Guns! Typography!Photo: Daniel Maurer
After passing through a coat-check anteroom where lines of cursive are engraved in the wall, you’re in an expansive room with a ceiling of raw oak slats and a zigzagging black-and-white floor that sets an El Morocco tone. The room is divided by a central black lacquered bar doling out $18 mixed drinks (no specialty cocktails yet) and, in one corner, a VIP-type area with a roaring fireplace and giant artwork by Roy Nachum (designer of Southern Hospitality and Saucy) of a sexy nude flanked by buffalo. Beyond that area is a cruise-y outdoor smoking lounge partially enclosed by mirrored walls.
About seven ostrich-leather banquettes line underlit brick walls covered by metallic gold curtains, offsetting a bizarre centerpiece — another large artwork of a young blindfolded boy with two horses. In the front of the room there’s an approximately six-foot-tall D.J. podium outfitted with what looks and sounds like a very pricey sound system and in the back, risers holding Louis XIV-type chairs for those happy to sit without silver Dom Pérignon buckets in front of them.
So what else is coming? There will be a downstairs space, and of course food service after the place fully opens in January. Will there be models? Um, there weren’t many at the 1 Model Management party. Then again, models tend to show up late and we left for the Park soon after it became a cash bar and we were asked to give up our perch by a host wielding a seating chart. Seems we were cool enough to get in but not cool enough for bottles.
