British-born media maven and woman about town Tina Brown, 64, moved to New York in the early 1980s to helm Vanity Fair. She went on to become editor of The New Yorker and of the Daily Beast. Brown, who lives on the East Side with her husband, British journalist Harold Evans, also runs the annual Women In the World Summit. The author of “The Vanity Fair Diaries,” recently released in paperback, tells JANE RIDLEY about her typical New York weekend.
When I stay in the city for the weekend, it’s a treat because I nearly always go out to the country for the crackling fires and walks along the beach. But I’ll stay here one in three weekends.
I regard our apartment as a kind of nuclear bunker in a troubled, crazy world. The weekend is entirely about spiritual refreshment, having a lovely time and just being home with my husband, Harry.
We hardly ever go out on a Friday night. Friday nights are very sacred for just hanging out. We’ve just moved to a new apartment on Beekman Place which we love. It’s a kind of square or alcove which has echoes of Paris or London.
But if we do go and have dinner, it will be somewhere like Deux Amis around the corner. It’s a local, very charming restaurant. We have got quite fond of it quite quickly.
Then we’ll come back for a kind of gluttonous screening session of something we’ve wanted to watch all week.
On Saturday morning we go to the Sutton Cafe, which was our go-to place where we lived before. Now I walk the seven blocks because I love that morning walk, and Harry will join me in a taxi. I’ll take this huge kind of banquet of print newspapers and an iPad and just have a news gourmet buffet. We’re there for about three hours. It’s just so fun.
Next I’ll head out to the gym. That is what I love to do after I’ve devoured all those carbs.
Then I will maybe go downtown and see my son and we’ll go for a long walk along the High Line. We chat and bring a cup of coffee with us and just catch up.
Or I’ll go out to Williamsburg and see my daughter who lives there. We might go to Domino Park, which is really lovely, on the waterfront. We’ll have a huge kind of mother daughter catch-up. And we’ll go and have our nails done at Primp and Polish [on Bedford Avenue]. I’ll have a pedicure because that’s such a real treat and also means I can continue to read.
Then on Saturday afternoon, at about 3:30 or 4 p.m., I’ll have a sleep. It’s a really good thing to do. I’m up very early all week. By the time it gets to the weekend, I just really need that afternoon quiet time. I am usually reading something I ought to be reading as preparation before interviewing someone. Then two hours later, I wake up.
Saturday nights, we might go out to the cinema.
Then on Sundays, I might go to the Strand bookshop with Harry.
I also do power-walks with my girlfriends, instead of the gym, by the East River. We just walk and yap and yap. We’re always opining about the whole week’s news. It’s a news junkies’ walk.
I feel so refreshed when I have a weekend like that. I never do fancy dinners or go to anything that requires wearing more than sneakers.