EFTA00013635.pdf

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Billionaires Are Free
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And, these days, a dime a dozen. But even for today's b boys, there are
some things money can't buy.
• By Vanessa Grigoriadis
Deep in the wilds of Chelsea, there is a door. The door has a screen, and the jet-black eye
EFTA00013635

of a promoter behind that screen, peeping out to gauge your social viability. Are you a
model? Or a billionaire? It will be hard to get in otherwise.
Around midnight, the most beautiful young models in the city arrive, squired in quickly,
their backs with shoulder blades like arrows disappearing inside. Door, as the nightclub is
creatively called, popped up late this summer. No one is supposed to know it's there. It is
where moguls go: After the Yahoo board meeting, Jeny Yang and David Filo came by.
Mother night in the fall, Sergey Brin and Larry Page were there. Supermarket billionaire
Ron Burkle, Virgin head Richard Branson, and Steve Bing, the down-to-earth
Democratic donor who inherited nearly a billion dollars from his real-estate-magnate
grandfather, the developer of some of the most beautiful Art Deco buildings on Park
Avenue and the West Village. Advance men for President Clinton. Few other guys can
get in, except for a couple of model wranglers, those handsome, usually South American
guys who round up models at their apartments and herd them to nightclubs. Promoter
Danny A., a friend of Ron Burkle's, runs this place—he even got to go on a trip to Israel
with President Clinton. The wranglers are the only people in here not having fun: One
hand on a mojito, they are nervous as they text madly on the phone to more girls, more
girls, more girls.
For the rest of the city, the door is closed. A few handsome bankers wait on the sidewalk
outside the club for a half-hour, scraping their shoes. "I guess I'm a zero-value-added
person in this equation," says one, stepping away, disappointed.
At the very pinnacle of the New Yor…

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