Score! We finally made it past 1 Oak’s egalitarian velvet ropes on Friday for 1 Model Management’s party. With owners Richie Akiva and Scott Sartiano making the rounds amid pals like Eugene Remm of Tenjune, we couldn’t sneak any photos beyond the ones you see here of the wall of stacked golden letters and the bathroom’s golden basins and pistol art, so we’ll have to walk you through the space the old-fashioned way.
After passing through a coat-check anteroom where lines of cursive are engraved in the wall, you’re in an expansive room with a ceiling of raw oak slats and a zigzagging black-and-white floor that sets an El Morocco tone. The room is divided by a central black lacquered bar doling out $18 mixed drinks (no specialty cocktails yet) and, in one corner, a VIP-type area with a roaring fireplace and giant artwork by Roy Nachum (designer of Southern Hospitality and Saucy) of a sexy nude flanked by buffalo. Beyond that area is a cruise-y outdoor smoking lounge partially enclosed by mirrored walls.
About seven ostrich-leather banquettes line underlit brick walls covered by metallic gold curtains, offsetting a bizarre centerpiece — another large artwork of a young blindfolded boy with two horses. In the front of the room there’s an approximately six-foot-tall D.J. podium outfitted with what looks and sounds like a very pricey sound system and in the back, risers holding Louis XIV-type chairs for those happy to sit without silver Dom Pérignon buckets in front of them.
So what else is coming? There will be a downstairs space, and of course food service after the place fully opens in January. Will there be models? Um, there weren’t many at the 1 Model Management party. Then again, models tend to show up late and we left for the Park soon after it became a cash bar and we were asked to give up our perch by a host wielding a seating chart. Seems we were cool enough to get in but not cool enough for bottles.
