Thursday, June 15, 2000

Even if you save it for the lastminute

It took me two cabbies and a caddie to get to Wollman Rink in Central Park. Not that hard to find, but there was a full moon, so the cosmos was out of sync. When I did arrive, John McEnroe and Mikael Pernfors were in full swing with their match for the Success Magazine Tour's Lastminutetravel.com Masters on Thursday, June 15. I made my way around the stands, past the JP Morgan tent and RCN area to the Lastminutetravel.com section of the stands. Kenny Kramer, the "real" Kramer (http://www.kennykramer.com/), was placing an order for pina coladas and Ron Burkhardt of Burkhardt & Hillman and Ricardo Montoya of Gerasimos International Holdings were sipping white wine as the match proceeded. Thirty or so guests sat in the bleachers, some nibbling on popcorn, others enjoying a cold beer, during the exciting game. Pernfors took a tumble, and as we waited for a medic to tend to his knee I met Lee Oberlander of Forbes and Zach McAdoo of Actbig.com. He told me his group purchasing and ASP company just closed another round of funding a few weeks ago. I introduced myself to Frederic Reed of Reed International and Gary Shiller of Sky Technologies, who promised to see me later at the VIP party at the Mansion on 5th and 79th Street. Constantine Alexander Morfopoulos and his father, both of Basic International Development Corp., were also there to enjoy meeting people associated with their investment in Lastminutetravel.com.