Meet the senior hipsters lighting up NYC: Aging gracefully is out — and living large is in
NY Post
Most mornings, style maven Debra Rapaport wakes up in her Manhattan apartment and gets ready to post her colorful, fashionably maximalist fits to Instagram, where she boasts 109,000 avid followers and counting.
On Thursday nights, Gerald Delet and James Valentino can be found taking their places at a popular local nightspot, where they’re always sure to be the center of attention. Meanwhile, entrepreneur, author, rapper and performer Lisa Carroll, in between dreaming up new ideas, is celebrating a new book launch.
They’re some of New York’s coolest residents, but they’re far from Gen Z. In fact, they’re old enough to be the great-grandparents of Gotham’s youngest trendsetters. Textile artist and stylista Rapoport is 80, retirees Valentino and Delet are 82 and 89, respectively, and former Las Vegas performer, toy inventor and sometime-rapper Carroll just celebrated turning 96.
Say hello to today’s senior hipsters: the not-so-silent generation, showing New York that aging gracefully is out — and aging gregariously is in.
And they’re joining a growing group of 70-plus New Yorkers taking over the city’s bars, social media and fashion scenes.
Actor Tony Danza, 74, is having a ball crooning to consistently sold-out crowds at Café Carlyle, while famed, 80-year-old fashionista Norma Kamali is destroying the “old folks don’t get tech” stereotype and embracing the wonders of artificial intelligence and freely sharing longevity tips. And octogenarian real estate queen-slash-viral-influencer Laurie “Hey, girls” Cooper, reportedly 86, is dispensing unexpected dating advice from a city-wide selection of barstools.
It was a flashback to NYC in the 1990s.
The killing of Iran’s tyrannical Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Saturday in an unprecedented joint military attack by the US and Israel called Operation Epic Fury set off widespread celebrations from Iranians around the world — as President Trump said it would give them their “greatest chance” to “take back the country.” Meanwhile, in Iran, a lack of internet has made it impossible for Iranians to easily communicate daily conditions. Over a period of three days, with limited VPN connection, an eyewitness currently in Tehran — who, for her safety, is concealing her identity — shared her account of life under a country in the midst of battle with The Post’s Natasha Pearlman.
After exactly 120 years, the curtain has fallen on the Theater District institution Barbetta, with the iconic Italian restaurant having served its final course Friday night.