Good morning. It's Monday. We'll look at an understudy that's getting a moment in the spotlight — a barber's chair that was ready if a famous caricaturist needed it. We'll also look at how foreign governments are using private investigators in this country for what one terrorism expert called "low-cost, low-risk state-sponsored terrorism." |
 | | via The Al Hirschfeld Foundation |
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The Al Hirschfeld barber's chair that Al Hirschfeld never sat in is going on display in a museum. |
The chair was only a spare. An understudy. More about it in a moment. |
The museum is the interactive and immersive Museum of Broadway, which is opening this week on West 45th Street in the theater district after several pandemic-related delays. |
Hirschfeld was the celebrated caricaturist who did not stand at an easel while creating his distinctive pen-and-ink drawings of Broadway stars and New York celebrities. He sat in a barber's chair. |
There were three barber's chairs in Hirschfeld's long career before his death at 99 in 2003. The first had been in a studio where he worked in his 20s. He took that chair with him when he moved out, but not a life-size sculpture by his friend Alexander Calder. "Every time I came in," Hirschfeld said, according to David Leopold, the creative director of the Al Hirschfeld Foundation, the Calder "would catch on my zipper, so when I left that studio, I just left it there." |
By the 1990s, the chair was a rattletrap. "One of the arms was held on by duct tape," Leopold said, "and there was this big spring hanging out the back. I thought, we're going to lose Hirschfeld to tetanus because he had told me one time it always ends badly for caricaturists." |
Leopold had a brainstorm: Why not give Hirschfeld a new chair for his 90th birthday? |
The next question was: Where to find an old-fashioned one that looked like Hirschfeld's chair had once looked? |
Leopold called antiques dealers. "Nobody really had what I wanted," he said. |
He poured out his frustration to a friend. "She said, 'I have two in the basement in Long Island,'" Leopold recalled. Her husband had saved them from a project at the Chrysler Building. |
Leopold proposed bringing one of them to Hirschfeld's studio, in his townhouse in the East 90s. |
"It occurred to me that maybe I'm insulting him," Leopold said. "He'd been working in that chair for 70 years. It's like saying, 'Your wife's getting older — maybe you should get a new wife.' I didn't say that out loud, but it's what was going through my mind." |
Hirschfeld's reaction was: "When do you think you can bring it up?" |
The answer was quickly, with help from a couple of friends. "It was the dumbest thing I ever did," Leopold said. |
Leopold had not only claimed one barber's chair from the garage; he had taken the other as a spare. The second chair has been stowed away until now, for the opening of the museum and the publication of "The American Theater as Seen by Hirschfeld: 1962-2002." An online auction of 21 Hirschfelds to benefit Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and the Hirschfeld Foundation began last month. |
The barber's chair Hirschfeld sat in is a permanent fixture at the library in Lincoln Center. The chair he did not sit in is only a temporary element at the Broadway museum. |
"We'll save it for the next time we need a chair," Leopold said. |
Enjoy a sunny day near the high 40s. Yes, the 40s. Those 70-plus degree days last week are just a memory. Record highs were posted on Nov. 6 (as sweaty runners in the New York City Marathon know) and Nov. 7. But now there's a freeze watch from the National Weather Service, which says temperatures as low as 30 are possible overnight. |
In effect until Nov. 24 (Thanksgiving Day). |
 | | Valentin Flauraud/EPA, via Shutterstock |
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Foreign governments hire private investigators under false pretenses |
 | | Todd Heisler/The New York Times |
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One investigator, Michael McKeever, above, was used by Iranian intelligence agents in a suspected plot to kidnap the Iranian American journalist and human rights activist Masih Alinejad, who now lives in Brooklyn. He believed he had been hired through his website by a client trying to track down a debtor who had fled from Dubai. The client wanted him to conduct surveillance, photographing whoever came and went from an address in Brooklyn. |
McKeever and an associate staked out the house without noticing that F.B.I. agents were also keeping watch. An agent soon warned McKeever that "your client is not who you think they are," according to McKeever, who says the agent added: "These are bad people, and they're up to no good." |
James Dennehy, the former head of the F.B.I.'s counterintelligence and cyber division in New York, said the bureau was afraid that "they were going to snatch and grab" Alinejad and take her back to Iran — "and probably kill her." When federal prosecutors in Manhattan filed conspiracy kidnapping charges against an Iranian intelligence official and three associates, they said the suspected plotters had researched routes from Alinejad's home to the Brooklyn waterfront, along with ways of taking her to Venezuela by boat and from there to Iran. |
The Iranian intelligence agents named in the indictment were all in Iran and are not likely to be apprehended as long as they remain there. But officials said the goal, beyond protecting potential victims, was to expose and deter plots devised at the highest levels of a foreign government. |
Not every private eye has avoided legal problems. Michael McMahon, a 55-year-old retired New York Police Department sergeant who built a second career as a private investigator, was arrested in 2020. He faces charges of acting as an agent for the Chinese government, along with stalking and conspiracy counts. Prosecutors say he was part of an effort to coerce a Chinese citizen who lives in New Jersey and was identified only as John Doe-1 to return home. |
McMahon said he was stunned by the allegations and that he had not known he was working for China. |
"When I read the complaint against me," he said in an email, "I became sick to my stomach. As my background shows, I committed my life to upholding the law and never have — and never would — commit a crime." |
On a Sunday afternoon in July, my friend Dolores and I went to Jimmy's Grand Cafe in the Bronx to celebrate our friendship and the life of my mother, who had recently died. |
When we arrived, we encountered two nice men. Dolores teased them about taking our parking space. When we were seated in the bar area, we noticed the same men at a table near ours. |
Dolores and I sat on high stools that overlooked Bruckner Boulevard. I had an omelet with Cheddar cheese and tomatoes and mashed potatoes. Dolores had a Dominican breakfast with salami, mangú and pickled onions. We shared a plate of buttermilk pancakes. |
We toasted my mother and our good health and happiness with mimosas. When we were finished, Dolores asked our server for the check while I dug my wallet out of my purse. |
"No," Dolores said over my objections. "Put your money away. I'm paying." |
Then the server surprised us by saying, "Your bill was paid already!" |
After a few minutes, we realized it was the two men from the parking lot. They had paid our bill along with theirs and had left without saying anything. |
A feeling of gratitude quickly overwhelmed the feeling of surprise. A special day was now even more memorable. |
This is our official thank you. |
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. |
| Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
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