Local Weirdo Screwed By Sex-Rape Hotel: A Modern New York Fable

Noury was one of those weirdoes who unaccountably have money, or at least used to have it, and one of the things Noury bought with his money was a building in the Meatpacking District -- though it couldn't have cost much, as he obtained it in the days when the neighborhood produced useful things like beef and transvestite hookers, rather than the hideosities of Stella McCartney and others that have made the place anathema to civilized people.

Noury's building was as strangely ornamented as one might expect such a person's home to be, with a patio full of weird junk and strange markings on the facade. One day developer Andre Balazs, who was then building his awful Standard Hotel on the High Line, approached Noury and proposed to buy his silly building, which many of his newly-rich friends who were taking over the District found to be an eyesore. Oh, no, said Noury, I'm going to build a "mini-inn" on this spot! But you could be my partner if you like!

Balazs shook his head, went home and set his jackhammers to work, separating Noury's building from the High Line and also fundamentally damaging it -- giving the city an excuse to throw Noury out of it, remove his belongings, and then destroy the building.

While Noury wanders the streets in his tattered disco finery, Balazs toasts Satan for the earnings from his Hotel, a well-known palace of exhibitionism and rape. Moral: New York despises its charming eccentrics and worships Satan and money. (h/t Jeremiah's Vanishing New York; photo via Famespy.)