Posted on 12/13/2005 10:03:09 PM PST by SmoothTalker
"This, by local standards, is a modest affair. Hundreds of New York bar mitzvahs cost $100,000 or more. Many top the quarter-million-dollar mark. If you're ready to spend that sort of money on a five-hour shindig for an eighth-grader, Pat James is the man to see. "
"A few weeks ago, David H. Brooks, the CEO of a body-armor maker, reportedly spent millions on his daughter's bat mitzvah, renting out the Rainbow Room, which sits atop Rockefeller Plaza, and flying in the rapper 50 Cent, as well as Aerosmith, Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks."
"There have been bar mitzvahs at Yankee Stadium and Radio City Music Hall. James has a client who plans to rent out the entire Museum of Natural History on a Saturday night. No matter the venue, James will engineer a gaudy entrance for the 13-year-old guest of honor, one that invariably gets a standing ovation. His go-to move is something called a "fantasy video," which plays on TV screens right before The Moment arrives. Most of them are filmed and edited weeks in advance, by professionals whom James hires."
"Stoopler, who speaks with a slight Long Island accent and looks to be in her late twenties, is planning her second bat mitzvah.
"It's not till 2008," Stoopler says, "but you've got to make a reservation early, or you could get shut out."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Oy vey!
Is Mr. Brooks's company a Defense Department customer?? If so, WE are paying WAAAAAAY to much tohis company!! Wonder who throws the contracts hs way....MURTHA??
Why yes, he is! There was a whole thread about it a week or so ago.
Are we supposed to be impressed by this lavish outlay?
What is the name of the body armor company that Brooks is the CEO of? He is CERTAINLY ripping the taxpayers off!! MILLIOS for a 13 year old girl's party....that is SICKENING!
Man, those Jews always got all the luck!
See post 7...someone kindly linked the other thread.
It's crazy, but I must admit I'm benefitting from the craziness. A client of mine is going to pay my airfare, room and board, and expenses plus $500 cash for one day's work (drawing caricatures of kids) at his daughter's bat mitzvah party in Philly this coming year. I told him I thought he was crazy to shuck out that kind of cash for a kid's party, but he insisted, so I agreed to do it. The money's good, so who am I to argue?
I think the idea of celebrating a person's coming of age in a religious sense is a great one. As a Catholic, however, the whole gigantic bar/bat mitzvah party thing is baffling to me, frankly. The Confirmation parties we have in our modest little middle-class parish are strictly Coke-and-cake affairs, and the average quinceanera in these parts is usually not much more elaborate than a debutante tea party. By contrast, these mitzvah bashes are on the level of a full-scale wedding reception.
Maybe it's a class thing: I can't imagine spending a quarter million on a house, let alone on a sock-hop for a bunch of adolescents! But that's just me...
Oh, I forgot to mention; he's the guy that made the DEFECTIVE body armor.
There is something very wrong with this.
In certain circles in NYC, everything about you is determined by how much money you can waste on stupid things. I've seen it and been sickened. The perpetrators then get additional mileage out of it by going around to their colleagues "complaining" about how much money they "had" to spend. You could be the shadiest slumlord out there, but if you have $50k to blow on some minor ritual thing that also happens to hammer into everyone else your particular religion and thus establishes your cultural identity beyond question, well, you are A Man.
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