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You'll recall that The Box owner Simon Hammerstein was accused of pressuring burlesque performers into three-ways, stashing them in dog-feces-strewn dressing rooms, pushing drugs on them and leaving welts on their assess. He denied most of the charges, and denies them again in this week's New York, backed up this time by some employees. But the magazine also dug up fresh information on the boozing, degenerate performances and sexual favor-trading that allegedly goes on at the nightspot:
- Especially bad taste: Hammerstein supposedly "asked the trio the Harlem James Gang to perform in blackface. And when he asked a member of a music group to perform a skit with a dildo stuffed in her mouth. (Hammerstein denies both these accounts.)"
- Drugs: "People smoked pot at staff meetings. Drank wine at rehearsal. The whole thing was fueled by drugs and alcohol. It changes the way you behave... the bathrooms were flooded, there was raw sewage on the floor in the kitchen."
- Sexual coercion: “When an act comes in, we may give them a trial run. We’d encourage them to stick around after their performance and mingle. A lot of the times, they’d end up at the bar, getting into conversations with Richard and Simon, discussing their act and maybe how they can improve it. That can turn into them staying out late and then maybe going to Simon’s loft.”
- Moby hates it (wait, is that good or bad?): Box co-owner Moby told BlackBook last week: "I don't really go there too often... I've been to a lot of degenerate places, and rarely have I seen the level of degeneracy like I’ve seen at the Box."
As the Box gets more and more degenerate, it sounds like it is slowly but surely imploding. But then, isn't that pretty much what you'd expect of an extreme burlesque?
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Every morning when he wakes up and stares out of the window of his ritzy New York apartment, Eliot Spitzer sighs and tells himself, not today. The former governor is still atoning for wearing socks during his affair with prostitute Ashley Dupre, but he has so much to say about what's happening in our country right now. Since we broke the news that Dupre's interview with Diane Sawyer would air this Friday, Spitzer evidently decided to poke his head out of his apartment. In his sermon from hell in this morning's Washington Post, he provides a naughty prescription for restoring America:
If he had just waited a year or so, Spitzer could have gotten a lower price on his fun jaunts with paid women. As his one-time paramour Dupre chose ABC for her "consulting" fee and first televised interview since the scandal, Spitzer has followed up a bland interview with Time Out New York with an editorial in today's Post.
In the essay, Spitzer renews his call for a unified regulatory agency instead of an expanding bureaucracy. The piece is mostly an analysis of the ongoing situation in the financial sector, although it does give a shout-out to his former lifestyle:
Although mistakes I made in my private life now prevent me from participating in these issues as I have in the past, I very much hope and expect that President Obama and his new administration will have the strength and wisdom to do again what FDR did.
You just know Spitzer will be back. If it takes forever, he'll wait forever. And as alert reader Chileno notes, between "capital infusions," "explosion of leverage", "ability to probe", "invisible hand" and all that "self-regulation," Spitzer will be plenty busy with his favorite subject when he does.
How to Ground the Street [WaPo]
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Simon Hammerstein, co-owner of downtown "burlesque" slum The Box—which pretty much everyone in the neighborhood wants shuttered—is finally defending himself against charges that, among other things, he's a grunting hog who abuses his female employees. And he's doing it in the reliable pages of the Times' Sunday Styles, natch. First of all, he could never be untoward. Because he's engaged to a lady!
"Mr. Hammerstein said he had recently become engaged and would marry 'in Decemberish.' He did not elaborate. Mystery, he said, is really the core of his business."
As for charges that he regularly slapped female employees on their asses hard enough to leave bruises and that he coerced the Porcelain TwinZ, Amber and Heather Langely, to dirty up their act so that he could rename it "Twincest"? Oh, pooh-pooh. He's an artist!
“I’m a director,” he said. “I edited their show. Whether I change the tone or the color of something, I’ve never gotten anyone to do anything they don’t want to do.”
Mr. Hammerstein said employees have access to a handbook in the payroll office that explains that anyone with a sexual harassment complaint can report it to one of two people, one a man and the other a woman. “They never complained when they worked here,” he said of the sisters.
The Langleys said they had never heard of the sexual harassment policy, had never seen an employee handbook and did not complain sooner because they feared losing their jobs. A performer at the Box who has worked there for more than a year and who requested anonymity because she fears being fired backed up some of the twins’ claims, saying that if there was an employee handbook, “that’s something that just started that was never passed out for the long-term employees.”
[NYT]
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Poor Simon Hammerstein. First, the burlesque club owner's employee abusing-and-sexing ways were exposed when one of his star burlesque acts quit the Box, along with the tech staff. Then, CityFile rightly and hilariously accused him of setting the entire financial crisis into motion by reminding us that "It all goes back to Friday, March 7th when sleazy club owner Simon Hammerstein, headband-wearing scenester Arden Wohl, gay party boy Derek Blasberg, heiress Amanda Hearst, and gala staple Claire Bernard turned up at the New York Stock Exchange to ring the closing bell." Now, the Box has been denied a renewal for its liquor license, the Observer reports. Then the neighbors showed up, wielding virtual pitchforks and complaining about getting carded while trying to get into their buildings:
"Alleged misrepresentation is just one of the club’s—er, dinner theater’s!—problems. Residents of the surrounding area say they are tired of wading through a sea of bottle-addled hipsters every time they walk down the block—the place has apparently been getting noise complaints since day one. Even more damning, people from the building next door showed up to inform the board that they often get carded trying to get into their apartments."
[New York Observer]
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The Box is one of the most interesting and decadent spectacles in downtown nightlife. Owned by Simon Hammerstein, descendant of the theater scion, the jewel-box theater hosts a variety of unique and sexually-charged acts nightly. Open since 2006, it's still a pretty hot ticket—“If you’re good enough to make it in, you’ll make it in," Box partner Cordell Lochin told the Observer. They're able to charge over a grand for a table on certain nights. But trouble is brewing, and we're not talking about two-bit drug raids or carping scenesters. It looks like the club's sexiness has gone to one owner's head:
The fetish-burlesque cabaret duo the Porcelain Twinz have been performing their hot-twin act for years. They were mentioned in Neil Strauss's pickup-artist book The Game: "You know what's funny," they told the author when he tried to hit on them, "We get all our physicality out on stage... we're probably more distant than most sisters."
Last year, they were tapped to perform at the Box. They recently quit the show, posting a long screed on their website called, "This is Why We Left the Box in NYC." They accused the handsome Hammerstein of everything from neglecting his dog to pressuring them into a threesome; they also mentioned that last month, the entire tech staff quit.
Their complaints resulting from the sexed-up work environment ranged from employee ass-slapping to sex they didn't want to participate in to other types of sexual coercion and job threatening. Hammerstein also allegedly charged them $2000 a month to live in an 8X20 room in his apartment.
A former Box employee we spoke to said that the Porcelain Twinz's story is "not at all" an isolated incident—and said she quit because of "a specific incident with Simon Hammerstein." What, exactly, is going on inside this Box?
From the Twinz:
- "Simon Hammerstein regularly slaps the girls so hard on the buttocks, that it leaves handprint welts for at least two days before leaving a bruise. This has happened to one of us as well as several of the classically trained dancers known as the "Hammerstein Beauties." Simon sexually harasses the employees constantly..."
- "He abuses the tech staff on a daily and nightly basis, constantly putting them down, calling them idiots, and ripping headsets off of tech staff's heads when he is in a fit of rage over something."
- "Simon sexually harasses all of the Hammerstein Beauties requiring all of the girls to sleep with him if they want to have a job, or if they want to be chosen for a special spot in the show, while constantly pushing cocaine on them."
The former Box employee we spoke with said, "I've seen this stuff happen. And I've experienced similar things. There was also a lot of job threatening... the treatment of staff is pretty abysmal. The slapping of asses, etc—I would see that all the time. It was playful, but then it was... not cool."
"I had a lot of fun at the Box, and I love it. The staff there is some of the most interesting and exciting people I've met. There are just no consequences to owner's actions, mostly Simon's. People are at his whim."
- Other allegations: filthy dressing rooms (pictured below), in which the Twinz say Hammerstein abandoned his dog for days. (An employee stole the dog at one point, hoping to protect it.)
Of course, there's something to be said about having different expectations for your work environment when it's a cabaret nightclub that bills itself as one of the sexiest and no-holds-barred acts in town.
But still: is the Box being run like a nineteenth-century Dickensian whorehouse? Calls and e-mails to Hammerstein for comment went unreturned. As Hammerstein himself told the New York Times last year, "The show’s only as good as the people you’re watching it with."
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Posted: November 12th, 2007, 2:47pm CST
As a celebrity, airports become a way of life. Just ask Cameron Diaz. She was recently spotted at Los Angeles Express Airport on her way to her next gig.
The “Sweetest Thing” actress was flying out to Virginia, the location for her next film titled “The Box.”
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Posted: October 13th, 2007, 10:59am CDT
Gina Gershon, hotass actress/singer, is showcasing music from her new album "In Seach Of Cleo" at The Box in NYC this month. It's her first ever solo recording, and it's about her search for her cat and for love. No, that isn't a mistype. It's a metaphor. Gina's been called an "indie move stalwart" by the Los Angeles Times and she's been in a ton of movies ("Showgirls"!) and TV (she makes recurring appearances on "Rescue Me" and "Ugly Betty" as Fabia, the Donatella Versace caricature). She was even in "Pretty in Pink"! And Dreamworks recently optioned the young adult book she wrote with her brother, "Camp Creepy Time". I was just thinking, "Donatelle Versace caricature" is kind of an oxymoron. Anyway, Gina's fantastic and she was kind enough to submit to some e-mail questions from me. Though, you can sorta feel the boredom implicit in her answers. In fact, I think her assisant might have answered them. I can't blame her ass. She's a celebrity and I'm some queer chump in Boston.
I haven't seen the show yet (I'm going on the 21st), is it really
about your lost cat? Did you really lose your cat? Is the cat ok now?
Is it actually a big metaphor?
Yes, it is about my cat. But it is also a larger metaphor for love
relationships.
Please tell me you're going to reprise your role as "Fabia" on "Ugly
Betty" this season. And did you model your performance after Donatella
Versace? Is playing "Fabia" as fun as it looks? What's the "Ugly
Betty" set like?
I would love to play Fabia again. All they have to do is write more parts
for her in the story.
You seem to me like a rock star who happened to start out as an
actress. Which one would you choose if you (god forbid) had to -
actress or musican?
At this point, I don't have to choose. It used to be a lot harder to do
both. My favorite is when both acting and singing merge into one and I can
do both at the same time.
Is it true that Spielberg optioned "Camp Creepy Time"? If so, what's
the status of that?
Yes, it is true. They are working on the screenplay right now. But, everyone
please go to your local bookstore or amazon.com and buy the book!
So, yeah, that was my brief contact with Gina Gershon. She didn't answer all of my questions, though. I wanted to spice things up a bit so read what she avoided answering AFTER the jump.
And - for info and to buy tickets for Gina Gershon's "In Search Of Cleo", go here or here.
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Posted: August 25th, 2007, 2:10pm CDT
Back in the 1930’s, swing clubs in Germany were raided by Nazis and shut down for illegal activity. And there was a similar scene in NYC early Friday morning when police broke into a club and shut things down Gestapo-style.
A witness told press, “All these cops busted in, and they were searching people. They lined people up near the bathroom and started going through their stuff. Nobody seemed to understand what was going on.”
Heading to the Republican convention? You could do worse than follow the advice proffered in today's Times "36 Hours in" column on the Twin Cities, penned by Minneapolitan David Carr. It's full of good advice for restaurants, culture, and entertainment. And bars. There are really just a couple of our favorite places that he missed: you can get a good (for the midwest) pizza and a cheap pitcher of Summit at Pizza Luce on Lyndale Ave. If the lot's full, there's usually street parking readily available a block away on