"Pawnshop" is such a loaded word: It almost immediately conjures up an image of a seedy, fluorescent-lit room with a clerk standing behind bulletproof glass and display cabinets full of tacky gold jewelry. Fortunately, if you happen to be rich, possess a reasonably large collection of art, and you're desperate for cash, you can call up Art Capital Group, which doesn't look anything like a pawnshop since it's located in the former Sotheby's building on Madison Avenue, and "looks at first glance like an art gallery," reports the Times. But bring Art Capital your collection and they'll do the same thing every other pawnshop does: They'll extend you a loan using your art works as collateral, and if you fail to pay back what you owe, you'll have to say goodbye to them forever.

• The renovation of the Old Homestead steakhouse is almost complete. The private party space will be filled with works by Julian Schnabel. [Eater, TONY]
• Via Quadronno may be opening a Tribeca location. [Zagat]
• Tenjune owners Mark Birnbaum and Eugene Remm, along with real estate developer mogul Michael Hirtenstein, are taking over the old Lotus space. [P6]
• at65 cafe, the new restaurant in Alice Tully Hall, opens on Sunday. [Eater]
• Suba's last day in business is February 28th. [GS]
• Some advice on how to buy decent wine on a budget. [WSJ]

It seems Stella Schnabel is kind of annoyed that she's been described on this site as "scenester." She's a real actress now, don't you know? (She's currently starring in Ry Russo-Young's You Won't Miss Me, which debuted this week at Sundance.) Stella tells Spout.com that people who say such horrible things just don't "know" her. "They can write whatever they want because they are not basing it on anything. I mean, I go to a party or because I like to dance... they just actually write that I am dancing just because I am my father's kid, not because it is something different than another girl dancing at the club... I don't even go to clubs. I go to underground Cuban places in Harlem," she says. Not sure attending the CFDA awards or sitting front row at Zac Posen's show during Fashion Week is something every other girl gets to do, but we look forward to meeting up with Stella at one of these "underground" clubs in Harlem in the near future. [Spout.com]

• Want to share an elevator with Rupert Murdoch? Today is your lucky day. Les Wexner, the CEO of Limited Brands (and onetime mentor to Jeffrey Epstein), has "discreetly" listed his five-bedroom apartment at 834 Fifth Avenue for $60 million with brokers Serena Boardman and Larry Kaiser. Wexner and his wife Abigail originally purchased the co-op in "fixer-upper" condition for $9 million back in 1997. [NYO]
• Christopher Pesce, a managing director at Steve Schwarzman's Blackstone Group and the former global head of prime brokerage at Bank of America, has paid $6.3 million for a condo at 101 Warren Street in Tribeca. [Cityfile]
• Who says the Hamptons real estate market is dead? John Veronis, a co-founder of the boutique merchant bank Veronis Suhler Stevenson, has sold his six-bedroom, oceanfront home on Meadow Lane in Southampton for $27 million. [Newsday]

Whoopi Goldberg served as emcee at the National Board of Review's annual awards ceremony at Cipriani 42nd Street on Wednesday night. Attendees at the Bulgari-sponsored event included Alec Baldwin, Meryl Streep, Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber (left), Clint and Dina Eastwood, Ed Norton, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Salma Hayek, Anne Hathaway, Julian Schnabel, Diane Lane and Josh Brolin, Sir Howard Stringer, John Patrick Shanley, Eva Amurri, Tim Robbins, Joy and Regis Philbin, Meredith Vieira, Heather Graham, Amy Adams, Debbie Bancroft, Veronica Webb, Bethenny Frankel, CNN's Alina Cho, Slumdog Millionaire star Dev Patel, director Danny Boyle, along with a smattering of Bulgaris, including Ilaria, Veronica, Nicola, Natalia, and Beatrice. [PMc, Wireimage, The Daily]

A crowd of nearly 400 made their annual trip to the Bronx last Friday night for the New York Botanical Garden's 10th annual Winter Wonderland Ball. The black-and-white dinner, sponsored by Chanel, featured appearances by the likes of Cristina and Chris Cuomo, Nina Garcia, Marjorie Gubelmann, Byrdie Bell, Poppy Delevingne, Minnie Mortimer Gaghan, Steve and Christine Schwarzman, Dalia Oberlander, Gillian Hearst Simonds, Alex Kramer, Alexandra Lebenthal, Molly Sims, Holly Dunlap, Erin Fetherston, Margherita Missoni, Zani Gugelmann, Coco Rocha, Gillian and Sylvester Miniter, Bronson Van Wyck, Patrick McDonald, Stephen Knoll, Jessica Joffe, Jill Kargman, Lauren Remington Platt, Coralie Charriol Paul, Joe and Nazee Moinian, Kate Schelter, James and Whitney Fairchild, Lydia Fenet, Maggie Betts, Meredith Melling Burke, and Pamela Fiori. [PMc, Style.com, NYSD, The Daily]

Perhaps the imploding real estate market is getting under the skin of Julian Schnabel, the artist turned film director turned high-end condo developer. The auteur's movies are widely admired and his smashed-plate paintings were at least big in the 1980s, but his hot pink ("Pompeii red") Palazzo Chupi has turned into a controversial icon for angry neighbors, gauche celebrity speculators and tumbling prices. And though Chupi didn't come up during Schnabel's 60 Minutes interview, the thin-skinned artist didn't take this blessing to heart, instead lashing out at Morley Shafer for daring to ask about art critic Robert Hughes, one of his most prominent detractors.

A few weeks ago, it was reported that Julian Schnabel was stepping out on his wife, Olatz, with Palestinian author Rula Jebreal. Cindy Adams reports today that the artist/filmmaker put his mistress up in his Palazzo Chupi, "maybe a floor away from the missus." You'll undoubtedly be shocked to hear that both Julian and Olatz have now retained divorce lawyers. [NYP]

Julian Schnabel's venetian-red West Village palace is an emblem of New York's high-end real-estate boom. The gorgeous condo tower—designed down to every detail by the obsessive artist and director—commanded prices of up to $7,000 per square foot, a record for downtown Manhattan. Or at least that's the price Schnabel was banking on. The only real measure of the value of Palazzo Chupi is the 3,500 square foot apartment bought last year for $12m by Richard Gere. The Hollywood star tried to flip the property for a quick $6m profit; but it now looks like he'll be lucky merely to make his money back.

♦ Soon-to-be-single Madonna premiered her directorial debut, Filth and Wisdom, at the Sunshine Theater on Monday night. On the red carpet and/or the after-party at the Thompson LES: Lindsay Lohan (left), Jerry Seinfeld, Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber, Ann Dexter-Jones, David Blaine, Alan Cumming, America Ferrera, Brooke Shields, Marc Jacobs and Lorenzo Martone, Glenda Bailey, Jessica Alba and Cash Warren, Juliette Lewis, Jason Biggs, Jeremy Piven, Vanessa Williams, Becki Newton, Malin Akerman, Lake Bell, Max Minghella, Padma Lakshmi, Terry Richardson, Diane Kruger and Joshua Jackson, Joe Zee, Byrdie Bell, Fabiola Beracasa, Ferebee Bishop Taube, Zani Gugelmann, Katie Lee Joel, Beth Ostrosky, Eleanor Ylvisaker, Kelly Klein, Minnie Mortimer, Maggie Rizer, Chace Crawford, Amanda Cutter Brooks, Ingrid Sischy, Ross Bleckner, Nancy Jarecki, Derek Blasberg, Ed Westwick, Rose Byrne, Taylor Momsen, Debbie Bancroft, Terry Richardson, Bruce Weber, Guy Oseary, and Ali Wise and Jason Pomeranc. [The Daily, PMc, Wireimage, Style.com]

» Zac Posen showed the kind of pretty dresses that made him famous. What has also made him famous, of course, is his dazzling knack for networking, which was in full effect with a starry audience of Claire Danes and Hugh Dancy, Marisa Tomei, Leighton Meester, Venus and Serena Williams, Anna Wintour, André Leon Talley, Bernadette Peters, Diddy, Julian Schnabel, Bette Midler, Juliette Lewis, Kate Mara, Jada Pinkett Smith, Veronica Webb, Joy Bryant, Rachel Zoe, Ingrid Sischy, and Fern Mallis. [WSJ, Wireimage]

• Lizzie Grubman is spawning once again: She and husband Chris Stern are expecting twins. [P6]

The September issue of Details features a two-page spread on Vito Schnabel, the son of painter-turned-movie director Julian Schnabel. Strangely, the headline, "The 22-Year-Old Art-World Power Broker: How Vito Schnabel became a big-time gallery owner—without his dad's help," is followed by an article detailing all the ways that mega family connections have furthered his career. He landed his first movie role at 12 (he played a "gay boy" in Before Night Falls—"I got a blow job in it," Vito says), sold his first works to Elton John when he was 15, curated his first show as a junior in high school, attracted family friends like Jim Jarmusch, Zac Posen, and Paz de la Huerta to his first gallery opening, now lives in a loft on the third floor of Palazzo Chupi (which his dad built), and spends his time hanging out with Theo (son of Jann Wenner), Jimmy Jagger (son of Mick), and Cody Franchetti (of Born Rich infamy).

• The Gap is continuing its practice of using of-the-moment fashion figures in ads: The fall campaign includes Julia Restoin Roitfeld, Georgina Chapman, and Ryan McGinley alongside actual mannequins like Chanel Iman and Lily Donaldson. [Fashionologie]

Welcome to another edition of Defamer Attractions, your weekly cheat sheet to everything new and noteworthy at the movies. This is a fairly easy installment for us, as will happen when the most anticipated superhero movie of, like, ever is threatening to run off with the biggest opening weekend, like, ever. As such, knowing that at least half of you are browsing this from a lawn chair in some long, twisting multiplex queue, let's skip the formalities: This weekend features one blockbuster, a melodic bit of counterprogramming, a primate-centric flop-in-the-making and a concert film for the manic depressive in you. As usual, our opinions are our own, but they are burnished to a soft, infallible glow. Off we go!

The real estate market really is in a slump, even for giant pink buildings in the West Village owned by artist Julian Schnabel! He's cut the asking price for one of the Palazzo Chupi duplexes, from $32 million to $29.5 million. (Actor Richard Gere only paid $12 mil for his Palazzo Chupi apartment, which he sold for $18 mil last year.) [WSJ]

We hope it's not too soon to pronounce the once-flatlining Oscars fully recovered, tipped upright by an attending nurse, who then removed the IV needle that maintained his celebrity-malnourished frame from his golden arm. All this is wonderful news, especially in light of what was quickly turning out to be the most depressingly atrophied trophy season in Hollywood history—where something as trivial as a bored-to-drunken-action Sean Young being escorted out of the Hyatt Regency became the year's most discussed awards show moment. Young, of course, has since exiled herself to a hecklers wellness facility, but her spirit lives on, particularly in this LAT feature:

A New York art world fixture since the 1980s, Schnabel is as well known for his relentless self-promotion as for his work as a painter, conceptual artist, and filmmaker.

Cornered at an amfAR benefit and asked to comment upon The Only Interesting Thing To Happen In This Strike-Crippled Awards Season yet again, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly director Julian Schnabel offered only this controversy-defusing shrug to a disappointed stringer apparently hoping to get him on the record about Sean Young's hasty retreat to rehab: "It's fine... You know what? I didn't have anything interesting to say anyway, so I should beg her to come with me wherever I go!" As far as we can tell, there was no disingenuous follow-up query about whether Schnabel planned to ask Young to be his Oscar date. [Us]

THR's Gold Rush blog finally delivers video of the incident, though from the director's perspective; you'll probably have to turn up your speakers to make out Young's now-infamous "Get on with it!" exhortation, but the perturbed honoree's now-poignant "Have another cocktail" retort is clearly documented by the Reporter's camera. Presumably, the clip brings this turbulent chapter in awards show history to an anticlimactic close, at least until some blurry cameraphone footage of Young's subsequent ejection from the event makes its way to YouTube.