is going to be an awesome addition to the downtown community. Everybody deserves a second chance.”

Not that everyone required convincing.

“There were a handful of us that had met her before [she was infamous]. I would say that we were very much the minority,” says Timo Weiland, who first met Delvey when they both interned at Purple magazine. Weiland, who says he was “confused” upon reading the New York story for the first time, is forthright about being charmed by the con woman. “When I first started to hear about her entertaining and having people over, for me, it was a no-brainer because I always liked her,” he admits.

From what Weiland could tell, no one at the party was focused on where she had been, or what she had done. “Conversations were more optimistic,” he explains. “Just chatting with people that I knew in the room that didn’t know her, and a handful of us that did, the future looks bright. There was a reckoning she didn’t shy away from, or even really deny.”

True crime is a spectrum, and grifts, scams, and cons usually err on the mild side. Add in the fact that they’re often more gossipy than gritty, it makes the perpetrator more palatable—a micro-celebrity for a niche audience. Delvey is unique because she went mainstream. The viral New York article that broke her story turned her into something of a folk hero. Inventing Anna , the immensely popular Netflix series which dramatized her tale, gave her misdeeds a glamorous sheen. Despite their intentions, both helped the general public identify with her.

In a fake-it-till-you-make-it world, perhaps some need to know that the consequences to being found out are survivable. Perhaps others simply need reassurance that people can both forgive and forget. Or maybe, this has always been how the city operates.

“Anna is a great New York character and knowing her is one of the pleasures of living here,” says Widdicombe. “If you only want to be around saints, go live in a monastery.”

ARIA DARCELLA

THE PAGES OF FOOD & DRINK ARE FILLED WITH GRILLS PERFECTLY CUT IN HALF, NAVEL ORANGES SO CLOSE THEY BECOME ABSTRACT, BLUEBERRIES SO LARGE THEY LOOK LIKE BOULDERS, AND GLASSES OF WINE MID-SMASH AS THE LIQUID ARCS INTO THE AIR.

The Second Acts of C-Suites

When Nathan Myhrvold was 12, he bought his first camera, a Zeiss Contax II, found at a Salvation Army in Seattle. He painted his bathroom black, developed his own photographs, and gradually upgraded equipment through the years. “As a general rule people discard most of their childhood interests as they grow up,” he writes, but “I am one of the exceptions to that rule.” There are many excep- tional things to the life of Myhrvold. Just two years after he bought his first camera, Myhrvold began college at age 14. This was followed by more college, then a master’s and PhD from Princeton University. After, the affable young man took to Silicon Valley, embarking on a virtuosic career that led to becoming Microsoft’s first chief technology officer. Myhrvold retired from that role in 1999, a fabulously wealthy man, in order to embark upon Intellectual Ventures, another wildly lucrative company seen by some as a spur for innovation and by others as a patent troll. But for most of the last decade, Myhrvold, always a foodie, has devoted himself to a gastronomic laboratory called Modernist Cuisine, which has produced a series of in-depth books. Now, he’s released his latest, most artistically ambitious tome yet: Food & Drink: Modernist Cuisine Photography.

If it seems strange that a plutocrat titan of industry should devote himself to creative pursuits, you have, perhaps, not known enough plutocrat titans. There’s David Solomon, Goldman Sach’s CEO, also known as DJ D-Sol, who has played festivals like Lollapalooza. Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett, a serious ukulele player, has dueted with Jon Bon Jovi and frequently whips out his diminutive four-string at shareholder meetings. Robert Mnuchin, former Goldman Sachs partner and father of Steve, found a second career as an art dealer in his later years. And don’t forget President George W. Bush, who has devoted many of his post-White House years to oil portraits. (His work has been collected into two monographs: Portraits of Courage and Out of Many, One.)

Myhrvold’s work, though, seems a little more in line with his day job. Many of the shots necessitated new techniques that Myhrvold developed. The pages of Food & Drink are filled with grills perfectly cut in half, navel oranges so close they become abstract, blueberries so large they look like boulders, and glasses of wine mid-smash as the liquid arcs into the air. As Myhrvold explains, “It only has to be beautiful for a thousandth of a second.” Unlike his time heading operating systems at Microsoft, the crash is exactly the point.

Joshua david stein