As beer recaptures its former glory, beer tourism has become an emerging phenomenon. People want to taste beers in their natural habitat. They want to see the breweries, drink in the beer halls, and eat the local food. I was at a lambic-beer festival in Belgium recently, and the tents were full of Americans, Britons, and Italians.I had arrived in Belgiumfrom Germany, a place that should be high on your beer pilgrimage list. Germany is flooded with beer tourists every year during Oktoberfest, an event that typifies Germany’s attraction to the traveling beer lover, with plenty of pilsner, pork, and polkas. Germany is Lagerland, where the cold-fermented, cold-aged quaff is king.I went to two cities on the northern Rhine River that have stubbornly different beer traditions: Düsseldorf and Cologne. In Düsseldorf, the local breweries make altbier, a dry, slightly roasty dark amber ale. Cologne has its own city beer, kölsch, a light-bodied straw-gold ale that’s crisp and refreshing.These aren’t quaint local choices, surviving only on the patronage of German beer geeks; they dominate the local markets. It is actually hard to find a pilsner in either place—which is like being unable to find a burger in a U.S. city the size of Detroit.I had traveled for the true altbier and kölsch experience. In Düsseldorf, I wandered the Altstadt neighborhood, dubbed “the longest bar in the world” in a nod to the 300-odd drinking establishments stuffed into its half-square-kilometer. There is the hausbrauerei(a house brewery—what we would call a brewpub), the Spanish tapas bar, a dive bar favored by crews off the Rhine barges, and fine dining establishments. Every one of them serves one brand or another of altbier, and at most of them, that’s the only beer they have.In Cologne, which is a 25-minute train ride from Düsseldorf—you arrive at the main train station by the huge cathedral—you find the same situation with kölsch. You can start at Früh am Dom with a hearty breakfast and a couple glasses ofkölsch, then stroll down to the Heumarkt plaza and hit a whole string of kölsch houses for a quick glass in each.And they will be quick: Kölsch is served in small, plain, cylindrical glasses that hold just under seven ounces. Your waiter will keep bringing them for as long as you keep drinking them, making a mark on your coaster each time; when you’re done, you put the coaster on top of the glass and he’ll add up the marks.Things work the same way in Düsseldorf, except that the glasses hold about two swallows more. I’m usually more of a “try this one, try that one” kind of drinker—but with beer this good, I’m with the locals: Keep ’em coming, and bring me some of that good Rhenish wurst too.The reason that these beers still hold sway is historical, as Horst Dornbusch describes in his book Altbier. Early Bavarian beer regulations prohibited brewing in the summer, when warmer weather often resulted in soured beer. Brewing in the winter led, naturally, to the evolution of yeast that worked better in colder temperatures. This is what we now call lager yeast.  But brewers in Düsseldorf and Cologne continued to brew in their cooler summers, and the yeast of choice remained the warm-temperature ale variety. Add the determined independence of these two wealthy trading cities—and their traditional rivalry—and you have the reasons that their local brewers didn’t go to lagering. There are other cities in northern Germany that still have indigenous ales: Berlin, with its strikingly tart Berliner weisse and the yeasty, spicy Leipzig gose. But they are not dominant like the beautifully drinkable altbier and kölsch.I’m happy to say that prospects for the future of these two beers are good. Despite the consolidation that has shaken the German brewing industry, the local markets remain devoted to their city beers. The most serious problem facing the smaller altbier and kölsch makers is one that confronts urban brewers everywhere: There is no room for expansion.In the Altstadt, I talked to Zum Schlüssel (To the Key) brewmaster Dirk Rouenhoff, who showed me where the brewery had been forced to grow onto the roof and into cellars. “We have nowhere else to go,” he said. The building is classified as historical, “so we cannot change it that much.” A quarter of the brewery’s 15,300-barrel annual production—about the same as that of a healthy American microbrewery—is sold in bottles. Rouenhoff has to send it to an off-site bottling facility because he has no space for a bottling line. It’s a good problem to have, but it’s still a problem.Each beer type currently represents about 3 percent of the overall German beer market, and almost all of it is sold in or near the two cities. Don’t expect to find any crossover. The folks in Düsseldorf make it very clear that they don’t care for kölsch or Cologne: “You know, kölsch isn’t very good, and their glasses are too small,” I was told more than once in the Altstadt. People in Cologne ignore the existence of altbier and Düsseldorf altogether, offering a lofty indifference when the subject is raised.When I’m in Cologne, I drink kölsch, and I’m very happy, whether it’s the fresh and grainy glass at the modern Paffen, at the northern end of the Heumarkt, or the malty, more old-style brew at Malzmühle, across the tortuous intersection at the southern end. When I’m in Düsseldorf, I’ll drink Rouenhoff’s fine altbier in its airy home or settle into the more warrenlike environs of Zum Uerige for glass after glass of its classically dry rendering.It’s a pleasant step out of the pilsner mainstream, in either case, but, really, both city’s glasses are too small for beer this good.Related LinksYou Can Can Craft BeerMalt DisneylandRaising the Bottle

  If you're like the rest of America, your old Rock Bandhas learned a few new tricks lately. Over 70 downloadable tracks like "Buddy Holly" and "Wonderwall" have kept mock musicians rocking since the game's November launch, and Harmonix announced today that they have sold over six million of them.Expect this number to explode in the coming months with Rock Band's new in-game music store. Now that players don't have to jump into Xbox Live Marketplace's clunky interface every time they want to download songs, they'll buy a lot more of them."The success of Rock Band downloadable content to date firmly reinforces our vision and its potential as a platform for music discovery," said MTV senior vice president Paul Degooyer in a statement today.MTV said one more thing about Rock Band sales: For the months of January and February, Rock Band was the top-selling videogame by revenue in the U.S. Of course, that's down to the fact that it's a hundred and seventy freaking dollars.Related:The Guitar Heroes: Meet the Brains Behind Rock BandRelated LinksLoonie TunesThe Guitar HeroesA Halo Over Xbox Sales

  You would expect good food from people who greet each other by asking, "Have you eaten well today?" And in Hong Kong, you get it.But dining in this vertical city can be tricky. Some of the best bites can be found in divey noodle shops. Restaurants are often hidden in office towers or shopping malls, and there is a dearth of good restaurant guides. (Zagatplans to launch its first Hong Kong-Shanghai-Beijing edition in late April.) Then there's the nature of Chinese cuisine, which traditionally revolves around large groups and shared dishes.With a little intel, however, a business traveler can eat gloriously well—and often with a spectacular view. The city has a diverse range of dining options, from regional Chinese (Cantonese, Chiu Chow, Pekingese, and Shanghainese among them) to Italian, French, Japanese, and about anything else you might desire. In recent years, Hong Kong has attracted its fair share of celebrity chefs: Alain Ducasse (Spoon), Nobuyuki Matsuhisa (Nobu), and Joël Robuchon (L'Atelier) are all here. Many of the best restaurants can be found in the Central district of northern Hong Kong Island, or in Kowloon's Tsim Sha Tsui neighborhood. Both offer dramatic views of the harbor and skyline.You might even forget you're alone.Central: Luk Yu Tea House24-26 Stanley Street2523 5464Tucked away on a side street near the bottom of the Central-Mid-Levels Escalator, Luk Yu dates back more than 60 years. The dim sum is standard but satisfying, the service efficient but brusque. With its dark wood paneling, lazy ceiling fans, stained glass, and cozy booths, however, Luk Yu offers a charming, colonial-era ambience that's hard to find. It can be jam-packed during peak lunch and dinner hours; off-hours, when you can slide into a cozy booth and slowly work your way through the menu, are more pleasant. The dinner menu offers a greater range of options, including duck, prawns, tripe, and bird's-nest soup.Dress: Casual Prices: InexpensiveReservations: RecommendedClose to: Four Seasons Hotel, Exchange SquareCentral: Lumiere3101 Podium Level 3, I.F.C. Mall2393 3933Located in the I.F.C. mall, next to the International Finance Center, this Sichuan bistro and bar shares a dramatic space and harbor views with Cuisine Cuisine, its Cantonese sister restaurant. Lumiere is more casual and inviting, with a long cedar bar where you can dine. Chef Ronald T.L. Shao serves up inventive cuisine, putting Latin American twists on traditional Sichuan dishes—a spareribs starter on cucumber pedestals, a chicken dish studded with vibrant red peppers. There are also contemporary cocktails and more than 120 wines from around the world. Try the Bordeaux-style Chairman's Reserve from Grace Vineyard, considered China's best winery.Dress: Smart casualPrices: Moderate to expensiveReservations: RecommendedClose to: Four Seasons Hotel, Exchange Square, Star FerryCentral: Mak's Noodle77 Wellington Street2854 3810Perhaps the city's most famous wonton and noodle-soup joint, Mak's still looks like the kind of place adventurous travelers dream about stumbling upon, its steamy windows promising savory delights within. Inside, the restaurant is small, clean, and bright, and you can join the crowd slurping away in anonymous abandon. The menu is simple: soup with dumplings, soup with noodles, or soup with dumplings and noodles—all for less than $5 a bowl. The flavors are fresh, and English menus are available.Dress: Casual Prices: InexpensiveReservations: Not takenClose to: Escalators, Central Market, Exchange Square Kowloon/Tsim Sha Tsui: FelixPeninsula Hotel, Salisbury Road2315 3188This Philippe Starck-designed restaurant has its own elevator to whisk you to the top floor of the historic Peninsula. For the best views of the harbor and skyline, request one of the small tables along the floor-to-ceiling windows. Or grab a seat at the long communal table at the back and strike up a conversation. The black-clad waitstaff is friendly, and the contemporary cuisine—tuna tartare with avocado, pancetta-wrapped lamb, mango-rice-pudding roll—stands up to the view. There are wines by the glass or half-bottle, and a nice selection of teas.Dress: Business/fashionablePrices: ExpensiveReservations: RecommendedClose to: Sheraton and InterContinental hotels, Star FerryKowloon/Tsim Sha Tsui: Hutong28/F 1 Peking Road3428 8324Hutong takes its name from the courtyard-lined alleyways of old Beijing. But while the decor features antique furniture, red lanterns, and bamboo birdcages, this is a thoroughly modern eatery. Hutong serves contemporary Northern Chinese fare that is flavorful and MSG-free (which is welcome after a few local meals). The challenge is choosing among the many mouthwatering options, such as the deboned lamb ribs Hutong-style (crispy on top, succulent underneath), soft-shell crab with Sichuan red pepper, and bamboo clams steeped in Chinese rosé wine and chili sauce.Dress: Business/smart casualPrices: ExpensiveReservations: RecommendedClose to: Langham Hotel, Star FerryKowloon: NobuInterContinental Hotel, 18 Salisbury Road2313 2323The Nobu InterContinental, has a more intimate scale than some other Nobus, making it comfortable for a traveler—even when the staff shouts "Irashaimase!" (Welcome) to greet you. It's easy to make a meal of small plates; along with sushi and the usual Nobu favorites like black cod saikyo yaki, the menu features a selection of the chef's local specialties, including bamboo pith with shrimp and scallop, and Japanese beef tartare. There's a great selection of sake in various sizes.Dress: Business/smart casualPrices: ExpensiveReservations: RecommendedClose to: Peninsula and Sheraton hotels, Star FerryKowloon/Tsim Sha Tsui: WuKong Shanghai Restaurant27-33 Nathan Road2366 7244This basement-level gem is full of civilized warmth and the buzz of contented diners—and it has several smaller rooms and smaller tables where solo eaters can happily settle in. The menu is extensive and includes dumplings, noodles, vegetarian dishes, and Shanghai classics, all at extremely modest prices. The Shanghai-style pork dumplings (a.k.a. soup dumplings) are sublime, with little bursts of rich broth. Also delicious are the Shanghai-style noodles and garlicky Chinese broccoli.Dress: Casual Prices: InexpensiveReservations: RecommendedClose to: Peninsula, Sheraton, and Langham hotels; Star FerryRelated LinksBusiness Travel City Guide: BeijingChina's Next RevolutionThe Tao of Yau

  It's amazing what a halfway-decent browsing experience can do for mobile internet usage. A new studyfrom measurement firm M:Metrics confirms what was pretty much common knowledge: Give users a good phone browser, and they'll flock to the mobile web. After charting the habits of more than 10,000 adults for six months after the iPhone's U.S. launch, M:Metrics concludes that nearly 85 percent of iPhone purchasers regularly use their handheld device to access news and other content on the web. Compare that to the 58 percent of total smartphone owners who browse web content and just 13 percent of overall mobile phone users who do, and you get an idea of how much a simple interface can do to inspire usage. You can just picture the design meetings happening at phone manufacturers around the world: "Wait, if we make a web browser that doesn'tmake users feel like jabbing forks into their eyes, they'll actually want to browse the web?"The study also found that 59 percent of iPhone users visited a search engine on their phone, compared to 37 percent of smartphone users and a miniscule 6 percent of mobile phone users. This corroborates information Google released last month, which said the search company saw on average 50 times more search requestscoming from Apple iPhones than any other mobile handset.Mark Donovan, an analyst at M:Metrics, says the other major factor in the iPhone's mobile success is AT&T's unlimited data plan for iPhone users. I'm not really convinced here. Sure, the labyrinthine data plans most carriers offered a few years ago were a cold shower for those with mobile internet lust. But almost all U.S. carriers now offer similar all-you-can-eat data packages, and there are plenty of phones out there capable of taking advantage of those plans. In the end, what continues to separate the iPhone from the rest of the pack is simple: It lets you tool around the web in a way that doesn't really mirror the desktop experience (what with the touching and the pinching), but one that provides you with at least a halfway decent mobile equivalent.Related LinksNew World for iPhoneNext on the Web: Tomorrow's News TodayHow Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong

  Here is a metaphorical query for everyone—Wall Street traders, venture capitalists, writers, politicians, farmers, mechanics, and editors. Are you a T-rex or a chicken?Turns out we may be a bit of both—as I discovered during a recent trip to Bozeman, Montana, where I had come to find out if I share a genetic sequence with a tyrannosaurus rex that died 68 million years ago in Hell Creek, an isolated spot near the Canadian border. In the basement of Bozeman's Museum of the Rockies, I'm running my fingertips over a stump of the T-rex's cool, hard femur bone, or what's left after scientists sliced up and pulverized most of it in search of microspecks of soft tissue that should have decayed eons ago.Instead, paleontologists discovered fragments of a protein with apparent similarity to Type I collagen [link to definition below], a building block of both skin and bone. In bone, it both holds the bone together and keeps it flexible. In human skin, collagen is the single largest component (after water). Collagen is found in most creatures with bones—including humans.In a basement lab at the museum, dinosaur hunter Jack Horner is showing me the truncated femur. All around him teams of paleontologists study heaps of bones using everything from tiny brushes and magnifying glasses to C.T. scanners and an electron microscope.Horner is the real-life scientist on which Michael Crichton based the central character in his novel Jurassic Park. Horner also advised Steven Spielberg on the Jurassic Park films. He disagrees, however, with the central scientific conceitof both book and movie: that dinosaurs could be reborn using dinosaur DNA in the bellies of Jurassic-era mosquitoes that had bitten dinosaurs and then been trapped in amber. "It's unlikely that could happen," he says.But Horner—a genial man whose unruly gray beard makes him more of a rustic Santa Claus than an Indiana Jones—says it could be possible to re-create dinosaurs another way. So anyone out there with an interest in starting a theme park with real dinosaurs and potentially raking in the cash, listen up! As Horner explains, dinosaurs are still with us. They're now called  birds. As pretty much any nine-year-old fascinated with terrible lizards can also tell you, many dinosaurs shared bone structures and other features—including, on some species, feathers—with modern avians. This strongly suggests that dinosaurs, including the ferocious T-rex, evolved into birds.The short protein fragments recovered from the T-rex bone found in Hell Creek confirms this, matching most closely to chicken collagen. (This analysis was organized by a former student of Horner's, Mary Schweitzer of North Carolina State University, and was written upin Sciencemagazine last year.In fact, Horner will tell you that chickens retain dormant sequences of DNA that would, if activated by bioengineering, cause a chicken to grow teeth and a dino-tail, and to grow little T-rex arms instead of wings. This has led the whimsical Horner to propose that a real Jurassic Park (are you entrepreneurs listening?) might feature a "chickenosaurus" as an attraction.This might not equal the punch of a real T-rex running amok and eating lawyers and threatening children, or packs of viciously intelligent velociraptors scrambling between the legs of majestic brontosauruses, but those sharp little chicken teeth might hurt like heck if they grabbed onto a finger.Actual T-rex DNA did not survive the eons, though since DNA is what provides the instructions for making proteins, scientists can make educated suppositions of what the DNA sequence might have looked like.  My own investigation into my inner T-rex/chicken is an offshoot of the book I'm writing, Experimental Man: The Ultimate High-Tech Exam, in which I'm having scientists run extensive tests on my genes (and other parts of my body). It is a writer-as-guinea-pig effort that allows me a personal perspective from which to describe and assess the latest science and technologies that are striving to tell us more about our health and our bodies past, present, and future. Horner and others are helping me tell the story of evolution contained in our genes. Certain genes and other DNA sequences have been passed down to humans and other modern organisms from the age of the dinosaurs, and beyond. As part of my "exam" into genes inside us, I asked molecular biologist Nathaniel David to compare the T-rex protein fragments to the human Type I collagen protein. David is chief science officer of Kythera Biopharmaceuticals, a Los Angeles biotech company developing drugs based on, among other things, manipulating collagen. David was disappointed by the smallness of the fragments but was impressed by their similarity to human sequences in collagen."The recovered dinosaur-protein fragments were short (less than 20 amino acids in length) while the human-collagen protein is over 1,000 amino acids in length," he wrote in an email. Amino acids are what proteins are made of. "But those we had were either perfect matches or different at only one amino acid position." Below is a comparison of one of the 68-million-year-old T-rex fragments to the human collagen sequence; each letter below represents an amino acid:T-rex:  GATGAPGIAGAPGFPGARYou:GAPGAPGIAGAPGFPGARThe only difference is a single amino acid, T (bolded), meaning that the T-rex-derived fragment contained a threonine amino acid at that position, while humans have a proline.However, as David said, these 18 amino acids tell an incomplete story about the evolutionary similarity of human and T-rex Type I collagen, a protein over 1,000 amino acids in length in humans, and in chickens—and presumably in T-rexes. "We would need more of the protein to compare to the human to see how this protein has changed in evolution," said David, "or even better, the DNA. But DNA just isn't chemically stable enough for a Jurassic Park-style comparison." The next step in my dino-quest is to compare this mini-stretch of T-rex protein—and its possible genetic code—to my own collagen protein. This may differ from the reference human protein used by David, which is posted online.I already know that, like most humans, I share 60 percent of my genes with the modern version of a T-rex—a chicken. I'll soon be finding out how I personally came out on the T-rex-and-chicken question.Related LinksGene-Sequencing WarriorGenes 'R' Us: The New Dot-Coms?Bioengineering Bugs to Make Fuel

  It's 6 a.m. on a February morning in the flyspeck town of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, and the wind swoops down State Street like a bird of prey, carrying the snow along with it. Outside Talula's Table, Daniel Kirkpatrick waits, hoping to beat the 7 a.m. opening of the restaurant's phone reservation line. "My parents paid me $30 to stand out here and reserve a table," says Kirkpatrick, a Colorado teenager on vacation with his family. "Sounds crazy, but they told me to come back every morning until there was an opening." By day, Talula's, 35 miles from Philadelphia, is a prepared-food shop that sells everything from artisan cheeses and duck rillettes to grilled quail and lobster pot pies. At night, it turns into a B.Y.O.B. restaurant serving eight-course feasts assembled as meticulously as a cabinetmaker constructs a fine piece of furniture.Regulars joke that it's easier to score dinner at Per Se in Manhattan or the French Laundry in Napa Valley than it is to snag "the table"—Talula's seats eight to 12 people at its longleaf pine table each night. And they're right: Per Se and the French Laundry accept reservations two months out. As of September 1, 2007, Talula's was booked through July 31, 2008, and had stopped taking inquiries. At 7 a.m. on January 2, the restaurant began accepting reservations for the rest of the year. By 9 a.m., every night was full. Talula's now has a rolling system, taking reservations a year ahead to the numerical date. Which is why hopefuls from as far off as the Rockies stand vigil at dawn.Plenty of restaurants are hard to get into—a handful of websites now sell reservations at hot New York spots—but small, out-of-the-way places rarely see this much demand. Talula's single table has caused a feeding frenzy among foodies, who are thrilled to pay $90 a head for the tasting menu and cheese board.Talula's is an unpretentious storefront in the rolling hills of Pennsylvania's horse country, sausaged between Picone Beauty & Wellness and the Half-Moon Saloon, where a Yuengling draught is $3.25 during happy hour. Yet diners have included chefs, writers, tycoons, musicians, mushroom farmers, plastic surgeons, and actors. John Turturro traveled down from Brooklyn with his wife, Kathie Borowitz, on Valentine's Day; a friend had praised Talula's food so lavishly that Turturro had to see for himself. "I was a little dubious at first, but the dinner surpassed my highest expectations," Turturro said after a banquet of egg custard with Jonah crab, exotic mushroom risotto, snails in rigatoni farci, roast pompano, osso buco and house-smoked bacon, lamb and wildflower honey, and an array of winter blue cheeses. "Each dish was a separate love affair," Turturro said. "It was the kind of a meal you'd request before your execution."  Talula's cuisine is prepared by Bryan Sikora, a 38-year-old Culinary Institute of America graduate who apprenticed under Nora Pouillon at Nora's, the eminent all-organic bistro in Washington. A kind of John Coltrane of the kitchen, he improvises with textures and flavors, making unexpected combinations work with disconcerting justesse. Sikora changes his fare every six weeks to reflect the seasons and his expanding cadre of local growers and producers.He grew up in Pennsylvania coal country, where Rolling Rock flowed freely, but fresh food was scarce. "I got interested in cooking because I was always hungry," Sikora says. Sikora met Aimee Olexy, his wife and business partner, in 1992 at a hotel in Boulder, Colorado. He was the head chef; she ran the whole hotel. A restaurant worker since age 13, Olexy skipped much of 10th grade to sell bagels with sprouts and scrambled eggs at Grateful Dead concerts.Together, the pair worked at inns and cafes in Denver; Eugene, Oregon; and Cape Cod before settling in Philadelphia and signing on with Stephen Starr, the city's high-concept restaurateur. While Olexy managed Starr's empire, Sikora presided over the galley at Starr's Moroccan outpost, Tangerine.In 2001, they quit. With a government loan of $45,000 and little more than mountain bikes for collateral, they opened Django, a boutique restaurant in Society Hill, pioneering Philly's renaissance in chef-run, B.Y.O.B. establishments. Casual and affordable, Django offered European-based fare, with the menu driven by the season. It reaped national acclaim from the New York Times ("may be the hottest ticket in town") and the Los Angeles Times. Philadelphia Inquirer food critic Craig LaBan called it "one of the region's best restaurants, period, dollar for dollar or by any other important measure." Alas, Django had only 38 seats and no liquor license, so profits were slim. In 2005, Sikora and Olexy sold the restaurant. Seeking a more rustic setting in which to raise their infant daughter, Annalee Talula Rae, they moved to Olexy's hometown in the Brandywine Valley.  They bought and gutted a vacant shoe store in Kennett Square, which bills itself as the mushroom capital of the world. (The town produces more than 40 percent of the nation's mushrooms.) Talula's opened last spring and was an immediate and unexpected sensation. The table filled up with Django groupies and epicures who had read about the place on foodie blogs. When LaBan wrote that dinner at Talula's had been his most memorable meal of the year, the reservation line jammed. A harried Olexy came up with the current scheme. "Otherwise," she says, "people would have booked Fridays and Saturdays 10 years into the future." The names on Talula's waiting list take up an entire office wall. Aside from staking out the joint, Olexy says the surest way to secure a table in 2009 is to call Talula's the moment it opens. There is a little-known second option. Twice a week, Olexy seats parties of two to four in the kitchen at Talula's invitation-only chef's table. Crafty out-of-towners might consider overnighting a set of bootleg Dead CDs—along with a subtle reservation request.Related LinksWooly BullyDependent Variables in Political Prediction MarketsBeer on a Truly Micro Scope

  Reluctant to betray the hard-won identities of its three automotive brands, Germany's BMW Group is reportedly contemplating the addition of a fourth nameplate — joining BMW, Rolls-Royce, and Mini— focused exclusively on the development and marketing of eco-friendly vehicles. Despite a very prolific Efficient Dynamicsprogram that has produced such concept vehicles as the Hydrogen 7 sedanand the recent X5-based twin-turbo diesel hybrid concept, BMW brand's Ultimate Driving Machine tagline doesn't leave a lot of room for serious fuel-sippers. Ditto Rolls-Royce, despite persistent rumors of a smaller, diesel-powered model in the venerable marque's future. Even Mini, with its stable of diminutive models, stands to see its fun-to-drive allure diminished by, say, an pure electric city car or a maximum-mpg mini-hybrid such as the Smart ForTwo Micro Hybrid Drive. So the company has initiated "Project I." The undertaking, which may evolve into a stand-alone, green-focused brand within seven years, is charged with examining a range of technological options for environmentally friendly powertrain systems. The Iin "Project I" reportedly stands for Innovation, but Isettaseems a whole lot more likely. The Isettawas a bubble car of Italian origin (pictured above, in triplicate), eventually acquired and built by BMW between 1955 and 1962. Besides enjoying surprising popularity in its day, the tiny car, with its teardrop shape and unique front-end door, has risen to cult status in the decades since. It's an ideal nameplate for BMW's green efforts. Source: Pistonheads.comRelated LinksShowing New ColorsDollar DazeTED Salon: It's Getting Hot in Here

  Radiohead has invited fans to create animated videos for any of the songs on the band's groundbreaking In Rainbowsalbum, and you don't even need to be an animation expert to enter. Possible submission formats range from storyboards of "basic sketches with words" to concept videos. If you have a great idea but lack the skills to make it real, animation sharing site Aniboomcan connect you to another entrant with whom to collaborate. The deadline for entry is April 27.Ten semifinalists selected by Aniboom, TBD Records and Adult Swim will receive $1,000 each to produce one-minute videos. Anyone will be able to vote on Aniboom and MySpace, but Radiohead band members will ultimately choose the winner, who will receive $10,000 for the creation of a full-length music video. The Cartoon Network's Adult Swimmay or may not premiere the video (apparently, that's yet to be determined).The announcement comes one business day after Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails announced a somewhat similar fan-generated video projectfor the latest Nine Inch Nails album, Ghosts I-IV. Radiohead's In Rainbowshas been a resounding success in just about every way, from the initial digital releaseto the standard CD, released in January by TBD Records and ATO Records, when it debuted at the top of the U.S. album chart. It succeeds musically as well, for me anyway, with Radiohead's meticulous craftsmanship focused on a warmer sound and, of course, some excellent songs.With a month and a half to put the initial concepts together and the prospect of major exposure for the winner -- not to mention the lure of compensation -- we expect to see some quality videos emerge from the contest.Related LinksHow Much Did Radiohead Make on Downloads in October?Music Mag Apes Radiohead's Pricing SchemeDaily Brew: Top Ten Inspirational '80s Songs, Cutting Edge Tech Gadgets You Can Only Get Overseas...

  Looking back now, friends say that it was clear last summer that something was bothering Larry Salander. He had stopped returning their phone calls, and many hadn’t spoken to him or seen him in months. Those who had run into him on the street or seen him briefly at Salander-O’Reilly, his gallery on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, were struck by how haggard he looked. He seemed distracted and tense, "totally wired," one artist and longtime friend recalls.By late June, many who knew Salander were aware that he was under some financial pressure, though they did not know all the details. In May, he’d been sued by two clients—the tennis star John McEnroe and Earl Davis, the son of the noted American painter Stuart Davis—who claimed that Salander owed them money and, in Davis’ case, paintings by his father that had been stored at Salander’s gallery and were now missing. (See a slideshow of some of the players and victims.)Together, McEnroe and Davis were demanding more than $3 million from Salander, but more remarkable than the amount of money involved was the fact that the suits had been filed by two of the art dealer’s closest friends. Disputes between clients and dealers are not uncommon in the art world, and many thought that if Salander was experiencing any financial strain, it was a short-term problem that he would soon resolve.At 58, Larry Salander was one of New York’s most respected and powerful art dealers. During his 35 years in the business, he had developed a sterling reputation, not only for his integrity, his eye for quality, and his brilliant shows, but also for his business acumen. In 2003, an art-industry report had named Salander-O’Reilly the best gallery in the world, and although not everyone shared that view, by 2007 many believed that Salander was well on his way to achieving that distinction. Some were surprised when, about six years ago, Salander—who had long specialized in American Modernists—suddenly began to expand into Gothic, Baroque, and Renaissance art. But others applauded it as a sign of his originality and boldness, as they did the opening, in the fall of 2005, after a renovation rumored to have cost more than $2 million, of Salander’s new gallery on East 71st Street in a magnificent 25,000-square-foot, seven-story Italianate mansion, whose sweeping marble staircases and velvet-lined rooms were reminiscent of the grandest old European galleries.  It was in this space, on October 17, that Salander was scheduled to open perhaps his most impressive show. Titled “Masterpieces of Art: Five Centuries of Painting and Sculpture,” the exhibition was to feature a breathtaking array of old-master works, including pictures by Rubens, El Greco, Titian, Botticelli, and, most eagerly anticipated in the art press, an astounding four works by Caravaggio. If Salander was having financial problems, the upcoming show should have eased his worries; as he let it be known, he was anticipating sales of close to $500 million from the exhibition. Indeed, the centerpiece of the show—Apollo the Lute Player,recently reattributed to Caravaggio—was to go on sale for $100 million.Yet as the date approached, Salander seemed to grow only more tense. Sometime in August, after trying for months to find out what had happened to 18 of his paintings that had been lent to a gallery in Rome, the artist Paul Resika spoke to Salander on the phone and was shocked when the dealer lashed out, accusing Resika of having betrayed him and their 20-year friendship because Resika had spoken to Robert De Niro about several paintings by the actor’s father that, like Resika’s works, also had not been returned after an exhibition at the Italian gallery. Not until the third week of October would Resika, De Niro, and other friends finally discover what had been bothering Salander. People had already begun to line up outside for the opening of “Masterpieces of Art” late on the afternoon of October 17 when it was announced that the show had been canceled. Two days later, the art world was shocked when the Salander-O’Reilly gallery was closed and its doors padlocked as a result of an order by a New York State Supreme Court judge, ruling in two of what would soon turn out to be more than 40 lawsuits filed by wealthy art collectors, Wall Street financiers, artists’ estates, and galleries in Europe and the United States accusing Larry Salander of a stunning array of misdeeds, including theft, fraud, and forgery. Among those who sued was Roy Lennox, the senior managing director of the $11 billion hedge fund Caxton Associates, who alleged that Salander owed him $3.8 million for a series of art investments that Lennox would call “nothing more than an illegal Ponzi scheme.” Saundra Lane, a Massachusetts art collector, claimed that Salander had not made $3.4 million in payments for a Charles Sheeler painting he had purchased from her and that some of the collateral he had given her in return—two Albert Pinkham Ryders and two James McNeill Whistlers—were possibly fakes. Earl Davis amended his suit against Salander, claiming after an investigation that the dealer owed him more than $30 million for 96 works by his father that Salander had either lost or sold without Davis’ permission. Myron Kunin, the billionaire founder of the hair-care conglomerate Regis and a noted collector of works by American Modernists, sued, claiming that Salander owed $3.8 million in unpaid loans and $3.5 million for a Georgia O’Keeffe painting that Salander had not fully paid for. The contractor who had renovated Salander’s East Side townhouse sued, as did the landlord of his old gallery on East 79th Street, the landlord for his new gallery, as well as Bank of America and Sotheby’s. The most damaging suit, however—the one that resulted in the shuttering of Salander’s gallery—was filed by Donald Schupak, the chairman of Triumph Apparel, who alleged that Salander had “swindled” about $42 million worth of Baroque and Renaissance art from Renaissance Art Investors, a partnership the two men had formed in the spring of 2006. In early November, telling the court that Schupak’s allegations in particular were “false” and that he believed he had “extremely valuable personal assets and holdings that, if sold in the proper manner, should be sufficient to satisfy all legitimate claims,” Salander and his wife, Julie, filed for personal bankruptcy. The gallery followed suit—at which point yet more claims surfaced, most notably from Salander’s lead creditor, the San Francisco-based First Republic Bank, whose lawyers would tell the bankruptcy court that Salander was in default on more than $40 million in loans. If the allegations are true, the collapse of Salander-O’Reilly would be among the most massive art frauds in history. All told, more than $100 million in art, bank loans, and client investments appears to have vanished into thin air. The scandal has shaken the art world, raising troubling questions about the darker side of this secretive, totally unregulated market into which investors have poured billions of dollars in the past decade. Today, as a federal bankruptcy judge sorts through the tangled web of claims against Salander, and an investigation, begun in late October by the Manhattan district attorney, raises the possibility that Salander will face a criminal indictment, the question that mystifies is not just how Salander got himself into so much trouble, but why? What caused a man who had achieved so much to risk everything he had worked so hard to create, “to destroy,” as one of his artists says, “everything that he loved?”That Larry Salander could have gotten into so much trouble over money is something that many of his closest friends would never have imagined, because money never seemed to be what drove him. His great passion, almost to the point of obsession, was not the business of art but art itself. A painter of some note, whose 1992 work Crucifixionis part of the Smithsonian’s collection, Salander had an almost childlike exuberance about art—“a tremendous enthusiasm,” says the New York dealer David Tunick—that people could sense just on meeting him. A big man, often dressed in his trademark T-shirts and baggy suits, Salander could be charming and gracious, like so many New York dealers, but he had an intensity and a bluntness, an unvarnished quality that set him apart. A man of strong emotions, he would speak about creativity and art in transcendent terms; the great masterpieces, he sometimes said, were the clearest proof that God existed. Salander loved art for its intrinsic beauty, its “aesthetic,” says Resika, as opposed to its place in art history or its price. This, many say, was reflected in the eclectic range of his gallery’s exhibitions. He would show contemporary American work one month, followed by an exhibition of Constable paintings and then Houdon sculptures.What Salander would never allow in his gallery, however, was the art that is in so much demand today—the Pop art, conceptual work, avant-garde pieces, and celebrity productions whose prices have been driven to dizzying heights in the past several years by an army of new collectors. Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Richard Prince—these were among the artists whose work Salander openly disdained. A classicist at heart, he regarded much of the new art as gimmicky and slick, as art created only for money. Such works, Salander felt, were “no longer about art,” says the sculptor Michael Steiner, “but about the people who buy art.” In the past 20 years, since art-market prices first began to spike in the late 1980s, the kind of people who buy art has slowly evolved. While there have always been investors with extremely sophisticated taste who take the time to educate themselves about the art they buy, an increasingly large segment of investors has not bothered with connoisseurship and has simply bought art that was in vogue and likely to turn a profit. In the past six years, as the art market has exploded, this trend has become even more pronounced. With torrents of money flowing in from newly rich American hedge fund managers, Russian and Asian oligarchs, and investors from the Middle East, auction prices for art started to go through the roof. The Impressionists, Post-Impressionists and Moderns were the first to go. And then, partly because of the growing scarcity of paintings from those periods and partly because of the tastes of the wave of new buyers, demand turned to contemporary works. While many in the art world lament the current state of the market, for Salander it was almost a moral offense that masterpieces by artists like Corot or Courbet were selling for less than a million dollars, while a shark in formaldehyde by Damien Hirst was fetching $12 million, a Balloon Dog sculpture by Jeff Koons could command $19 million, and Basquiat’s stick-figure paintings could go for nearly $15 million. “He was outraged,” Steiner says.It was partly this outrage, people say, that led Salander to make his first foray into the market for Baroque and Renaissance art sometime around 2001. “Here were all these rich Americans buying the stupidest things around,” says one friend, “and with old masters, you could have real paintings for a fraction of the price. He was a great salesman, and he thought he could convince them. But it was a gamble.” With the exception of the rare sale of a work by a top artist—a Tintoretto, for example, a Canaletto, or, rarer still, a Caravaggio—the business in old masters had become relatively lackluster.Selling old masters also had its perils—most notably what the dealer David Tunick calls “the shifting sands of attribution.” The provenance of most works has grown very murky over the centuries, and it requires experience and scholarship on the part of dealers to distinguish a real masterpiece from a work by an artist’s followers or an outright fake. But none of this seemed to daunt Salander. He set about hiring some of the top scholars in the field and, in 2002, stunned the art world with his first major purchase. At Sotheby’s London old-master auction that July, his gallery paid $3.2 million for a terra-cotta figure attributed to Bernini, the sale price of which had been estimated at $250,000.What Salander had set out to do, people say, was to create, in effect, an entirely new market for old masters. And he was utterly convinced that he would be able to make it happen. But his motive, some say, was not just his passion for art. He’d seen the effect that the cascade of new money was having on the market, how the power was shifting to contemporary dealers like Larry Gagosian, who worked the moneymen so well. And Salander was tempted, some say. It wasn’t the money but his ambition that drove him, friends say. There was no question that art was his great love, but his other passion, and perhaps the stronger of the two, was his desire “to be the greatest, the most important, dealer in the world,” says one prominent artist. “Larry talked about it openly, and you could also feel that was his idea. It just radiated off him.” Raised in Long Beach, New York, Salander came from a family of dealers. His grandfather and uncle owned a small shop on Madison Avenue that sold antiques, and his father ran an antique-furniture dealership on Long Island, where Salander worked throughout his youth. It was not an easy business in which to earn a living, and though the Salander family lived well, they were far from prosperous. Salander was 20 in 1969 when his father died and he was forced to drop out of the University of Miami to help his family make ends meet. For several years, Salander ran his father’s store, until 1972, when he opened his own furniture and antiques shop in Wilton, Connecticut. The following year, he opened a second antiques store in Manhattan, where he also began to sell works of art.  In 1974, Salander teamed up with William O’Reilly to form the Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, which quickly established itself as a dealer of some distinction, focusing on 19th-century European art, American Modernism, and contemporary works. While O’Reilly was charming and highly knowledgeable about art, people say that of the two men, Salander was the “income earner.” He was driven, focused, and, like many of the best dealers, had a “razor-sharp memory,” as a former employee puts it. Information about collectors, rumors about which artworks might be coming to market, sale prices, details of deals—he kept it all in his head, rarely needing to put anything in writing. He was also a consummate salesman, patient and subtle, with an acute, almost intuitive understanding of his clients’ emotional needs and desires.Salander’s ambitions eventually began to eclipse those of his partner, and in 1991, he agreed to buy O’Reilly out. By then, Salander had moved the gallery to elegant new quarters at 20 East 79th Street, renting three floors for $58,333 a month in a huge mansion owned by Elaine Rosenberg, the daughter-in-law of the renowned French art dealer Paul Rosenberg. After the buyout, the widespread impression in the art world was that Larry Salander was making it on his own. What virtually no one knew, however, was that in February 1995, Salander took on a new partner, Curtis Galleries, in a deal that would remain secret for nearly 12 years. The owner of Curtis Galleries was Myron Kunin, perhaps the most important private collector of American Modernist art, and the deal effectively gave him 50 percent of Salander-O’Reilly. The agreement attested to Salander’s prowess as a negotiator: Though Kunin got half of the gallery’s profits, Salander in return got financing; the right to run the gallery’s business with virtually no interference, involvement, or oversight from Kunin; and an annual salary of $500,000. It was a remarkable arrangement, one that stunned those who worked with Salander when they learned of it last summer. Salander’s reasons for “selling half of himself,” as one friend puts it, may have stemmed in part from personal pressures. His first marriage had collapsed; there was alimony and support for three children to pay. A year after the deal with Kunin was signed, Salander married his second wife, Julie, a director at the relief agency CARE who was 15 years younger than he was and with whom he would have four more children. By 2002, Salander had begun his move into old masters; his staff was expanding and would soon reach an impressive count of 50 employees. By all indications, Salander was doing well financially. He and Julie maintained an estate in the wealthy upstate New York enclave of Millbrook. He was traveling frequently to auctions and meetings in Europe, and one of his artists recalls, it was around this time that he began hiring private jets for his business trips. In July, he would buy the $3.2 million Bernini.Larry Salander first met the hedge fund manager Roy Lennox around the beginning of 2002. A year later, according to Lennox, Salander offered the financier the first of what would be 11 “business propositions.” He told Lennox that he had a buyer willing to pay $1.2 million for a painting by Corot that Salander did not yet own but said he could buy for $800,000. Salander offered Lennox a 50 percent share in the painting. If Lennox gave him $400,000, Salander promised that within a year he would repay Lennox $625,000, a profit of more than 50 percent. Lennox agreed to the offer, and in January 2004, Salander paid Lennox as promised.  During the next three years, the two men would do 10 more deals, totaling more than $5 million, for works including a sculpture by Santi Buglioni, a stucco relief by Desiderio, and paintings by Marsden Hartley, Stuart Davis, Arthur Dove, and Francisco de Goya. These deals all had the same structure: Salander would promise Lennox a share in the profits from the sale of an artwork that was yet to be purchased. Lennox never took title to the works, never saw them, and apparently never asked who the buyers were. For Lennox, the deals appear to have been done solely for the potential profit. But the returns Salander promised were huge—in the case of Sun and Moon,by Dove, a remarkable 40 percent in just under four months.Agreements such as these are not uncommon in the art world. Dealers will sometimes turn to collectors or to one or two trusted investors in order to help them buy art. What was unusual about the Lennox deals was the expected profits, the frequency of the investments, and, ultimately, the fact that Lennox kept investing in deal after deal despite the fact that Salander soon stopped paying him the money promised. Skyrocketing art prices may have made anything seem possible. Or Lennox may have trusted Salander because they’d become friends. In the fall of 2004, Salander threw a 40th birthday party for his wife at the Frick museum. Friends were surprised when they arrived for what they thought would be a small dinner and found that Salander had rented the entire place for a lavish affair with about 400 guests. The impression at the time was that the party was thrown, in part, to impress the wealthy Wall Street financiers and collectors that Salander was trying to woo as clients for his burgeoning old-masters business. Soon after the Frick affair, Salander signed the lease on what would be his new gallery, on East 71st Street. Still paying rent of $58,333 a month for his space on 79th Street, he now owed an additional $154,166 a month in rent for his second place. On top of that, he hired the architect Andrew Bartle to renovate the 71st Street mansion. That summer, Salander had also bought himself a $4.75 million townhouse on East 82nd Street, something that few of his friends knew, and he was paying nearly $3 million to have that renovated as well. When one close friend learned about the townhouse, he was surprised by the extravagance. “Something changed in Larry’s life that year,” he says, “and it wasn’t just about the art.”At exactly what point Larry Salander may have crossed the line and begun to deceive his clients, as they allege, is hard to say for certain, but by the end of 2004, there were signs of trouble. According to court records, he had stopped making payments on the $3.1 million he owed to the Canadian press baron Kenneth Thomson for a Charles Russell painting, claiming that the buyer of the work was refusing to pay—although Thomson’s estate would later allege that Salander already had the buyer’s money. He was also involved in a dispute with Dougall Arts, a London dealer, over payments he was refusing to make on a 16th-century sculpture of Saint Jerome, which he had bought from the dealer and, according to Dougall’s assertions, had already resold. And sometime in 2005, Earl Davis began to suspect that Salander was selling Stuart Davis paintings and pocketing the proceeds without telling Earl—a betrayal that friends say, if it indeed happened, is particularly shocking, because Earl had known Salander from childhood and, says one, “trusted him like an uncle.”  Salander’s new gallery on 71st Street opened in September 2005 to much public and press acclaim. By then, although few people knew it, Salander was in serious financial trouble. Unable to pay Elaine Rosenberg the full rent on his 79th Street gallery, he’d made a deal to effectively reduce it by $43,750 a month, but he was still in arrears. He was also borrowing money from the contractor working on his townhouse. And in July, without offering any explanation, he’d stopped making payments on his buyout arrangement with his former partner, O’Reilly, who sued Salander for $148,000 the week after the gallery’s opening. Salander’s facade, though, was that of a very prosperous man. In 2005 alone, he bought five vehicles, including a Cadillac Escalade, a Lexus 330 S.U.V., and a Denali truck. Still, among art financiers and dealers, the opulence of the new gallery raised questions. “To go and put money out in inventory or real estate in speculation that there will be a market one day requires a tremendous amount of financial muscle,” says Richard Feigen, a prominent New York dealer. “If you go and occupy an enormous place, then the assumption is that you have a tremendous amount of backing, and if people think that you don’t, then people are going to say you are overreaching or in trouble.” Apparently intended to impress the new-money collectors, the 71st Street gallery was sumptuous, almost on the scale of the palazzo-like gallery in Paris owned by the Wildenstein family. But the Wildensteins, with a collection believed to be worth $5 billion, are the richest art dealers in the world and have been amassing works for more than 100 years. Feigen, for one, was baffled because he felt that at that point there wasn’t enough high-quality inventory available in the market for Salander to fill his vast new space. An art collector who was taken aback by the lavishness of the new gallery remembers asking one of Salander’s top employees, “What the hell is going on there?” He was told that no one really knew but that Salander hadn’t been paying his top staff the commissions that he owed them. In April 2006, unaware of the rumors in the market and the lawsuits against Salander that had begun to trickle into the courts, Donald Schupak invested $15 million in Salander-O’Reilly. Somehow, Salander had managed to convince the financier that big money could be made by selling Renaissance and Baroque art to hedge fund managers and other newly wealthy collectors. As part of their agreement, the two men formed Renaissance Art Investors, an investment partnership whose goal was to develop that market. With Salander at the helm, the partnership would acquire undervalued old masters, find wealthy buyers, and resell the art at a massive profit, which would be split between Schupak and Salander. In addition to Schupak’s $15 million, Renaissance Art Investors was also financed by a loan of about $15 million from First Republic Bank. Salander’s contribution to the initial capitalization of the partnership was the title to approximately 300 works of art. With his investment, Schupak believed he had become the owner of Salander’s entire portfolio of Renaissance and Baroque art, which, through swapping, trading, and purchases over the next year, would grow in number to more than 600 works, according to Schupak’s lawyer, Barry Slotnick.  The question of how to prove ownership would eventually become a problem, however. In the art market, which functions on trust and handshakes, without any regulation or institutional oversight, the only proof of ownership is the title to the work. But even that offers no guarantee. Unlike the real estate market, for example, there is no title insurance and no legal title registry for artworks, and titles can be forged or copied and given to multiple buyers. To protect their ownership in works of art, banks, dealers, and some sophisticated investors will register pieces they have claimed as collateral with a public document called a Uniform Commercial Code filing, or U.C.C. The dealer Richard Feigen notes, however, that for many in the art world, filing a U.C.C. “would be highly awkward, really almost an insult.” And even U.C.C.’s have their limits, as Schupak would later discover, when, according to his lawsuit, he found that many of the works purchased by R.A.I., though noted in extensive U.C.C. filings, were either not Salander’s to sell in the first place or were sold by the dealer behind Schupak’s back. Saturn Abducting Philyra,by Parmigianino, is alleged to be one such work. At the time that Schupak “bought” it from Salander, the painting was actually owned by the New York dealer Stanley Moss. Salander had arranged to buy it from Moss for $1.5 million but had not paid for it when, in April 2006, he included it as part of his contribution to R.A.I. with a stated value of $1.75 million. That February, according to Moss, while Salander was still negotiating the R.A.I. deal with Schupak, he asked Moss to withdraw his U.C.C. filing on the work. When Schupak checked the public record, there was no way he could tell that the Parmigianino was, in fact, still owned by Moss. In May, after R.A.I. had taken title to the work, Salander told Moss that he could refile the U.C.C.It was, if Moss’ account is correct, a clever maneuver. Schupak, however, was not a man to trifle with. He was a tough dealmaker who did not shy away from a fight, as his Porsche dealer discovered in 1986 when Schupak hired someone to picket the shop every day for a month in a dispute over a repair bill. It was Schupak who would bring Salander down, demonstrating that in a confrontation between art and money, the money would win. By the end of 2006, according to bank documents, Salander was “in multiple default” on nearly $50 million in loans from First Republic. These included the $15 million loan to R.A.I., a $14 million mortgage on his townhouse, and a $26 million line of credit to the gallery. How and why First Republic had gotten itself in so deep with Salander was something that baffled other bankers. “You have dealers with $1 million, $5 million, maybe $10 million bank lines, but $50 million is off the charts,” says one lender. People now speculate that First Republic, which catered to high-net-worth individuals, was trying to expand its business and got in over its head in the art market, in which it had little expertise. Indeed, in its 2005 annual report, the bank, which was acquired by Merrill Lynch for $1.8 billion in September, touted Salander as one of its best clients. But by the end of 2006, the Salander-O’Reilly Galleries had a new C.F.O., Antonette Favuzza, who many people believe was installed by the bank to monitor what had become a seriously troubled credit. This move, along with other events that suggested First Republic was aware of Salander’s problems, later raised questions among creditors about the bank’s culpability. It was a point that Earl Davis’ lawyer raised in court in November, when he told the bankruptcy judge that creditors might have “possible claims against the bank for aiding and abetting a fraud.” By the spring of 2007, Salander was bouncing checks for hundreds of thousands of dollars on his First Republic accounts. In April, Myron Kunin notified Salander that he would terminate their partnership that fall because he had not received any financial statements for months and because Salander had not paid him in full for the O’Keeffe painting Shelton Hotel.It is not clear whether First Republic even knew about Salander’s partnership with Kunin. Artists and one employee say that Salander was secretive about his business dealings. But the bank should have known about Salander’s ongoing problems with Saundra Lane, the collector who claimed that he still owed her $3.4 million for a Charles Sheeler painting; in April, ruling on Lane’s behalf, a Massachusetts judge issued an injunction against Salander essentially forbidding him from spending any gallery money without Lane’s approval. And yet throughout 2007, First Republic continued to lend Salander money, as did Sotheby’s, that summer, although the auction house was aware that Salander was in serious financial trouble. Sotheby’s made three loans to Salander, for a total of $863,650, against a group of artworks he had consigned for auction. Such loan advances, along with large sale-price guarantees, have become increasingly customary among the auction houses in the superheated art market. What was different about the deals with Salander, however, was that he never got the money. As part of an agreement between First Republic and Sotheby’s—which was eager to keep the works for sale at auction—the money was paid to the bank instead. When asked about its relationship with Salander, its role in selecting Antonette Favuzza, and whether it was aware of the gallery’s problems with Saundra Lane and Salander’s partnership with Kunin, First Republic declined to comment, as it did when asked whether its executives considered warning other creditors of Salander-O’Reilly’s financial condition and about the suggestions by creditors that it might face claims for aiding and abetting a fraud.Donald Schupak was leafing through Sotheby’s catalog for its old-masters sale last June when he came across a number of works that belonged to Renaissance Art Investors. Stunned because Salander had not told him he was putting the works up for sale, Schupak said nothing to the dealer but sent an associate to the auction. The pieces sold, but Salander never mentioned the sale to Schupak. On July 19, Salander was summoned to Schupak’s office, where he was confronted by Adam Deutsch, a private investigator Schupak had hired, who, according to an affidavit, interrogated the dealer about “inconsistencies uncovered by R.A.I. in the prices Salander represented he had paid for certain works of art that he sold to R.A.I.” and evidence that he had sold R.A.I. works and not paid the art investment partnership. In late July and again in early August, Schupak’s investigator came to the gallery to interview employees and later alleged that in the week between those meetings, computer records relating to R.A.I.’s artworks were deleted. In August, the deluge began. On August 7, Myron Kunin sued Salander through his holding company, Curtis Squire, alleging that Curtis Squire had been the victim of “Salander’s shell game” and “gross mismanagement.” On August 29, Roy Lennox sued Salander. On September 24, R.A.I. filed its suit. More complaints would flood the courts in the coming month.  And things would get worse. In early October, Schupak paid a visit to Alexander Acevedo, a New York gallery owner from whom Salander claimed he had bought works for R.A.I. But when Schupak showed Acevedo the invoices from these deals, Acevedo said they were forgeries. Two days later, Schupak had Salander served with a temporary restraining order, forbidding him from selling, transferring, or consigning any artworks. Desperate, Salander tried to settle with both Schupak and Lennox, offering them art, money, jewelry—and, in Lennox’s case, a portion of Salander-O’Reilly’s art library—if they would withdraw their lawsuits. According to Schupak, on the afternoon of Salander’s offer to settle with R.A.I., a truck showed up at the gallery to deliver a Matisse painting and was then loaded with several works owned by R.A.I., which, Schupak alleges, Salander had traded for the Matisse. Where the art was taken is still not clear. In the end, it was Schupak’s attorney who, in an impassioned courtroom plea, persuaded the judge to issue the order that resulted in the shuttering of Salander’s gallery on October 19. Denying that he cheated anyone, insisting, “I’ve always paid my bills,” Salander blamed his fall on Schupak and almost everyone else he’d done business with. In a court filing, Salander claimed that he was the victim of Schupak’s “personal vendetta.” He also lashed out verbally at “people I thought were my friends” and “people who I made a lotof money for”—all of whom had “betrayed” him, “lining up” to take advantage of him when he was weak. “It would have been easy for me to get angry over your taking legal action,” Salander wrote to John McEnroe, who had interned at the gallery in 1993 and is the godfather of one of Salander’s children. “I only feel sad.... You chose to let some asshole liar take advantage of what all people who buy art are terrified of: being taken advantage of,” Salander continued. “You have listened to rumors and innuendo.... You listened to everyone but me.” Today, Larry Salander’s battle with his creditors has grown even more bitter. As the bankruptcy proceedings grind on, as the art is being cataloged, its snarled ownership sorted out by a court-approved specialist, Salander has drawn the ire of his leading creditors through his repeated attempts to remain involved in the gallery’s affairs. Calling his efforts to be hired to help in the gallery’s liquidation “offensive,” “outrageous,” and even “extortionate,” Salander’s creditors, in an angry torrent of legal filings, say he is withholding information about what happened to their art and their money, while he tries to secure a salary. So far, the judge has allowed Salander to keep the 66-acre estate in Millbrook, but the court has forced him to sell the New York townhouse, which went on the market for $25 million.According to his lawyer, John Moscow, Salander claims that as best he knew from the gallery’s financial statements, Salander-O’Reilly was showing a profit as late as October 2006. Whether or not this turns out to be supported by the gallery’s records, which are now in the hands of the district attorney, those close to Salander say that he appears to have genuinely believed right up to the end that the “Masterpieces of Art” exhibition was going to make everything all right. He would be able to pay off all his debts with profits from the show, particularly from the Caravaggio that would be offered for $100 million. “The level of denial was amazing,” says one friend. In fact, the Caravaggio might have sold for only a fraction of that price, if at all, because its attribution was in dispute. Last sold by Sotheby’s in 2001 for $110,000, it was painted, many experts believe, not by Caravaggio but by an artist who was in the master’s circle. As with a so-called Donatello that Salander gave Lennox at one point in an attempt to settle his debt and the purportedly fake Ryders and Whistlers he gave to Saundra Lane, friends are almost certain that Salander did not knowingly trade in fakes or intentionally misattribute masterpieces. He believed that these works were genuine, says Michael Steiner, “because he needed to believe.”  Most people who know Salander well doubt that he set out to cheat anyone. The portrait they paint is of a man who did much good for art and for artists—tirelessly promoting them, giving up his commission on sales of their work when they needed money, lending emotional support—but who was overpowered by ambition and hubris. When he first slipped no one is sure; perhaps it was in early 2004, when he saw how easy it was to delay payments for the Charles Russell he bought from Kenneth Thomson, the press baron. Maybe he was taken in by the justification that the money would go to building a business of great value, expanding the market for the world’s most extraordinary works of art. Then one thing led to another, the debts piled up, and the bills came due, and as he sold paintings he didn’t own and sold others to more than one buyer, he told himself he was just buying time. He would pay everyone off with the proceeds from his October exhibit, a show so magnificent that it would be a testament to the correctness of his vision. Then everyone would understand that something bigger than their art or their money was at stake. In early June, although Resika and Steiner did not yet know it, Salander had signed an agreement giving their work, worth some $2.4 million, to the Benucci gallery in Rome, to settle a debt and to get a Matisse painting that he coveted. Yet in August, Resika recalls, Salander sent him a letter: “I will get all your pictures from Rome,” the dealer wrote. “But God forbid, if I can’t get them back, is it worth our friendship?” In October, unwilling to sue their old friend, Resika and Steiner instead sued the Benucci gallery for the return of their art.It is possible, says the dealer Richard Feigen, that one day Salander may be proved right—that hedge fund managers and the wave of new collectors will indeed start pumping their money into Renaissance art—but that day is probably a long way off. Salander’s mistake, says Feigen, was to invest so heavily in a market that did not yet exist. But many people were seduced by Salander’s business plan, and even sophisticated investors like Schupak did not see its flaws. That may have been in part because Salander was so compelling, so fluent in the languages of art and business, so passionate, and so easy to like despite the damage he has done to so many people. Even among the clients who say they were defrauded, the artists whose work went missing, and the dealers who say that his actions may have hurt their business by heightening distrust of dealers generally, there is a tremendous feeling of “sadness,” as one colleague put it. Salander was, after all, a man who tried, someone who put everything he had on the line for his business and for art. That he discovered his dark side in the process is probably something that many people can relate to. And regret. “I would have given him my art to help him, if he’d only asked,” says Steiner. “He was very good to me; he was my friend, my Icarus.”Related LinksOpening Up the CitadelThe Art of Investing in ArtA Second Look at Bacon's Triptych

  They haven't won a world series in 100 years, have had only nine winning seasons since 1980, and seem maddeningly prone to bad luck. But the Chicago Cubs are one of the most beloved teams in baseball, and ever since Sam Zell, whose Tribune Co. owns the team, said he'd sell it, boardrooms and locker rooms have buzzed with two questions: Who will buy the team? And for how much? Zell wants to sell the Cubs and Wrigley Field separately and hopes to get $1 billion total from the transactions. However, because the Tribune Co. doesn't break out the team's results in its financial statements, it's hard to know just how much the Cubs are worth. We asked a number of experts, including analysts in the Chicago office of Anderson Economic Group, a financial consultancy, to help us arrive at a figure.Never Mind ProfitsSeveral factors make sticking to the top line the best approach for valuing a baseball team. Because Major League Baseball requires teams to share part of their net local revenue to help make poorer teams more competitive, most teams drum up expenses where they can. A.E.G. estimates the Cubs' 2007 revenues at $200 million, which would include ticket sales, concessions, and advertising. Sports teams generally sell for two to three times their annual revenue. A.E.G. suggests using a multiple of 2.5 for the Cubs, yielding a starting value of $500 million. Base value:$500 millionCould They Be a Contender?How much does a team's win-loss record matter? Analyzing sales of European soccer teams, A.E.G. researcher Ilhan Geckil found that the market value of a team may not be overly affected by any particular year's results. But the value is clearly influenced by whether the team is consistently in the running for championships. In recent years, the Cubs "have changed from being a mascot and a nostalgia trip to being an actual contender," says A.E.G. principal Patrick Anderson. Four of their paltry nine winning seasons since 1980 have come since 2000; last year, they won their division (but were then swept by the Arizona Diamondbacks in the playoffs). The team's recent success is widely attributed to some aggressive moves, including bringing in Lou Piniella as manager, as well as signing outfielder Alfonso Soriano to an eight-year, $136 million contract and pitcher Carlos Zambrano to a five-year, $91.5 million deal. A.E.G. research suggests a team's value can rise by 20 to 30 percent if it's a bona fide contender. Anderson gives the Cubs a 20 percent premium, adding another $100 million to the value.Subtotal:$500 million + $100 million = $600 millionDon't Forget Bill MurrayThe Cubs are an iconic franchise, one that sports banker Sal Galatioto likens to "beachfront property." Peter Keating, a contributing editor at ESPN the Magazine,says, "Owning a sports franchise is like owning the Mona Lisa." No one is ruling out the possibility of a bidding war for the team. Among those thought to be potential buyers are Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, private equity bigwig John Canning Jr., Phoenix Suns owner Jerry Colangelo, and possibly even actor Bill Murray. University of Michigan professor Rodney Fort thinks the intangibles that come with owning a team, like boosting an owner's personal celebrity, can add anywhere from 17 to 35 percent to the price tag. A.E.G. is more cautious, though, throwing in an extra $6 million for intangibles. Subtotal:$600 million + $6 million = $606 millionThe Bottom Line A rational buyer should offer $606 million. But sports fans—and sports owners—aren't always rational. Bids could approach the $660 million record set in 2002 for the Boston Red Sox.Possible sale price:$650 million or more Related LinksChicago Cubs Sale Process Moving at Slow PaceTribune Company Could Keep Chicago Cubs in 2008Tribune Company Mulls Selling Cubs Package in Parts