Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, thanks for pulling up a cheer on Table
Speaker 1: for two. This is Bruce and we are in Hollywood. However,
Speaker 1: we're not at the Tower. We're a block down from
Speaker 1: the tower. Tonight, we're having dinner in someone's home. One
Speaker 1: could say that.
Speaker 2: I think the casion calls for vesper. Thank you.
Speaker 3: Oh I like this.
Speaker 1: A man who created one of the most beautiful, mysterious
Speaker 1: hotels in Los Angeles called the Chateau. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: look at this, cheers salt. It's not our date night,
Speaker 1: we're just having just a warm This would be mister
Speaker 1: Andrea Balaz. He's responsible for such hotels as the Mercer
Speaker 1: in New York, Chiltern Firehouse in London, a multitude of experiences,
Speaker 1: his attention to details unrivaled, his elegance unmatched. So sit back, enjoy,
Speaker 1: because we're going.
Speaker 3: To go deep with Andre.
Speaker 1: I'm Rus Bassi and this is my podcast Table for two. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is so exciting to me. Everybody, if you've pulled
Speaker 1: up a chair tonight, this is very really special, my friend,
Speaker 1: because we are in Hollywood, at the most glamorous place
Speaker 1: undeniably in Hollywood.
Speaker 3: That you have created.
Speaker 1: It is not where we often find ourselves and we're
Speaker 1: sitting with the empresario, the king, the master of experience
Speaker 1: and hotels and so much more. So we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about that, mister Andrea blaz Welcome. So this was
Speaker 1: the chateau moment was your first property.
Speaker 4: But you it's strange in one year, you know, I
Speaker 4: was in the biotech business before. I having sort of
Speaker 4: a serial entrepreneurs I started started newspapers, not school papers,
Speaker 4: but newspapers in college with some partners, and I started
Speaker 4: other businesses. Then I started biotech business. I did that
Speaker 4: for a while. I didn't like the way my life
Speaker 4: was bifurcated between my personal life and work life. So
Speaker 4: after the company public, you know, I thought, you know,
Speaker 4: what would be an interesting thing where basically I couldn't
Speaker 4: distinguish the difference between work and play.
Speaker 2: This being a perfect example of it.
Speaker 4: Wow, right, we're here where friends, we've been friends for
Speaker 4: a long time. We happen to be doing a podcast.
Speaker 4: Is sort of a business of yours. We're talking sort
Speaker 4: of about a business mind. But I couldn't tell you,
Speaker 4: you know, if this if we were paying for this
Speaker 4: meal and and someone said, did you just have a
Speaker 4: business meeting or did you have a personal meeting. I
Speaker 4: wouldn't be able to say what it was. Yeah, And
Speaker 4: that was the goal, just blend everything. So that's how
Speaker 4: I got into it. And in nineteen ninety just happened
Speaker 4: to be a year that I bought the building that
Speaker 4: then became the Mercer, and I was here staying as
Speaker 4: we started a nightclub called BC down Road that we
Speaker 4: never got licensed because it got so much advanced hype that.
Speaker 2: The city said no, Yeah, but I tried to salvage it.
Speaker 4: Right. So I was here, I was staying of the Chateau,
Speaker 4: and I realized there's something about this place. So I
Speaker 4: ended up buying this building the same year as I
Speaker 4: bought the building in nineteen ninety. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I like how you started that by saying creating
Speaker 1: the letting go of the bifurcation that we all are
Speaker 1: basically trained to think that you have to live your
Speaker 1: life up work, home, workplay or separate as opposed to
Speaker 1: bringing them together.
Speaker 4: And it's been a mission in my life to sort
Speaker 4: of obliterate that line. Yeah, so that everything is play
Speaker 4: or everything is work, but the whole idea of work
Speaker 4: is that it should be something you like doing so
Speaker 4: much that's not considered work.
Speaker 1: Right, and the irony of what you're talking about is undeniably.
Speaker 1: This business, I think is one of the hardest businesses
Speaker 1: to work at.
Speaker 5: What you would know, Yes, I spent years and difficult many.
Speaker 1: And on a multitude of levels, so to be able
Speaker 1: to sort of kind of understand how to bring those
Speaker 1: two together.
Speaker 3: You know what you do, so the chateau. So if
Speaker 3: we kind of just take that beat in your life.
Speaker 1: So for those of you who are who have pulled
Speaker 1: up a sure today, the mercy of New York which
Speaker 1: and the chateau they you know, having that vision I
Speaker 1: think is really fascinating that you saw the beauty of that,
Speaker 1: You saw the beauty of the sort of the symmetry
Speaker 1: of to central downtown Soho, New York, which was a
Speaker 1: sexy it.
Speaker 4: And when I look when I recently came, I've been
Speaker 4: looking through a building an upstate New York, a place
Speaker 4: up there, and we've been collecting, just working on a
Speaker 4: book sort of called the Ship We've Done.
Speaker 3: This working title, right, is a great title, The Ship
Speaker 3: We've done.
Speaker 2: The Ship We've done it.
Speaker 4: Now, this is a very collaborative business and there's always
Speaker 4: a week, there's no eye. And I came across this,
Speaker 4: this box that was sort of a mailer to introduce
Speaker 4: the mercer, and I realized, you know, it's hard to
Speaker 4: imagine today when every city in the world has a Soho,
Speaker 4: but back then I had to it was it was
Speaker 4: an old fashioned hotel bell and I had to go
Speaker 4: to Nasau and get a satellite picture because I wanted.
Speaker 2: No one knew where Soho was, so the.
Speaker 4: Idea was this mailer was that it would see to
Speaker 4: pick the little button at the top of the the
Speaker 4: bell popped through Soho because no one knew where Soba
Speaker 4: was in Manhattan when I bought that building, which was
Speaker 4: the Astor family's headquarters, which is why it had sort
Speaker 4: of more elegance to it than all its neighbors.
Speaker 2: They were in a fur trapping business.
Speaker 4: A mercer is someone who cleans furs, hence the name
Speaker 4: or whatever.
Speaker 2: And we.
Speaker 4: But the biggest concern was that no one knew where
Speaker 4: it was, and if they didn't know where it was,
Speaker 4: whether it was sleep there because it was. There were
Speaker 4: two restaurants, Raoul's being one of these, stood there. Another
Speaker 4: one was a place called Food That's not there. I remember,
Speaker 4: and there was there was forget retail, there was nothing.
Speaker 4: There was art galleries and literally I lived on the
Speaker 4: top floor of this loft buildings or walk up because
Speaker 4: the four floors blow me was occupied by a rag business.
Speaker 4: They collected rags and sent them out to JFK to
Speaker 4: clean airplane parts. I kid you not, that's what that's
Speaker 4: the soho that the mercer was born into.
Speaker 2: It's it couldn't imagine what it is transformation.
Speaker 1: In essence, by acquiring that real estate, bringing your vision,
Speaker 1: you changed the whole.
Speaker 2: The neighborhood, neighborhood.
Speaker 3: How does that all work together? And why doesn't it.
Speaker 1: Scare you or why you know just say, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: I'm going to do this, but like there's no one
Speaker 1: down here.
Speaker 4: Well, the good thing is I started everything young enough.
Speaker 4: When you know things are being scared, don't don't occur
Speaker 4: to you.
Speaker 2: You just kind of do it.
Speaker 4: So this a lot to be said for not need today.
Speaker 4: You can call it ballsy later on, but that's retrospective
Speaker 4: and there's no option right exactly.
Speaker 2: And you buy a building.
Speaker 4: In a shitty neighborhood because that's what you can afford
Speaker 4: to buy. So the fact that it then becomes the
Speaker 4: most expensive neighborhood in Manhattan.
Speaker 6: Is not.
Speaker 4: It's a result of this, but it certainly it's like
Speaker 4: the standard that we built over the high Line.
Speaker 2: The only reason I was.
Speaker 4: Able to build that, and that's the unfortunately, the only
Speaker 4: hotel that I had the good fortune.
Speaker 2: To be able to build from ground up.
Speaker 4: Everything else has been a conversion of some other building,
Speaker 4: like a warehouse, like the Mercer. But that building we're
Speaker 4: able to do because nobody wanted the real estate. You know,
Speaker 4: at that time, everybody was demanding that the high Line
Speaker 4: be torn down. I just happened to know a bunch
Speaker 4: of artists and you know, the urban planners and people
Speaker 4: who are concerned about the city, and I loved the
Speaker 4: Highline just as a thing, as a remnant of its history.
Speaker 4: So I joined this group called Friends of the high Line,
Speaker 4: and through that suddenly realized there was this site that
Speaker 4: nobody wanted because it was bifurcated by a train track
Speaker 4: thirty feet above ground. CSX, which is now owned by
Speaker 4: what now gave the tracks to the city, but at
Speaker 4: that time, when Bloomberg was mayor, CSX still owned it.
Speaker 4: But it's such a huge conglomerate that you couldn't talk
Speaker 4: to anyone, and they didn't give a damn about what
Speaker 4: they're trying things.
Speaker 2: They want to rip it down.
Speaker 4: The city didn't own it yet, they hadn't been gifted
Speaker 4: it by CSX.
Speaker 2: It wasn't a park, it wasn't This wasn't that.
Speaker 4: We had to build a hotel, so I had to
Speaker 4: figure out how to build around it. So you end
Speaker 4: up with these weird things. It's not in retrocirc It's
Speaker 4: not like you have a vision. You just make the
Speaker 4: best of what you have. Like if the mercer changed soho, Well,
Speaker 4: the reason I was able to get something sobo was
Speaker 4: that nobody else wanted to be there.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: If now you know one of the most expensive neighborhoods
Speaker 4: on the West Side, largely you know, Barry and Dan
Speaker 4: built that spectacular pier and all of that stuff. But
Speaker 4: that came years afterwards, right the Whitney moved down there afterwards.
Speaker 4: The whole neighborhood changed after the Standard as well. But
Speaker 4: we built the Standard there because it was the one
Speaker 4: place I could do it. Because it was inexpensive, nobody
Speaker 4: wanted it, nobody knew what to do.
Speaker 3: And you know what you did. Well.
Speaker 1: That's it's sort of a great business model plan when
Speaker 1: you're but you also have to have the eye you
Speaker 1: have and the I for detail.
Speaker 3: Now, when you know, I've stayed in a number.
Speaker 7: Of your hotels over the years as a complete guest
Speaker 7: and a lover of the hotels, sometimes not even realizing
Speaker 7: they were your hotels, just because they were great, you know,
Speaker 7: And I'd be like with Anty Cohen, he'd be like,
Speaker 7: you know, Andreas is a ton I'm just.
Speaker 3: Like, Oh.
Speaker 1: One of the things that you do, which I so
Speaker 1: appreciate because I have such a big pet peeve, especially
Speaker 1: in my beloved city of New York, is the design.
Speaker 1: So when you talk about the standard, the design of
Speaker 1: that hotel does not go against the neighborhood.
Speaker 3: What was authentic to that neighborhood.
Speaker 1: And so many buildings I see now going up in
Speaker 1: New York City are just to me horrific.
Speaker 3: What made you design it that way?
Speaker 1: And it's very sexy and a lot of people do
Speaker 1: have sex against those windows.
Speaker 2: It's such a funny story about that.
Speaker 4: Again, it because it's the only hotel that I've been
Speaker 4: able to for circumstances, I've been able to do it
Speaker 4: was it's crafted literally from the inside out, the way
Speaker 4: all proper buildings should be. And because it's purpose built,
Speaker 4: it's not a developer who wants to build something and
Speaker 4: then they're going to sell it off to someone else.
Speaker 4: Look at the worlds, let's use the modernist vocabulary. Right
Speaker 4: in New York City, buildings like the Seagrums building or
Speaker 4: a lever House or Rockefeller Center stand out as well.
Speaker 4: It was amazing, but they were all built for the owner.
Speaker 4: Lebronfons built Seagrums right, lever House was built for it.
Speaker 4: The standard was built specifically to use the architecture and
Speaker 4: everything to what then was it was the third sort
Speaker 4: of fourth standard we've done. It took one in Hollywood,
Speaker 4: one downtown LA one in Miami, and then that was
Speaker 4: the fourth one and by harnessing the architecture. But I
Speaker 4: remember for so long the idea. Of course it was
Speaker 4: a budget hotel. That was the idea. So the idea
Speaker 4: was how do you make the rooms as small as
Speaker 4: possible but feel as big. But one way to do
Speaker 4: that is to have Florida ceiling glass. And the other
Speaker 4: thing is if you have Florida ceiling glass is you
Speaker 4: can't make it reflective or it's going to look like
Speaker 4: every other blue or gray or green tinted office building exactly.
Speaker 4: So you had so it's very expensive lead free glass
Speaker 4: that is perfectly clear. And the idea was that you
Speaker 4: walk into the room and you almost can't see, like
Speaker 4: falling out.
Speaker 2: That was the idea. Then the other thing is we
Speaker 2: I flipped the rooms on side.
Speaker 4: On some of the rooms, instead of a shoe box
Speaker 4: like thing, it became horizontal. So instead of thirty five
Speaker 4: thirty six feet from the door to the window, it
Speaker 4: became sixteen feet, which made you open the door and
Speaker 4: you're like, whoa, I've just fallen into the city of
Speaker 4: New York.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean, And that's the kind of playfulness that one
Speaker 4: can do if you're building something from scratch.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to Table for two.
Speaker 1: The hotels of our guest, Andre Blas are beautiful and
Speaker 1: one of.
Speaker 2: The kind spaces.
Speaker 1: One incredible example of this is the rooftop bar at
Speaker 1: the Standard in New York City. What's Andrea's secret? How
Speaker 1: does he bring experiences like this together where there is
Speaker 1: like does the design in Andrea's head go all the
Speaker 1: way up to say, okay, this is sort of like
Speaker 1: the cherry on the top of this is going to be.
Speaker 4: Well, every space has a narrative in my mind. I
Speaker 4: always try to approach it with some story. But that
Speaker 4: one was such a slam dunk in a way because
Speaker 4: there are two places in New York that were, you know,
Speaker 4: elegant cocktail lounges on top of the building, the rainbow
Speaker 4: rooms and Windows in the World.
Speaker 2: Well Windows on.
Speaker 4: The World was no longer and Rainbow room is hardly
Speaker 4: a cool place.
Speaker 2: So what do you do? You need a new.
Speaker 4: Rainbow room for a different generation in different plays. And
Speaker 4: the advantage which we also took advances here in downtown
Speaker 4: LA with the standard, is that you don't want to
Speaker 4: be the tallest building because then all you're looking at
Speaker 4: is the air conditioning and the.
Speaker 2: Top of any buildings.
Speaker 4: You don't want to be the lowest building, but you
Speaker 4: want to be right in between so that when you're
Speaker 4: looking out a window, as you can in the Boom
Speaker 4: Boom Room, you can look up and you can look
Speaker 4: down exactly. And the way the buildings bent because I
Speaker 4: knew who could be a wood build to the north,
Speaker 4: we bent the building to preserve the views onto the
Speaker 4: Empire State Building. When one can do this, people really
Speaker 4: to it, and then it becomes the physical platform for
Speaker 4: that what then has to become a social platform.
Speaker 2: But it's a little bit like a play.
Speaker 4: I suppose you know, you need to create the set,
Speaker 4: but a fantastic set doesn't mean that the plays create
Speaker 4: at all.
Speaker 1: Completely right, Well, I mean one of the things that
Speaker 1: I think you also do very artfully.
Speaker 3: And you're right, it's like a play or it's like
Speaker 3: a movie, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: You walk in and you feel like you're kind of
Speaker 1: going into a different place in time.
Speaker 4: Everything I tried to my best in my ability, with
Speaker 4: the help of a lot of good people. I think
Speaker 4: a good hotel should be like a living room for
Speaker 4: everybody's It should by definition be democratic and open to everybody.
Speaker 2: If there's anything that.
Speaker 4: Qualifying things that the more interesting you are, the more
Speaker 4: you're well, nobody's not welcome, because if that were the case,
Speaker 4: I don't think this kind of hotel would work. Well.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's interesting because whatever you changed and when,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure there were many things that you changed
Speaker 1: from my hotel that was opened in nineteen twenty seven
Speaker 1: when you acquired.
Speaker 2: It in nineteen ninety ninety, specific.
Speaker 1: The authenticity around it continues. So if you go into
Speaker 1: like the rooms, like it's so like the rooms here
Speaker 1: are so fascinating because this is where people live here.
Speaker 1: You know, they choose to live here, they choose to
Speaker 1: have secondary residences here.
Speaker 3: I mean they have you know.
Speaker 2: You know a few of them right now, but we
Speaker 2: don't mention names.
Speaker 1: So but no, that's right, and it's and you know,
Speaker 1: it's so cool because when you go back into your spaces,
Speaker 1: you mean, you're going.
Speaker 3: Back in time.
Speaker 1: You know, there's things, there's telephones, there's there's couches, there's
Speaker 1: soul where there's things that are like, oh.
Speaker 3: I'm in a different decade, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm in a different time.
Speaker 6: It's really groovy.
Speaker 1: If you don't know, and you're listening, Andrea has been,
Speaker 1: you've been in this business now.
Speaker 2: Of length thirty four years.
Speaker 1: What's the first thing that when you walk into a
Speaker 1: hotel that you look at to should say? Because I
Speaker 1: know what it is what I look at that you
Speaker 1: look at and say, oh, okay.
Speaker 4: I don't look I feel the first thing I want
Speaker 4: to feel. And I would never pretend to try to
Speaker 4: do something that I'm not that isn't within my.
Speaker 2: Sphere. Like if you asked me to.
Speaker 4: Produce a television show, I can guarantee you it'll be
Speaker 4: a flow. It's my taste is too particular. But if
Speaker 4: I act on what I know, I know that there's
Speaker 4: enough people that it'll be successful. We've never had a
Speaker 4: feel because I've never tried to overreach, so meaning that
Speaker 4: I believe that once you stay true to what you
Speaker 4: know yourself, what you believe, what you believe, the experience
Speaker 4: should be. To me, a place that I feel comfortable
Speaker 4: is number one. Place that first makes me feel safe
Speaker 4: in every term of the word. It's embracing. I know
Speaker 4: that my privacy is not going to be violated. Whatever
Speaker 4: I do.
Speaker 2: Is not going to be somehow invaded on.
Speaker 4: And when I feel safe, then I become less inhibitive.
Speaker 2: And if you.
Speaker 4: Think about what one of the greatest joys one can
Speaker 4: have in life is to feel uninhibitive. So what can
Speaker 4: a good hotel provide One It makes you feel safe,
Speaker 4: that triggers your lack of inhibitions, and that allows you
Speaker 4: to then experience things that you wouldn't necessarily experience. The
Speaker 4: old adage which kilt in their holiday and Institute. After
Speaker 4: the Second World War, when the American hotel industry took over,
Speaker 4: it was, you know, the world was a dangerous place.
Speaker 4: That's the way people saw it, and things like home
Speaker 4: away from Home, which was one hotel chains slowly, you know,
Speaker 4: if you think about it, at least the people that
Speaker 4: I'm interested in hanging out with, the last thing they
Speaker 4: want to do is leave home, travel someplace else, and feel.
Speaker 3: Like they're going at home exactly.
Speaker 2: So the whole point is to get away from home
Speaker 2: to be home.
Speaker 4: But to that feeling, strangely, you first have to feel
Speaker 4: even safer than natrone or as safe as at home.
Speaker 4: Then you let your guard down. Then you can experience
Speaker 4: something else, and then you made do things that you
Speaker 4: wouldn't even do it. A romance is great, business partnerships
Speaker 4: and whatever.
Speaker 2: It may be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in one of your hotels, before I got into
Speaker 1: the room, I had taken off all my crothes in
Speaker 1: the hallway to be.
Speaker 3: With the person I was going to be with.
Speaker 2: So you clearly felt at home.
Speaker 1: I felt right outside the doors. How does one sort
Speaker 1: of manage this whole sort of idea that, okay, this
Speaker 1: sort of empire to use lack of a better word,
Speaker 1: and you're in a constant state of acquisitions, new builds,
Speaker 1: new ideas, conversions, renovations like how does that in Andrea
Speaker 1: Blasa's head?
Speaker 3: How do you when you wake up? How are you
Speaker 3: navigating this?
Speaker 1: And also maintaining a sense of such serenity and peace
Speaker 1: as what I'm feeling as I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Next to you, and every time I'm like you, I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, what is the most challenging piece of in
Speaker 1: the dynamic of what you do?
Speaker 4: Look, navigating COVID was really difficult, definitely fueled by my
Speaker 4: understanding of the severity, the medical the reality of pandemics
Speaker 4: throughout history and.
Speaker 2: What this was about. I think I lost my bearing.
Speaker 4: A little bit in that I became overly concerned about
Speaker 4: it and I completely underestimated societies, our societies, but most societies.
Speaker 2: Willingness to completely ignore it. That's probably been the most.
Speaker 4: Difficult thing I've had to navigate in this business, other
Speaker 4: than trying to build a nursery in New.
Speaker 3: York physically literally literally all So, what is your joy?
Speaker 3: What you do?
Speaker 4: Is?
Speaker 3: It's so super hard. What is like the most joyful.
Speaker 4: Aspect of the four It's very clear the most joyful
Speaker 4: aspect is making people happy.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know where that gene comes from.
Speaker 4: It's probably got something to do with why actors want
Speaker 4: to act or comedians want to be comedians.
Speaker 2: That you know, it just makes me happy to see
Speaker 2: other people happy. It's it's just a psychic reward, you know.
Speaker 4: We we we did the did this party to celebrate
Speaker 4: the tenth anniversary of the children.
Speaker 3: So that was a big deal and a party.
Speaker 4: So it was it was, it was, It was a
Speaker 4: lot of fun.
Speaker 2: And what was interesting is.
Speaker 4: It it's always difficult to enter a city and figure
Speaker 4: out not only take the most basic stuff like how
Speaker 4: do you build something without people dying, you know, and.
Speaker 2: How do you then.
Speaker 4: Centric because having it be a success is the easy part.
Speaker 4: Having it survived its success is the hard party really
Speaker 4: is and that is a whole other game, you know,
Speaker 4: because every you know, we live in a society, or
Speaker 4: anything new is great. The question is how do you
Speaker 4: survive being the next.
Speaker 3: Great, staying in the conversation, staying relevant.
Speaker 4: And what was so satisfying in that in organizing that
Speaker 4: event was how many people was just responded to it,
Speaker 4: you know, and it was fascinating because some people say,
Speaker 4: oh my god, it's already been ten years, and other
Speaker 4: people said, it's only been ten years. So you realize
Speaker 4: that the intensity of the interaction of the people with
Speaker 4: that place, which is, you know, ten years versus this
Speaker 4: is almost one hundred. Yeah, it was so refreshing to
Speaker 4: me because that's what gives me joy, is to have
Speaker 4: people connect to a place to say things like you say, yeah,
Speaker 4: I think it's a wonderful lady to take your clothes
Speaker 4: up all the way before you get into the.
Speaker 1: Room, thanks for joining us for table for two. So
Speaker 1: much goes into making a hotel feel like a safe,
Speaker 1: welcoming place.
Speaker 3: Everything from the design to casting the staff must be
Speaker 3: just right to create a great destination.
Speaker 1: I'm curious how does he find the right balance at
Speaker 1: each one of his hotels.
Speaker 3: We don't we share.
Speaker 1: Andy Cohen as a very close friend of ours, and
Speaker 1: I was speaking to Andy today and I said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm gonna So it.
Speaker 3: Was Andrea and we're gonna have a drink and we're.
Speaker 1: Gonna and he was like, oh, I need to write
Speaker 1: Andre note and let him know. So you know, he
Speaker 1: was just there last week and he was there for
Speaker 1: the week, and he was promoting his show, and he
Speaker 1: was and this was what always filled me up when
Speaker 1: people would talk to me about the restaurant.
Speaker 3: I need to tell Andre how how.
Speaker 1: Incredible the people are, how incredible the people are, that
Speaker 1: how they treated me, how incredible.
Speaker 3: And that is how you stay.
Speaker 1: I think in the room, have the longevity because you
Speaker 1: know people will come and go.
Speaker 3: It is a transient business. There's a burnout piece to it.
Speaker 1: But if you can maintain that culture, because it becomes
Speaker 1: all about the culture, so you set the tone of culture.
Speaker 3: And I think what happens, which is challenging to a
Speaker 3: lot of places, is they lose their culture.
Speaker 4: And when you lose the culture, it happens all the time,
Speaker 4: and I find it fascinating.
Speaker 2: In the say call it luxury.
Speaker 4: I mean not that the chateau is from a physical
Speaker 4: point of view, luxury, but from an experiential point of view,
Speaker 4: it certainly this luxury. I think, how you The problem
Speaker 4: I believe in this industry is how the industry is structured,
Speaker 4: the ownership. Think of how many hotels or publicly traded corporations.
Speaker 4: Think of how many are owned by these private equity firms.
Speaker 4: Or other institutional money that needs certain returns and then
Speaker 4: think of who trains these people.
Speaker 2: I mean it's if you think of the awards system.
Speaker 4: You know you talk about a five star hotel, Well,
Speaker 4: the full concept of five stars are started by Mobile
Speaker 4: Oil Corporation. It's like the Michelang Guide, which is a
Speaker 4: rubber tire company rating restaurants, and we take it seriously
Speaker 4: coming from a tire company.
Speaker 2: They're rating hotels now.
Speaker 4: This year, which we did very well and it was great,
Speaker 4: but it's still it's a tire company.
Speaker 2: Let's licensed its name.
Speaker 4: Forbes is a magazine and financial magazine that's defunct, but
Speaker 4: they've licensed their name. And now you've got a company
Speaker 4: going around rating Forbes hotels. You've got five Stars, which
Speaker 4: has been invented by the gas company.
Speaker 2: All you have.
Speaker 4: Before that, the Automobile Association of America TRIPLEA had a
Speaker 4: rating system which goes back to when people would travel
Speaker 4: and they want to encourage car travel, gasoline, rubber cars.
Speaker 2: You wanted to go to this.
Speaker 4: Different city, you didn't know where to stay, so we
Speaker 4: went ahead and raided the hotels.
Speaker 2: Is the way to stay.
Speaker 4: Today that's morphed into something that's made everything but homogeneous.
Speaker 2: It is. It's so painful.
Speaker 4: Even i'm on Adrian Zecha, who was sort of a
Speaker 4: mentor mind when I decided to go into the business.
Speaker 4: I just sort of offered to be his assistant for
Speaker 4: two years and traveled around them.
Speaker 2: Back then, a'mon was unique.
Speaker 4: Today it's like Four Seasons or Park Hyde or the
Speaker 4: Peninsula or Mandarin Oriental. I mean, you go into the
Speaker 4: lobby and you can't.
Speaker 2: You don't know. They're all the same.
Speaker 3: They're all the same. You can't, you don't know exactly.
Speaker 4: So what does luxury mean today? Which is I think
Speaker 4: is a really interesting question.
Speaker 1: I do too, And I think you can even equate
Speaker 1: that with the movie business, with a lot of these
Speaker 1: studios being bought up by things like AT and T
Speaker 1: or Comcast, you know, these big there's a you know,
Speaker 1: you don't have, you know, the Jack Warners, you don't
Speaker 1: have the Sharry Lansings, you.
Speaker 3: Don't have the you know, Bob.
Speaker 1: You know, also, you lose there's a flavor that's gone
Speaker 1: because they're not movie people.
Speaker 3: They don't know how to And so I think to
Speaker 3: your point.
Speaker 2: It's very very similar.
Speaker 4: I mean, I I've also said this before I'm tried.
Speaker 2: But what we do is very much like producing a movie.
Speaker 4: The differences that it's more like a play because it
Speaker 4: has to go on the next day and the same
Speaker 4: person who is fantastic on Monday may be in a
Speaker 4: bad mood on Tuesday. So it's not like you can
Speaker 4: wrap it and it's done yet. On the other hand,
Speaker 4: it still is like a movie production. You have to
Speaker 4: invent it, create it, have a set, shoot it, but
Speaker 4: then you have to do it again and again again.
Speaker 4: How you do that is deeply dependent on who's behind.
Speaker 1: It, deeply dependent on completely.
Speaker 4: Look, Mike Nichols could do a play and there was
Speaker 4: no way it was going to go off kilter. If
Speaker 4: it went off kilter, it was because he took it
Speaker 4: off kilter. Yeah, but it's not because someone interfered.
Speaker 1: Right, It's true, And it's very you could really tell
Speaker 1: and like it is like a play because it's like
Speaker 1: we're gonna do the same thing. I'm gonna come in,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna open the dru i'm gonna turn on the lights,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start, you know, get the theater, get the
Speaker 1: the the.
Speaker 3: Orchestra, rety. But then it's different every day because I
Speaker 3: don't know who's gonna walk through and up to that podium.
Speaker 1: I don't know what's gonna happen in that room that's
Speaker 1: gonna call and say, oh okay. So the play changes
Speaker 1: every day, and again I will bring it to when
Speaker 1: you're paying attention, when the when the owner is there,
Speaker 1: when it's not the corporation, then.
Speaker 3: You have the control.
Speaker 1: Then you have the control, which is a good word
Speaker 1: to sort of make sure the scene that you envision
Speaker 1: is set. Every day might shift, but the players aren't
Speaker 1: gonna understand all of a sudden. You don't have the
Speaker 1: corporate entity bottom lining your expenses, bottom lining your people,
Speaker 1: putting everyone in horrible uniforms, doing all the things that
Speaker 1: they do, and they take away, like you said, the specialists.
Speaker 4: I think that that is one of the problem challenges
Speaker 4: for the luxury business in general. Is not luxury Again,
Speaker 4: I'm not talking about material or expense. I'm talking about
Speaker 4: the richness of experience. When I talk about luxury, that's
Speaker 4: what it is meaning. Am I giving something banal or
Speaker 4: am I giving something interesting? It's not a function of money.
Speaker 4: It's a function of richness of experience. And I don't
Speaker 4: think that one can create a rich experience if the
Speaker 4: underlying financial structure does not embrace that. So if you
Speaker 4: have private equity firms that are looking for twelve and
Speaker 4: a half percent return as a minimum before anyone gets
Speaker 4: a bonus, so you really have to get twenty five percent,
Speaker 4: and we're going to ruin what it is because this
Speaker 4: business can't yield those kinds of returns. But since the
Speaker 4: money goes wherever the money needs to go to finance it,
Speaker 4: it's a very weird business. Then you get into the
Speaker 4: flip side, which is the vanity people. But when I
Speaker 4: can feel within a minute of walking into a place
Speaker 4: what the ownership is, that's either ownership that's there for
Speaker 4: the money or it's ownership that's there for the vanity,
Speaker 4: and both of.
Speaker 2: Them have their pitfalls.
Speaker 8: Yeah, tell me about your function by any Warhol, What
Speaker 8: was that timeline?
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 4: So, look, Andy, who was a very very close friend,
Speaker 4: had a habit of picking up certain people at times
Speaker 4: who fascinated him for whatever fascinated him at the time.
Speaker 4: I believe that I just happened to be a person
Speaker 4: that he was interested in for the last seven years
Speaker 4: of his.
Speaker 2: Life, and.
Speaker 4: I sort of became together with Page Powell and would
Speaker 4: sort of alternate date nights and sometimes Katie, my then
Speaker 4: wife with the company, is but I sort of became.
Speaker 2: His date, and.
Speaker 4: So I was seeing three or four nights a week,
Speaker 4: every week minimum, and we just do all kinds of things.
Speaker 4: But I mean the range of things we go from.
Speaker 4: I remember a dinner at the Odeon with Jean Michel
Speaker 4: Bosca Jehn Michelle's father, who was a very upper ranking,
Speaker 4: you know, accounting executive at a big eight accounting firm,
Speaker 4: wearing bankers pinsiler suits. I happened to be when I
Speaker 4: got the call from Andy, I happened to have already
Speaker 4: told my lawyer, who was you know, blue blazer, khaki,
Speaker 4: yellow tide things. So you can imagine Jean Michelle, me Andy,
Speaker 4: his father, je Michelle's father, and my lawyer having dinner.
Speaker 4: Then we go to the garage where Keith Harring is
Speaker 4: having a party, but nobody recognized Andy or John Michell Basca.
Speaker 4: So we were standing there and Andy had to ask
Speaker 4: some door bouncer to go upstairs and get Keith to
Speaker 4: come down and let us in. So it goes back
Speaker 4: to that that weird time that was before Tony Shafrazi
Speaker 4: put Jaman Schabaska and Andy together in that collaboration or
Speaker 4: whatever you want to call it. So we were friends
Speaker 4: on that level, and it just I don't know, I
Speaker 4: spent an extraordinary amount of time with him.
Speaker 1: I mean that is first of all, being in that room,
Speaker 1: in that decade with those people.
Speaker 3: Again with like, there's like no when you're in a
Speaker 3: when you're in time in your life where you're not
Speaker 3: just you're not aware of it and you're just in it,
Speaker 3: and you happen to be in a historical moment of time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, incredibly artistic people without our going to change the narrative.
Speaker 1: It's kind of wild and it had to be a
Speaker 1: huge influence in what you then didn't even know you
Speaker 1: were about to go from here.
Speaker 4: I'm sure it did, right, right, I'm sure it does.
Speaker 4: And I was just, you know, I I feel like
Speaker 4: I've been an extraordinarily fortunate person.
Speaker 3: What's on the horizon.
Speaker 1: So you've accomplished so much in your career and you
Speaker 1: still are sort of so vibrant, and is there something
Speaker 1: that you haven't done or is there you know, something.
Speaker 3: That is brewing the chamber is brewing in the blas.
Speaker 2: It's a question. I asked myself, Look, these we've never
Speaker 2: managed other people's hotels. Who never you know, everything that
Speaker 2: we do is.
Speaker 4: From the ground up, right, So there are significant commitments
Speaker 4: in time, and the question is what do you What is.
Speaker 2: Compelling to me?
Speaker 4: I think that the there are one or two things
Speaker 4: that have to do with you know.
Speaker 2: One is sort of although we developed.
Speaker 4: Them on paper but never built them fully, is a
Speaker 4: you know, health spa wellness thing. The other is creating
Speaker 4: a literally a community but for older people who are
Speaker 4: not really old in any way except certain things start
Speaker 4: to give way, sure, and there's nothing that's of a
Speaker 4: quality for them. If I think about okay, look someone
Speaker 4: like Famously again I'm not speaking of school, but Carl Lagelfeld,
Speaker 4: who was always at the Mercer.
Speaker 2: Like, where would he be living today? Where would he
Speaker 2: want to live? I always like to live.
Speaker 4: At the Mercer. He had an apartment on Gramercy Park.
Speaker 4: He wrote me a long letter saying, you know, I've
Speaker 4: never even though I own a place a few blocks
Speaker 4: away from me, I've never lived there.
Speaker 3: I think you're so onto it like that is, but
Speaker 3: that you.
Speaker 2: Know, it has to be all the right circumstances, right.
Speaker 1: But I think you know the idea that creating a
Speaker 1: community for people who are aging and but aging in
Speaker 1: the way I.
Speaker 3: Mean, this is like the year of sixty. Like I mean,
Speaker 3: everyone is crossing over into like a year of sixty.
Speaker 1: Everyone looks fantastic, everyone's still vibrant in their life. But
Speaker 1: you know we're now going to be in the sixty
Speaker 1: to eighty zone of the next twenty years of our lives.
Speaker 3: So to create that experience where you go downs.
Speaker 1: I don't need that house, I don't need that stuff,
Speaker 1: but I want the community, I want the services.
Speaker 3: I want that.
Speaker 2: That's what intrusion.
Speaker 4: I haven't really sorted it out, but but you know, owning,
Speaker 4: you know, a house here, there, and all over the
Speaker 4: place is becomes more and more exhausting, and you realize
Speaker 4: that you're running all these and wouldn't it be great
Speaker 4: when you go and you run into you are fairly
Speaker 4: sure that you're going to run into a friend that
Speaker 4: you would love to and it just happens that there's
Speaker 4: nick it.
Speaker 2: You know, they're there for a month as.
Speaker 4: Yours, yeah, or forget a month, but if it's they're
Speaker 4: there for that's it.
Speaker 3: That's it that's where they live and they travel from there. Well,
Speaker 3: Andy and I will both be buying.
Speaker 2: But this is certainly the place to start.
Speaker 1: I mean you and I would think I would have
Speaker 1: said my husband, but Brian Alway says, well, your real husband,
Speaker 1: Andy Cohen, So like that will be where we're we're
Speaker 1: going to be first. I want to thank you so much,
Speaker 1: and I want to thank you on behalf of creating
Speaker 1: what I think is the most valuable thing one can
Speaker 1: create in life, which has experiences for people in community,
Speaker 1: and like what has happened over the course of my
Speaker 1: my adult years and as a result of the things
Speaker 1: you've created have been magical and have bond to meet
Speaker 1: a people for life.
Speaker 3: And I love you.
Speaker 1: You are an incredible man and it's an honor to
Speaker 1: sit here with you at your first baby.
Speaker 3: The chateau. It really is. This is a big deal.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you, Thanks, It's been an utter pleasure.
Speaker 3: Thank you for pulling up a chair.
Speaker 9: I love our lunches and never forget the romance of
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Speaker 9: friend and rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. Table
Speaker 9: for Two with Bruce Bosi is produced by iHeartRadio seven three,
Speaker 9: seven Part and Airmail. Our executive producers are Bruce Bosi
Speaker 9: and Nathan King. Our supervising producer is Dylan Fagan.
Speaker 2: Our editors are.
Speaker 3: Vincent to Johnny and Cas b Bias.
Speaker 5: Table for two is researched and written by Jack Sullivan.
Speaker 5: Our sound engineers Our Meal, b Kl, Jesse Krainich, Evan Taylor,
Speaker 5: and Jesse Funk. Our music supervisor is Randall Poster. Our
Speaker 5: talent booking is done by Jane Sarkin. Table for two
Speaker 5: Social media manager is Gracie Wiener. Special thanks to Amy Sugarman,
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