Rich New York in the late 90s - Vanity Fair
From across Spring Street in downtown Manhattan, the restaurant Balthazar glows like a Manet painting of the Folies-Bergère. The banquettes in the big, high-ceilinged room are spilling over, the bar all but hidden by a milling throng aglint with champagne glasses. It’s the sound of Manhattan in full, giddy swing, of a city embarked on a new golden era: confident, powerful, exuberant, and flush with cash. Young Wall Streeters, in suits and Hermès ties, sit in happy packs beside artists dressed in black, while older foursomes feast on the $98 three-tier seafood sampler, as high as a wedding cake. The eclecticism is part of what makes the place fun, as it did, in another era, at El Morocco, the Stork Club, or Toots Shor’s. It’s what makes Balthazar, in the fall of 1997, a set piece for Manhattan itself. The last time the champagne flowed so freely in New York was the mid-1980s, and now, as then, Wall Street is paying the tab. The 80s were about outsiders storming the Street, making overnight fortunes and flaunting them by giving huge, absurd parties and inviting the press. So the moneyed of the new golden age do what the rich in America always did until the 80s:. Source: www.vanityfair.com
