Oy! August! Between giant bridges tumbling down, peacocks running amok in Burger King parking lots and New York women showboating their toes—metallic pedicures? still with the toe rings? black footless tights? please, ladies, enough already—we’re totally over this month and we’re only a week in. Or maybe the heat is making us cranky: Hey, Mr. Mayor, please take some time out from pretending to run for President and help the people who elected you by clearing the rats off the subway platforms and giving us a nice clean subway system like they have in Tokyo! Okay! Gamely braving the Manhattan muck tonight will be a bevy of lonely and listless lovelies at “Unframed: the AIDS Community Research Initiative of America” benefit art sale at Barneys Co-Op in Chelsea. Sixteen contemporary artists including Tobias Wong, Edward Burtynsky, Chris Jordan and Ted Mineo have pieces “priced well below market value.” Guzzling the good stuff at the cocktail party will be Time Inc.’s editor of the People Group Martha Nelson, heiresses Amanda Hearst and Gillian Hearst-Shaw, fashion designer Francisco Costa and Observer fashion columnist Simon Doonan. Across town, more proof that New York is becoming just like West Virginia: Duane “Dog” Chapman, muscled cable TV star of Dog the Bounty Hunter, entertains the faux tweed twits of the Oxonian Society, whose members will be tittering. Here’s hoping Dog gives ’em a face full of bear mace.
[Unframed, Barneys Co-Op, 236 West 18th Street, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., 212-924-3934; Duane “Dog” Chapman, The Oxonian Society, 6:15 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., www.oxoniansociety.com]
