Friday, December 02, 2005

TOO COOL FOR (PUBLIC) SCHOOL:

"We call it 'Baby Marquee,'" says 17-year-old Lexi Lehman, the promoter of Crush, a nightclub expressly for and by teenagers. Very smart, very privileged teenagers, that is.

"Everyone is so intellectual and intelligent, because these are the top schools," says Lehman of her peers. "They're all hanging out with A-listers. They hang out backstage at concerts. This club is for the crowd that everybody looks up to for the latest trends. It really is the Teen Vogue market."

Her friends, she adds, often are in Teen Vogue. Or they work there: "That's a big thing at Spence."

Crush is the brainchild of Grant Shapolsky, a 33-year-old real estate agent who grew up on the Upper East Side - "Nobody's perfect," he jokes - and who himself is a product of the city's private-school system.

"This is a vision I've had for a while," he says. He grew up with "Noah and Jason" (nightlife impresarios Tepperberg and Strauss) and says he was struck, as early as third grade, by the sophistication and taste level of Diana Ross' daughter, a classmate at Dalton. He set up a meeting with Grubman, whom he calls "the club queen with the Rolodex."

"I went up to her conference room and told her the idea, and she was like, 'Interesting - have you met my 16-year-old socialite-private-school-jappy-spoiled-Upper-East-Side intern?'" says Shapolsky. "I was like, 'No! But I really want to talk to her!'"

12:49 AM