An Interview With Noah Tepperberg

L.G.: What persuaded them that was the case?

N.T.: Well, first of all, I think when I bought my first apartment—at age 21. It was in the Village. It was a co-op, and my dad had to co-sign it so they would approve me. Same building I live in now, on West Twelfth Street. And I think they realized—Wow!—and that was with the money I saved working in clubs throughout college. And they realized that I was a good businessman. And they thought that was very smart of me. All my friends were still living at home or renting rooms with other people.

L.G.: Do you mind my asking, since real estate is kind of the new pornography, how much did you pay for it?

N.T.: I paid $65,000 for a studio. [Laughs]

L.G.: [Laughs] Which today would probably go for- 

N.T.: Probably go for, like, $400,000.

L.G.: That was obviously very prescient of you. And now you live in a much larger apartment in the same building.

N.T.: I'll tell you because it's public, but I don't want to sound like I'm boasting.

L.G.: No, you're not boasting—I'm asking you. I'm demanding to know.

N.T.: I actually just moved into a three-bedroom apartment. I bought it from Peter Eisenman, the architect. It's fantastic.

L.G.: Since this is also a matter of public record, what did you pay for it?

N.T.: Please don't put that in. I hate that. I know that's a hard thing to ask you to do, but I hate it. Considerably more than my first studio. How about I give you a multiple?

L.G.: Okay, what's the multiple?

N.T.: I have to take out my calculator—I think 300 times. No, 50 times. Sorry.

L.G.: [Laughs] Well, that'll do. Whatever, it'll be 300 times in due course. But tell me, why did you choose Miami for college?

N.T.: I had a lot of family that lived in Miami. And my dad was sick, actually, when I was in school, and he used to like to go down there a lot. My brothers live there, and I like the city. I wanted to go to a school in the big city because I grew up in New York, and I didn't know how well I would acclimate to a college town. But I wanted to go to a real college. And with my family living there, and my parents spending a lot of time down there, and just the year I was applying to school, I read the "Soho in the Sun" story—I never forgot it—the cover of New York magazine. The month I was making my decision, they had a whole feature on South Beach and how it was the new Soho. It was Soho in the sun! It was a picture of the Clevelander Hotel and some girls in bikinis. It was this great story about how Miami was the new place with hot clubs, all the artists, and fashion. I just thought it would be a good place for me to go to school. The school itself had a great reputation for the business school. And I liked the city. It was near New York, good weather. And that's why I went. It was one of the best decisions I've ever made.

L.G.: By the way, I suppose that as a high school kid, you were making in the thousands of dollars a week, perhaps, promoting parties?

N.T.: Not really. We weren't making a lot of money. It was really more toward the end of college. In high school, it was small-more like the other benefits, the social benefits, and the fact that we liked it. We liked going out and organizing the guest lists. It was fun.

L.G.: And did you run across this character in New York club lore named Baird Jones?

N.T.: I did meet Baird a few times in high school and college. [Jones, a former doorman at Studio 54, was a New York party promoter and the self-proclaimed inventor of "midget bowling," among other pursuits. He died in February at age 53.]

L.G.: He was also doing party promotion for nightclubs, but his business model was different from yours.

N.T.: Yeah, Baird used to hand out these small "get in free with his card" cards. 

L.G.: And then he established himself as the Webster Hall curator. And every time his name was in a gossip column with Webster Hall, he got paid a certain amount of money by Webster Hall.

N.T.: I guess that's how it worked. I didn't really know what the deal was.

L.G.: [Laughs] I just told you. At least, that's what Baird said, may he rest in peace. But, in any event, you and Jason decided actually to get into the nightclub business yourselves. Tell me about that.

N.T.: Well, we had been promoting a few different clubs every week. And we had always done very successful parties in the Hamptons. We had a big following out there, and we were approached to open our own club.

L.G.: By whom?

N.T.: A guy named Bill Masterson and Andrew Sasson. The two of them came to us and said, "We'd like to do this club." Andrew owned Jet East, which was right up the road. And they wanted to do a club. At the time, it was going to be positioned as more of the hot place for a younger crowd. I was 23. Jason was 24.