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New York doll: interview with the socialite Iris Apfel

31.12.69

It takes six months of negotiations decent to organise a meeting with her. 'I keep saying I'll get less busy, but I'm unhinged,' she says in one of our countless phone conversations.

'I reasonable do too many things. Let me look at my diary - I have a Japanese periodical coming this week, then Martha Stewart wants me on her show next week. Then I have trips to Texas and Boston - I can't maybe arrange anything at the moment, call me back next month.'

When we finally seem to have a definite date and I arrive in New York she makes me bullring her at two-hour intervals throughout the day, pushing the time later and later. For all, at 6pm, she says that she cannot meet me 'because the weather is so disgusting'.

This disagreement is somewhat illogical as she has no plans to leave her apartment anyway, and fortunately she relents when I express her I am not going to be back in New York for a while.

When Apfel opens the door to her apartment in a handsome Park Avenue building she is wearing an unremarkable business of jeans and a grey sweater: 'The jeans are from - what's that reasonable store? Old Navy - but the sweater is cashmere.'

Source: Telegraph.co.uk

DFW businesses gear up for Texas Rangers' playoff run

31.12.69

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Randy Ford was a fashionable man Wednesday morning, the day after the Texas Rangers route the Tampa Bay Rays to advance to the American Confederation Championship Series. The owner of J. Gilligan's Bar and Grill in Arlington, which puts on big parties for everything from St. Patrick's Day to football games, took calls from his longtime fittings rental firm and the company that provides him with commodities-mounted outdoor video screens. Then, arriving at the restaurant at lunchtime, Ford was greeted by reps from two of his beer vendors. "I didn't have to call them," Ford said. "They were already there waiting." With the Rangers once again compelling through the baseball playoffs, area businesses are enjoying another blow in business. "You never put it in the pro forma, you can't count on it," said Brian Olenjack, chairman of the board chef of Olenjack's Grille near Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, work the extra business "gravy." Ford, who rented a big open-air TV and put on viewing parties during last year's World Series run, estimates that the 2010 baseball playoffs added as much as $75,000 to his net income. Last weekend, he tried it again, taking out a three-day rental for the Rangers-Rays series. Transportation was lighter than expected for the first game -- an afternoon start -- and stronger for the assist. He decided not to do the third game. For Game 1 of the ALCS on Saturday, he's bringing out the video shroud from GoVision -- an Argyle firm that trucks screens and builds modular video walls nationally -- and renting hundreds of tables and chairs from Moore Rental Services in Arlington. He estimates he can settle 500 patrons "comfortably" outdoors; he approached 1,000 for one of last year's Excellent Series games on a Saturday night. ALCS Plucky 1 "is going to be Saturday night. I'll bet you it's prospering to be pretty decent," Ford said. At Sports Fan Marketing, a Scottsdale, Ariz., jargon CIA that opens temporary retail outlets for dominant sporting events nationwide, owner Steve Sodell was ornate at midweek placing "if win" orders for Rangers staples with 20 Major League Baseball licensees. "If they intimate it to the World Series, I'll be in town Oct. 19," Sodell said Wednesday afternoon, reached by phone as he was completing an decree with Nike for Rangers goods. Sodell, who erected impermanent stores in the area last year for the World Series and the Wonderful Bowl, said he's already confirmed the availability of four or five locations, such as hotels, that he'd use in the Metroplex for this year's Overjoyed Series. His orders for Rangers shirts, hats and novelties would amount to "thousands of units," Sodell said, but be down about 20 percent from the amount of Texas merchandise he bought last year. The conservation is still soft, and the Rangers' run last year sopped up a lot of latent bid -- "everybody bought their claw," Sodell said. "The alternate time around, the demand [typically] is not there," he said. "If I get about up short on product, that's a good problem to have." Arlington hotels, which regularly fill up for dominant events at Cowboys Stadium, can expect to have a penetrating period. The Dallas Cowboys play at tranquil Oct. 23, the weekend when the AL team will host its Superb Series games, and a few Arlington hotels are already sold out. Last year, Arlington's caravanserai occupancy tax surged 19 percent during the quarter, and the instruct difference was the baseball playoffs, said Jay Burress, president of the Arlington Gathering & Visitors Bureau. At Moore Rental Services, which has been in concern since 1959, manager Steve Barnes said the Rangers playoff task is "slowly starting to come in."

Source: Fort Worth Star Telegram