“You have an expiration date in the nightlife business,” he said, “and I expired it before it expired me.” A Social PivotĪfter polishing off his scallops, Mr. Sartiano’s last tie to his old club days. Sartiano has already settled his claims in previous agreements. Perlman, said that the suit has no merit and that Mr. Akiva for $15 million, alleging that his former partner had underreported income and underpaid him in the deal. “They seemed to have a gift for making all kinds of people, especially high-profile celebrities, feel comfortable.” “It sent shock waves through nightlife when Sartiano and Akiva split as partners,” said Michael Musto, the nightlife columnist for The Village Voice, which is back as a monthly publication and website. In 2014, after getting married, he decided to sell his share of the company, the Butter Group, to Mr. It scored the nightlife equivalent of a benediction in 2013, when Jay-Z name-checked the club in “Beach is Better.” (“Started at the Darby, ended up at 1Oak, left the house with 100 grand, ended up near broke.”)īut by then, Mr. Next up was 1Oak, a 250-seat nightclub in far Chelsea with gold leaf walls and a revolving door of celebrities. “All these years I’ve been with the Patriots and now the Bucs, and he still does not give a damn.”
“The thing that amazes me the most is, I have yet to crack Scotty’s loyalty to the Pittsburgh Steelers,” Mr. Two years later, they opened Butter on Lafayette Street, a rare fine dining establishment with a D.J. Akiva opened Spa, a raucous dance club near Union Square where Justin Timberlake and Sean Combs would sometimes party. Under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s quality-of-life campaign, club-kid palaces like the Limelight and Palladium were on the way out, replaced by upscale lounges for a new generation of young professionals living out their “Sex and the City” fantasies. It was the late ’90s and the city’s nightlife was changing. Annual dues range from $2,500 to $4,000 (plus an initiation fee of $750 to $5,000), but money alone will not guarantee entrance to the club’s two floors of plush lounges, private dining rooms, omakase restaurant, screening room and library.
Sartiano is coy about the club’s membership, except to say there is a waiting list of 8,000. Judging by the half dozen or more private social clubs opening in New York City these days (see Casa Cipriani, Casa Cruz and the Ned), he was clearly onto something. “The business model with most clubs is basically, ‘How many people can you pile on top of each other?’ I wanted to do the opposite.” “There was a void of places to go for people who are sophisticated and successful and still want to be social at night,” he said. He was considering a hotel, but the property was too small, so he pivoted to a “urban lodge and social workplace” for people like himself. “I thought it was the coolest address on the coolest street.”
Sartiano said, recalling the moment in 2017 that he first toured the 19th-century Victorian Gothic building at 0 Bond, its actual address, that long ago housed Brooks Brothers. As an old mentor once told him, “a club is a baby forever and you’re always going to be changing its diapers.” Cashing Out of Clubs six nights a week, coddling V.I.Ps.“Nightclubs can suck the life out of you,” he said.
Now 47 and married to Allie Rizzo, a Wilhelmina model, with a 4-year-old son, Henry, he not only runs one of the city’s hardest-to-join social clubs (some, he said, have attempted five-figure bribes), he was recently appointed by the mayor to one of the city’s most influential and coveted social positions: the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.Īs for his old life? He no longer wants to stay up until 4 a.m. His philosophy in nightlife? “You can’t buy cool,” he said.īut those days are over. He had so many celebrity girlfriends that The New York Post once called him “ the former man snack of Lindsay Lohan, Ashlee Simpson and Ashley Olsen, and the current squeeze of Jamie-Lynn Sigler.” Sartiano has a sensitive-jock look with hints of John Krasinski or Mark Ruffalo, depending on the angle. Wearing a custom navy-blue blazer, black V-neck sweater and a titanium Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore watch, Mr. On a recent Tuesday night, sipping an old fashioned over a plate of seared scallops, Scott Sartiano said, “I like having people over, but I’m not necessarily the most extroverted.” He was seated in the club’s Baccarat Room, a private lounge reserved for founding members who enter using their fingerprint. He has an “unassuming magnetic personality,” said Brad Zeifman, his publicist, who also described him as “so quiet, he’s monotone.”
So it may come as a surprise to learn that the man behind Zero Bond describes himself as a “low key,” soft-spoken guy who was recruited by Columbia University to play tennis and fell into nightlife by accident.