The Dueling Princes of the Gem Palace
Inside a family jewelry feud that stretches from Jaipur to Madison Avenue.
The Billionaire Battle in the Bahamas
A years-long quarrel among two billionaire neighbors with homes in the Bahamas.
Woo Cho Bang Bang
In Brownsville, Brooklyn kids are joining gangs whose territories are based on the housing projects where they grew up. The warring gangs have helped made Brownsville the “murder capital of New York”:
Prosecutors and detectives still don’t know when the battle of Brownsville started or what it was over. Some think it grew out of a perceived slight at a dance-hall party in one of the warring projects, whose turf is separated by about ten blocks. But the authorities did establish a connection to the current group of principals by the summer of 2010, when a series of shootings, allegedly by Hoodstarz members, wounded two associates of the Brownsville Fly Guys (a gang aligned with the Wave Gang). In October, one of them died from the injuries.
Two days later, in what was likely B.F.G. retaliation, the purported Hoodstarz leader, 16-year-old Hakeem (“OCC”) Gravenhise, was ambushed in front of his apartment building with a fatal barrage of gunfire. His mother witnessed the shooting. There have been no arrests in his murder.
The Trials of Art Superdealer Larry Gagosian
How the global art market works:
“The negotiations among Gagosian, Mugrabi, and the Sotheby’s team reflect the sort of favored-client privileges many gallerists who don’t speculate in the secondary market claim can be dangerous to collectors and artists. Mugrabi told Rotter that if Froehlich, the seller, didn’t agree to their price, he ought to take the piece off the market rather than risk a buy-in. ‘I’ll tell you what the bottom price is, and if the guy wants it, we can at least have a secure bid on it,’ he told Rotter. ‘And if he doesn’t, then maybe he withdraws it from the sale.’
“Then Mugrabi called his father. ‘Froehlich está muy stubborn,’ he complained. He proceeded to have a conversation, mostly in Spanish, about which pictures were covered (‘El Tuna, sí. El Hammer and Sickle, no. Los Zapatos tampoco…’). He took his father’s remarks as instructions to make an offer ‘por los dos.’ When Mugrabi called back to Rotter at Sotheby’s, he said, ‘What’s up, Alex? My dad said that he can pay for the two pictures—for the Hammer and Sickle and the shoes—£2 million, all-inclusive.’ Then he said, ‘Okay, cool. Okay, okay.’ They hung up.”