Free Republic

IT seemed like an ordinary evening at Crobar, the trendy Manhattan nightclub. Two weeks ago, as Counting Crows performed on stage, young women dressed in expensive jeans pushed toward the front with their khaki-clad, mostly older boyfriends. Few, however, were regulars. On this night, the very rich and the merely rich intermingled on the club's two floors - V.I.P.'s upstairs ($1,000 a ticket) and the rest down below ($250). Most of the 1,250 people gathered for the event, the Robin Hood Foundation charity ball, were part of the city's unlikely new "it" crowd. Richer than Wall Street rich and more...