Steven Greenberg, bon vivant: He drank Pétrus and paid cash

           A flamboyant bon vivant and legendary marketing wizard, Steven A. Greenberg, the man with the Ben Franklin hair, was a restaurateur’s favorite. He drank Pétrus and he paid cash. I remember him bringing three bottles of the great Bordeaux to Sammy’s Roumanian, where we sipped it with the chopped liver. Steven gallently poured some in a goblet for the maitre d’ to taste but got a little testy when the guy picked up the bottle to pour himself a second glass.

           Last July 4th weekend Greenberg staged a widely televised hot dog eating exhibition on the expansive roof of his club, 230 Fifth. It was the next day that he received a diagnosis of lymphoma. He told no one outside his family. On Saturday, he died at 68.  

          As a legendary man-about-town, he made the rounds in a limo, his driver Remi at the wheel, always with a woman, sometimes two. In recent years they were likely to be Asian and very young. Sometimes Remi picked us up in a stretch or a super stretch. I never saw Steven wear anything but a dark blue suit and a white shirt with pointed lapels. He had several in various sizes. You could spot him at his courtside seats at Knicks games with that signature white mane. In the summer, when most of his world moved to the Hamptons, he still made city night rounds in that dark suit. In July 2010, he had Remi drive us to Sheepshead Bay for clams at Randazzo’s, pointing out the home he grew up in and his high school.  

          Born in Brooklyn, Greenberg went from New York University to a job as a Securities Analyst at Value Line. He developed his Anametrics, Inc. into a leading money management and financial PR firm and made who-knows-how-much-money investing. What mattered was that he won cultural cred as the creator of Fame magazine, as a co-founder of the Roxy roller disco and at the Palladium with Steven Rubell and Ian Schrager, after they were forced to sell Studio 54 and went to jail.  

          In 2002, Greenberg got the sublease on the once grand, now shabby, Gramercy Park Hotel. He patched it up, filled it with bargain-hunting tourists, and put in an instantly popular rooftop bar without a license. Then Ian Schrager bought and renovated the hotel with a sumptuousity dreamed up by Julian Schnabel. Greenberg needed a new roof. The 22,000 sq.ft. penthouse atop a staid office building at 230 Fifth Avenue was it. Never mind that roof bars usually get their lure from topping snob clubs and hip hotels. His plan to draw socializing guzzlers and nocturnal nomads through a brightly lit lobby of a fuddy duddy commerical building seemed highly quixotic.

           He launched with a sweep of glass, food by Zak Pelaccio, purple iridescent lights (to remind you of Studio 54) and panoramic views of The Empire State Building, Met Life and New Jersey in the distance. The enclosed suite was only so big, but the roof could hold 500, plus palm trees. Then winter came. Evergreens replaced the palms. A roster of hot weather specialty drinks in warming mugs and heat lamps weren’t enough. He ordered dozens of cheap hooded red bathrobes. Soon the roof looked like a Russian Ku Klux Klan meeting. He began ordering the robes for pennies, directly from China.  

          The last time we had dinner together, he had a dynamic Chinese woman at his side and introduced us to Soto, a restaurant I’d not heard of, that was almost invisible on Sixth Avenue until Seamus Mullen opened Tertulia next door. “Omakase,” he instructed the chef, ordering the most expensive sake on the list. And when the sushi master suggested we might be ready to stop, Steven insisted on two or three more creations. I’ll miss that most. There are not many incurable insatiables around these days. “We’ve got to have his uni,” he said, watching with pleasure at my uni-mad swoon. Then, as he almost always did, he’d pretend to go off to the men’s room. When we asked for the check. He would smile and stand up. It was already paid.  

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