New York is back in town. It’s Fashion Week in New York and it’s also UN Week in New York with everyone here from all over the world. They’ve blocked off blocks and blocks around the UN so that it’s hard going for New Yorkers heading toward midtown. I was looking for a cab at 10:30 to make the Michael Vollbracht’s Bill Blass Show at the tents at Bryant Park and there was none to be found. Finally I got a cabbie who told me he was going off-duty because it was too hard getting around with all the blocked off traffic. So he took me to the 77th Street entrance to the Lexington Avenue subway and I took it to 42nd Street.

I think it’s interesting how we go all out to “protect” the leaders of the world, free and not-so-free, from the possibilities of conflict and confrontation and they, in turn, do so little to protect us from the possibilities of conflict and confrontation. Besides, we already know that if someone wants to knock off a leader, it doesn’t matter how much security they have. Remember John F. Kennedy, surrounded by his armies of Secret Service men? Remember even more recently Ronald Reagan, even more surrounded by his batallions of Secret Service men? Someone slipped through.

Meanwhile it gets harder and harder and harder to move around the streets of New York, traffic-wise, UN meetings or no UN meetings. There are too many cars and too many double-parkers. The city does NOTHING about it except to attack the cab drivers. Meanwhile everyone else ties up the city. Imagine a terrorist attack under the circumstances?

Blah blah blah.

Michael Vollbracht closing out the show

On to the shows. I made it just in the nick of time to Michael Vollbracht’s Bill Blass show. This is his third or fourth season. I remember when Michael replaced the last designer who replaced the legendary Mr. Blass. They all said he’d never last. Well, here he is, better than ever. I was between Renee Fleming and Karen Bjornson — the muse of the house. I saw Michele Herbert, Audrey Gruss, Mayme Hackett, Debbie Bancroft, Lydia Hearst Shaw, Sharon Bush, Robert Ruffino, Mark Gilberston, Stewart Manger, Neva Anton, Geoffrey Bradfield, Susan Bodnar, Becca Thrash from Texas, Courtney Arnot, Meg Braff, Lisa McCarthy, Elizabeth Loomis, Charles Russell, Collette Russell, Eleanora Kennedy, Nancy Sambuca, Jamee Gregory, Carroll Petrie who just sold her Southampton villa for $32 million (!), Nathalie Kaplan, Leslie Heaney, Candy Pratts, Anne McNally, Patrick McCarthy, Sharon Hoge, Jim Fallon, Joel Grey who was with Bernadette Peters, Cathy Hardwick, celebrity stylists Freddy Leiba, Anne Caruso as well as the grateful Blass owners, Michael Groveman and Haresh Tharani.

After the show it was over to Michael’s (I had time; I walked). Jammed to the rafters.

Then last night I was invited to see the opening night of Elaine Stritch doing her first nightclub act ever at the Café Carlyle. What can you say about a master? A master storyteller, a master songstress, a master actress who tells stories and sings and reminds you of all the old romances that never quite die away, reminds you of when you were a kid and agreed to the “let’s put on a show,” reminds you of what it’s like to see a performer who is marked with genius. She’s an American Piaf (I didn't say she was “like” Piaf). If there is such a thing, it’s Stritch.

The place was packed with well-wishers and celebrity fans including Charles Grodin, Governor Ann Richards with Liz Smith, Peter Rogers, Elizabeth Peabody, Peter Peterson and Joan Ganz Cooney, Michael Feinstein et al, Parker Ladd and Arnold Scaasi, Donald and Barbara Tober, Virginia Mailman, Pia Lindstrom, Barbara Fox, Barbara Cook, Eartha Kitt (the latter two Café Carlyle veterans), Billy Norwich, Cynthia McFadden. An almost two-hour show and the only problem is the audience couldn’t get enough. The last of the bigtime show biz splendors — Stritch — is back in town.