Jim Clark's Not In a Hot Tub in Italy!

Kevin Maney writes: So I'm in New York, and last night stopped in at the launch party for the new Manhattan magazine, at the Bryant Park Hotel. It was jammed. Fashion Week crowd. Lots of beautiful young people. And I'm jostling across the room and see someone who looks, well, a lot like Jim Clark -- probably the most successful entrepreneur in Silicon Valley history and mentor to Marc Andreessen.

I think, well, it can't be Jim Clark, because just this past Thursday, I interviewed Andreessen in front of a Churchill Club audience, and he said he thinks that Jim is living in some far-off nation and the last he ran into him, Clark was "in a hot tub carved into the side of a mountain with an Australian swimsuit model."

So I went up to this man who looked like Jim Clark and asked him if he was Jim Clark -- and he was! What was he doing there? "I live in New York," he said. No no -- what was he doing at that party? He said he wasn't quite sure -- came with his girlfriend, the aforementioned swimsuit model, who was standing nearby.

What's he doing now? Ah, this was interesting -- laying low and staying out of business until the markets and economy finish tanking, and then he says he'll dive back in.

Oh and he said he was never in a hot tub carved into the side of a mountain. Some kind of natural pool in the side of a mountain maybe. I think. I don't know. We talked for a while but it was noisy and frankly I'd just finished a martini about the size of a goldfish bowl. But there you have it. Jim Clark is alive and well in Manhattan.