A Brooklyn Life: Hotelier Superstar Ben Pundole
(Fast-forward 15 years: I’m at a gallery opening at the Gagosian in Beverly Hills. The artist—the same, now-absurdly famous artist—surprisingly makes a beeline for me, and in front of my guest apologizes for the bullying 15 years previous. He’d been sober for eight years and clearly needed to get it out…)
From the Groucho Club it was the Met bar, the members bar in London’s first boutique hotel, the Metropolitan. I was the manager. I was 22. This is the bar where Bono would humbly ask, at 3am closing time, if we could have a lock-in so Kate (Moss) could DJ for her friends. The bar where I couldn’t seat Madonna in a booth, as they were taken up by Oasis, Pierce Brosnan and The Spice Girls, so I sat her at the bar with me, drinking shots—lemon-drop shots, if I remember correctly. Where Liam Neeson would bring his own wine and hang-out with the staff… I can’t divulge what really happened during my two years there… Suffice to say my four years at the Groucho Club were barely enough preparation for my time at the Met bar.
The Met fast became known as a global hotspot for the world’s glitterati. We were invited to New York to do a pop-up bar at Saks during fashion week, which is where I met the wonderful Amy Sacco. Three months later, I was living in New York, working as the general manager of LOT 61 on 21st between Tenth and Eleventh. It was 1998. I was 24. ‘WeChe’ did not yet exist. Galleries had just started to pop up and you were more likely to see transsexual hookers and dealers than yuppies and art students… Those were the days!
It was early on a quiet wintery Friday evening when Madonna walked through the doors of LOT 61 to ask whether I’d consider managing a club she was planning to open with hotelier Ian Schrager. We had dinner. I said yes. The club never ended up happening, but I was introduced to Ian, who I then worked for until his departure from the company in 2006, including a three-year stint at the Shore Club in Miami from 2003 to 2006 where we partied on the beach, at the pool, in the Red Room and in the Penthouse—the New Year’s Eve parties were legendary!