Concierge Confidential (27 page)

If you want a
really
quiet place, go to the floor where the conference rooms are. Oftentimes there's a mini-lobby there. If they're having corporate meetings at the time, they'll set up catering tables with coffee, fruit, croissants, and things like that. Go ahead and help yourself. It won't be missed.

Because they catered to a celebrity clientele, the RIHGA zealously protected their guests' privacy. Over the years Daria had to fire a few people for speaking to the press about who was staying there and what their proclivities were. She almost had a heart attack when her mom called her to let her know that she was in Page Six—for hiring a beard-braider for Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top. The hotel's PR director had planted it herself to show that the concierge at the RIHGA will “do anything” to keep their guests happy.

I always went above and beyond with my clientele, but celebrities have the nerve to request things that even the most notorious guests would never dream of. It's not so much that it's crazy or obnoxious, but that it's simply
weird
. When Prince came to stay at Daria's hotel, all the furniture had to be moved out of his suite. Everything was replaced with his own things by his people—down to the candles, the lighting, and the pillows. When they were done, it was stunning. They staged it like a movie set for him—for the one night that he stayed there. Yet even though it was an outlandish request, it's not like he was pitching a fit every five minutes over how long room service was taking him. He was particular, but he wasn't
mean
.

Kathy Griffin was another case in point. Many celebrities who tour have their luggage FedExed independently of them. There might not be enough turnaround if they're hopping from city to city on a daily basis. Daria would get Kathy's luggage, take it upstairs, unpack it, and spritz the clothes with water so all the wrinkles got out. Then she would open an attached envelope. Inside the envelope were Polaroid pictures of Kathy posing in her different outfits. Daria matched up the pieces to the picture, down to the shoes, so Kathy would know what to wear with what. When Kathy left, she always made a huge spectacle of thanking the staff for how great they were, putting on a big show of gratitude—before jokingly palming them a one-dollar bill as a tip. But she made sure that they would all get invited to her concerts, too.

Surprisingly few celebrities carried themselves as difficult individuals. There's rarely any need to, because their “people” are there to be difficult on their behalf. Despite claiming that she was still “Jenny from the block,” Jennifer Lopez's people said the room could only have white flowers—okay, no big deal. But she once kept the massage therapist waiting for three hours while she got on the phone and had screaming arguments with her boyfriend at the time, P. Diddy. Every time he called, she'd chase her assistant and all the handlers out of the room. The poor masseuse had to stay there, hanging on, while J.Lo cried and screamed hysterically. This was somebody who worked hard, and who booked appointments one after the other because it was her livelihood. But everyone else had to subordinate their schedules because J.Lo was having personal drama.

But J.Lo was an exception. When Norman Schwarzkopf stayed at the hotel, for example, he found out that a dozen employees were in the Reserves. They worked as dishwashers and in maintenance, things like that. The general came down to the lobby and met with them all as a surprise, thanking them for their service to their country, and got the entire staff all emotional. U2 were similarly humble. When they stayed at the RIHGA, they told the paparazzi to wait for them across the street. That way, the other guests wouldn't be disturbed and the entranceway wouldn't be blocked. True to their word, they came down, crossed the street, and got their pictures taken and signed autographs. Wealth and fame don't always lead to class—but they don't necessarily have to lead away from it, either.

At one point the management changed at the RIHGA, and Daria decided to leave. She got hired by a company named Marquee Concierge, which was trying to do something similar to what Abigail Michaels was doing—but they were doing it all wrong.

They had three big investors and their business model was predicated on having clients pay $10,000 a year for 24/7 concierge service. They hired a big staff with exorbitant salaries, and took nice offices in the Empire State Building. The overhead was tremendous. Meanwhile, it took them four months and a fortune just to put together a brochure.

One of Daria's clients followed her from the hotel. The other thirty or so Marquee clients were all free memberships, or given a “promotional rate” of 75 percent off. There were only two concierges and, because the service was 24/7, they both had to be on call at all times. Unfortunately for them, this was the same time that Marquee the nightclub opened up. Daria would get woken up at two in the morning, because some drunken partier was calling 411 looking for Marquee.

They had a core group of financiers who did spend money and traveled a lot. But those people weren't enough to sustain the business—not when management was renting a house up in the Hamptons using the company's money. Not when management was dropping thousands of dollars at nightclubs, entertaining clients with models and bottles.

They fired everybody, and the business shut down—and I got Daria to join our team and oversee our expanding operation.

16.

Circle in the Sand

The more Abigail Michaels expanded operations, the more calls we got from people who wanted to work with us on their projects. Andrew Miller made his fortune through a very popular infomercial product. “I have this resort in the Hamptons,” he told us, “and I want to have concierge service. Would you be interested?”

Abbie and I were always interested. We met with Andrew in a nice restaurant on Lexington and 46th Street. He was about forty years old, a short guy with a big mop of brown hair and a very intense demeanor. When he spoke, he leaned forward like he was whispering CIA secrets. His assistant was named Ilse and looked like a cliché of the hotel industry worker: She wore a little scarf and her hair was pulled back in a very tight ponytail. She had a leather book to take notes in, and she totally exuded a crush on Andrew. Even if there wasn't any romantic inclination between them, you could just tell she was fantasizing about beating the crap out of him in bed.

The only resort that Andrew had, unfortunately, was a conceptual one. “Here's the idea behind the resort,” he told us. “I have friends who are bazillionaires, and we have these gigantic, elaborate homes all over the world. No one is ever there and it costs a fortune to maintain a home like that. St. Martin's, St. Bart's, Aspen, Telluride, Vail, Nantucket. Everywhere you would expect.”

I knew exactly what he meant. There's a lot of wear and tear on homes like that, especially when it's an oceanfront property. The house gets eaten away, and yet the owners are only there once a year—if that. They have to hire a house manager (often with a six-figure salary) to live in the house for free to make sure that the salt doesn't erode the façade. The house managers have to paint—or rather, hire painters—when needed. They have to make sure that the gardener shows up, make sure that the mail gets in, and really run the house as though it were an ongoing operation. With places like that, it's not okay if the grass grows six feet tall until the owner gets there. The neighbors would flip. The owners wind up spending $40,000–$50,000 on a gardener for lawns that they don't even see.

“A lot of people are starting to take advantage of the big boom in the market,” Andrew pointed out. “There are fifteen-, twenty-, thirty-million-dollar homes on the market, but they stay on the market for two or three years. These are marquee value homes. We're talking about things built by famous architects. I know of a Lapidus that's been on market for over two years. The house has a whole history and it's just sitting there.”

“Eating away money,” I added.

“Exactly. They're paying all of this upkeep, and nobody lives in it. So my idea is to go after the very high-end vacation market and find people that really don't want to go stay in a hotel. Let's basically duplicate their lifestyle, but in other locations. The Hamptons is an international destination for the rich and famous, and there are no hotels there.”

Andrew was right. There must be some zoning regulations that keep it from happening, because otherwise Hyatt would have built a beautiful beachside hotel in the Hamptons. There
are
a couple of bed-and-breakfasts and a few really disgusting motels—but that's it. It's part of the reason why the Hamptons is so cliquey. You're not going to get invited to a party if you live in Queens. You get invited to a party because you were at another cocktail party the day before, at someone else's house. The party circuit is this little incestuous buzzing around.

“I want to homogenize all of the houses,” Andrew continued, “so they have a certain congruent aesthetic. They're all going to be outfitted in Frette linens and they're going to have certain bath products, just like a hotel—except instead of a hotel, it's going to be a twelve-bedroom home.”

“We expect to be able to charge a hundred thousand dollars and up per week,” Ilse chimed in.

It actually sounded like a good idea, or at least a feasible one. It would be just like when we rented the $300,000 yacht for Zinovy. It would also be a great way for Abigail Michaels to expand our operations, both in a new framework and in a new location. Abbie and I were downright giddy. To be fair, if a dog spa had approached us to have a concierge examine dog poop, we'd go get our gloves. But the Hamptons seemed a little more up our alley.

“Do you think you'll be able to service these big estates?” Andrew asked us.

“Oh, of course!” I told him. “We'll anticipate everything they need. There are vineyards in the Hamptons, and they're going to want private tours. They're going to want to go to all the hot nightclubs, like the Pink Elephant and Tsunami. And they
definitely
will want to eat at Nick & Toni's.”

“We're just gonna crack the shell,” Abbie chimed in. “We know how to do all this, and everyone is going to love it. It'll just be magnificent.”

“The only hitch is that
we
don't have a place to stay out there,” I pointed out.

“I'm going to rent a house just for the staff,” Andrew told us.

Even though Hampton Estates was still just a concept in Andrew's head, he was an aggressive businessperson who picked a start date for things to get going. Abbie and I started designing how the service was going to work. While Ilse was off with her clipboard, busy picking out the official Hampton Estates–brand soaps, we were left to figure out the logistics. To be honest, I started to get scared. The hotel concept and procedure didn't necessarily translate to what Andrew was envisioning. Where did the people go to get the keys? Where did they check in?

Ilse spent a lot of the time trying to get pool companies to wear a Hampton Estates shirt whenever they cleaned the pool at one of the homes. We couldn't employ a pool cleaner full time, mind you, so he would have to do a few other jobs, then put our shirt on, and then change his clothes again. She was picturing this beautiful Aryan pool cleaner, with his blond hair greased back, disrobing in the sunlight and putting on his fancy Hampton Estates button-down oxford shirt. He would sparkle like gold as he went to clean pools in the one-hundred-degree weather. The more we discussed things, the more it seemed like a fantasy that wasn't going to come to life.

Abbie and I made our way to the Hamptons, and got hit with another solid dose of reality. The Hampton Estates offices were in a disgusting stucco building across the street from the Southampton Car Wash, and were totally industrial and generic. Down the block was the bus stop for the Jitney. If the wind was right, you could smell the Armor All and chemicals from across the way. There was nothing luxurious about any of it at all.

We made appointments to sit down with the doormen and the owners of all the nightclubs and the restaurants. The one place where everyone goes to in the Hamptons is Nick & Toni's. If we couldn't get our people into Nick & Toni's, we might as well have boarded up our imaginary twelve-bedroom houses and told our theoretical Aryan pool guys to go home.

Nick & Toni's is a little place that looks like a cozy bed-and-breakfast type cottage, tucked away among tons of foliage. It's supposed to be Italian, but it's more like a mix of everything—in other words, rich people food. It's not formal at all, and is very laid back. You can go there in jeans and no one will blink.

The restaurant doesn't hold a lot of people, but it's one of those places that is full of A-listers. But a Britney Spears isn't A-list to Bonnie Munshin, the manager. To her, an A-lister is more like real estate developer Harry Macklowe or the president of the New York Stock Exchange. It's high-culture cred, not pop-culture cred. The only glitterati that matter to Bonnie are the ones that are known in the Hamptons: Billy Joel, Steven Spielberg, Chevy Chase, Calvin Klein, and Liz Smith.

That's why Nick & Toni's is the kind of place where you have to practically send in your résumé to get in. It's not a rude sense of self-importance, like with Trough. It's actually not about pretense. Bonnie tries to create a home away from home. It's the opposite of a trendy nightclub: She
doesn't
want lookie-loos bothering people. If you want to gawk, go somewhere else.

Obviously,
everyone
in the Hamptons wants to be Bonnie's friend. She's the Texas Guinan of her scene. My friend Robert knew her—and he was my only in to get a connection. There's a Nick & Toni's in Manhattan, which is perfectly fine as a restaurant but nowhere near as exclusive as the Hamptons branch. Whenever I had run into her there with Robert, I'd really tried to get on her good side.