The party is already in full, frothy swing when you arrive, and you're 45 minutes late. Welcome to Greenwich Village, mid-1980s, and Elkie’s apartment is packed tighter than a cocaine executive’s day planner. Her duplex walk-up smells like Campari, Shalimar, and hair products. The stereo's blasting the Talking Heads at an anxiety-inducing volume, and someone’s brought a ferret. It’s wearing a leather collar. Naturally. Elkie herself—daughter of a dubious, possibly fascist German businessman and a former Miss Switzerland runner-up—is gliding around in a backless gold lamé number and neon green heels. She has the posture of a disco giraffe and the voice of a chain-smoking dove. She never blinks. No one knows what she *does*, but everyone knows she’s *done* things. Legendary things. She curates chaos. Warhol is in the corner, snapping Polaroids with slow, skeletal movements. Basquiat’s tagging the inside of Elkie’s coat closet with a Sharpie he stole from the hostess stand at Danc...

    In Williamsburg, before the rents ballooned and the irony calcified, there was a window of time when people believed they were creating something important. It was 1997/8 and for one humid, candlelit evening, we were in Notting Hill — or at least pretending hard enough that it almost held. This was before 9/11, before algorithms, before Uber and influencers and curated realities. Nostalgia has turned it golden, but even then, we knew something delicate was happening. Fragile. Possibly delusional. But pure in its own chaotic sincerity.   The apartment belonged to Caulder, a 29-year-old gallerist with no formal gallery and no formal income. He wore tuxedo pants every day and claimed not to believe in chairs. His loft had one couch, no television, a salvaged butcher block table, and a faint, inescapable scent of eucalyptus.   The party began late because parties always began late. The guests arrived in staggered waves, all limbs and linen, clutching wine bottles wit...

This past November, I wrote an article here as a reaction to the Cassie/Diddy story. My hopes for his monumental downfall were tempered at that time because I knew he would settle the lawsuit as fast as he could because the longer it hung out there, the bolder other people would become, and after years of silence, the legions of those he had betrayed, hurt, and used were many. They would have their say and a satisfying, sometimes therapeutic taste of long overdue revenge if given a chance. It was why I wrote that story, and it is why I revisit it today. I don't feel done exposing him, so here I am again. Sean Combs' nefarious behavior permeated New York City's hip-hop scene during the 1990s and the 2000s, and you were hard-pressed to find someone who didn't have an opinion about him and Bad Boy Records. He behaved without fear of retribution or exposure; he did what he wanted, and no one said anything against him. At least not publicly. Yet anyone who spent time sociali...