I’m a Vanity Fair junkie. And it’s not a guilty pleasure because it’s a damn good magazine. But its mix of high and low culture, of important reporting and silly gossip and celeb stuff could be construed as a guilty pleasure. I look at it this way: Some people like crappy television shows, others read bestsellers to relax. But me, when my Vanity Fair arrives it’s my time for myself. I take to my bedroom (with the VF) and read…

(This revelation of myself as a Vanity Fair junkie is yet something else for  people to make fun of about me. Groan).

So the new Vanity Fair is out — the one with Kate Moss on the cover posing as Marlene Dietrich (as Catherine the  II). And I wasn’t going to wait two weeks to fish it out of  our big pile of mail that’ll be waiting for us.

I wanted it. NOW. So I bought it at the mall (at the Barnes and Noble) and started reading it as soon as we got into the car.

And then I SQUEALED. Omigod: there’s an adorable picture of our neighbor, a hair stylist, on page 170. I gather that VF has a new fashion and style director and our friend and neighbor is obviously on the new team (for all I know he’s been there for years).

That means that at least three Vanity Fair contributors live between Third and Ninth Streets.

Our neighbor is pictured giving New York Red Bulls midfielder Seth Stammler a Mohawk hairdo.
For years I’ve seen him go off to work with a rolling suitcase.

I knew he was a hair stylist. But I never knew exactly what he does and for whom. I still don’t.

But I know this: there’s a picture of him on page 170 of Vanity Fair. And to a VF junkie like me, that’s big news. In last year’s September issue, my friend Marian Fontana had a long excerpt from her book and great photographs. Now this.

Stuff to like about the September Vanity Fair
–the photo of our neighbor
–Elissa Schappell’s Hot Type column (she’s a Park Slope literary luminary)
–Graydon Carter’s anti-war and anti-Bush Editor’s Letter
–Dominick Dunne’s column
–The 2006 InternationalBest-Dressed List
–Baghdadh is Burning
–The Enigma of Sofia Coppola (with pictures)
–Dubya vs. Dad: What really goes on between the Bush Presidents
–Confessions of a plastic surgery addict
–Great photography
–and more more more