Here's a little background about how a photo taken at an East Village restaurant apparently became "the topless shot heard 'round the world."
On Monday morning, Verso owner Labinot Baraliu told us about a woman who removed her top after walking into the Italian bistro on Avenue C and East Eighth Street the previous evening.
The folks at Verso asked the woman to put her shirt back on ... and after a brief protest, she and her dining companion, who was photographing the entire episode, left. For his part, Baraliu thought it was a funny little story that locals might like.
Probably so. Eater linked to the story on Monday morning. On Tuesday, Gothamist and Jezebel both linked to the post.
On Wednesday morning, we heard from a responsible party — East Village-based photographer Allen Henson. He recently moved here from Los Angeles. He had been out with model Cheyenne Lutek. He offered this background. "It was an impromptu photoshoot. We did two that night," he said. "The first establishment loved it and interacted, the other, well — we weren't there long."
Meanwhile on Wednesday, news of the topless diner had made it into the Daily News, MSN and The UK Daily Mail. The item was also seemingly syndicated to various FM radio station websites across the country... such as 94.5 "the Buzz — Houston's New Rock Alternative" and Dave and Chuck the Freak at 101 WRIF in Detroit. (Please keep in mind that we weren't sending this around to anyone to feature.)
Then a story on what happened appeared in The Corriere della Sera, an Italian daily newspaper published in Milan. Someone told us that it was the paper's most-viewed article for the day.
On Thursday, the Daily News had a feature titled "EXCLUSIVE: Sexy Cheyenne Lutek goes topless at East Village restaurants."
[Allen Henson via the Daily News]
Then the UK Daily Mail picked up the story again with this breathless headline: 'I'm not ashamed of my body': Model who was kicked out of New York restaurant for exposing her breasts speaks out
There was, apparently, even more coverage. Per the Daily Mail:
It's the topless shot heard 'round the world. A picture of a comely blonde who took off her shirt at a trendy New York restaurant has become an internet sensation - picked up by publications from Italy to Russia to China.
Closer to home, the Daily News really liked this story, as it was the basis for a political cartoon on Friday.
[Via Crazy Eddie]
By last night, Lutek was posing with the NYPD on Avenue C.
[Allen Henson via Twitter]
In the end, that post from Monday became the second most-viewed in EVG history, far behind another post about a topless woman. All this maybe provides some insights about how the media works. Or maybe what's wrong with the media. (Or humanity?) And it's probably too late to put up a paywall ...
Previously on EV Grieve:
Female diner decides to go topless last night at Verso
Since so many people want to see topless women running wild in the streets, it's time to rename this blog EV TnA Grieve, and give the world what it really wants, wild naked East Village boobies.
ReplyDeleteIn May, The Stuyvesant Town Report wrote a blog post about college girls taking over a Stuy Town playground to sunbathe, preventing the kids from using it. The Post picked it up with the title 'Tit for Tot Furor.' As each new media outlet picked it up, the story (d)evolved into 'Stuy Town residents protest skimpy bikinis' which was never the issue. The parents only wanted their kids to be able to use the playground. The story made it as far as India.
ReplyDeletehttp://stuytownreport.blogspot.com/2013/05/stuy-towns-bikini-beauties-vs-soccer.html
The media eats up boob stories as if they were a 12 year-old boy seeing a copy of Playboy for the first time. Guess people like boobs.
And smart move NYPD officers. Are you begging to get suspended? Ray Kelly hates this kind of attention.
ReplyDeleteSo they're sayin' that it's time to up the ante on Ray's next birthday bash.....
ReplyDelete......might sell a HELL of a lot of eggcreams.
What concerns me is the trend line...first the girl walking on 12th Street (and everywhere else), then the playground fracas, now this airy diner? By this time next year, may it be mandatory for women under, say, 30 to go topless all summer long? (I leave it to fellow EVG readers to offer remarks about political campaigns.)
ReplyDeleteYa can't even begin to pay for the type of publicity Verso's getting for free here.
ReplyDelete@3:38 - "The media eats up boob stories as if they were a 12 year-old boy...Guess people like boobs."
ReplyDeleteUh, yeah -- ever been in a newsroom?
Trust me, nerd central. And it's not "people" who like boobs -- it's juvenile adult males who lose all sense of what is newsworthy and what is not when faced with a pair of mammarires.
Seriously, Grieve? You're disappointing me by LATCHING on to this story -- so to speak.
Why are the police taking part in this nonsense? An embarrassing publicity stunt and they stand there grinning like tourists.
ReplyDelete- East Villager
Missing caption: Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just glad to see me ?
ReplyDeleteWhat do you call a topless woman riding a CitiBike?
ReplyDeleteA TittiBike.
I'm with V.H. McKenzie - no more titty posts!
ReplyDeleteYou're sick of tits, I'm sick of Citibikes, who cares. That's apparently what brings in the eyeballs. It's one thing if this blog was all tits/all citibikes all the time, but it's not. A variety of stuff of general interest to most is the usual. Calling out EVG for putting up the back story on the second most-viewed post in EVG history is pure b.s.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous 3:39 PM --
ReplyDeletere Ray Kelly: They could always say it was a "stop and frisk".
Gojira 9:18 PM
The publicity Verso gets is not good. In a campaign about censorship, who wants to be known as the restaurant that censored?
"'There's no such thing as bad publicity" - P. T. Barnum
ReplyDeleteI don't understand -- I live here, I walk around every day, this lady's boobs get around like wacky wok menus, and yet I've seen nothing. Is this real or did Greive conspire to make this up to generate traffic?
ReplyDeleteNice picture outside PSA8 of Toody and Muldoon posing like tourist and grinning like teenage boys. Ray Kelly's favorite pass time inappropriate police behavior in the Press. That Homeland cabinet position looking better every day!
ReplyDelete