(Long Island, NY) Hello darlings, welcome back to Cognac’s Corner. On February 15, 2007 Hosts Tim Gunn, of the Department of Fashion Design at Parsons The New School for Design, and Project Runway Mentor, & Designer Jonathan Adler invited Manhattan’s biggest hearted and most fun people to attend the Bailey House Auction and Cocktail Party at Puck Building to keep this mid winter tradition alive and help house and serve some of New York City’s most vulnerable citizens.
This cocktail party and a live and silent auction featured hundreds of cool things – from art and photography to decorative pieces, fashion, gifts, theater and concert tickets, trips and fantasy items – and a food tasting from the best and the brightest of NYC’s own restaurateur/caterers. Now in its 19th year, this annual funds-raiser for Bailey House has proved a perennial crowd pleaser with its lively vibe and trove of great stuff to bid on. The money raised helps the city’s second-oldest AIDS organization in its 24-year-old core mission of providing desperately needed housing and supportive services to New Yorkers living with HIV and AIDS – well that’s the definition that matters most.
Founded in 1983, Bailey House was the nation’s first provider of supportive housing to people living with AIDS. Today, Bailey House is a nationally recognized leader in AIDS housing and services. This event helps Bailey House clients achieve a new, more promising future through secure housing, and other supportive services. At Bailey House, the future starts with a place to live.
A small group of dedicated clergy, gay and lesbian activists, West Village business people founded the AIDS Resource Center which later was renamed Bailey House in 1995. These warm wonderful and encouraging individuals witnessed community members and friends devastated by what was then a new disease, lose access to the care and resources needed to stay alive and became homeless. They decided to make a difference by raising money to rent apartments for these poor homeless people and eventually were able to purchase a building for a congregate living facility, known as BaileyHolt House.
The housing and services Bailey House provided allowed many sick and homeless AIDS victims residents to survive long enough to take advantage of the life-sustaining breakthroughs in medical therapies. Without stable housing and support, many of these unfortunate ill people would have died before treatments became available. Our successful housing programs have become the models that have ensured effective services for homeless people with HIV/AIDS throughout the country and around the world.
Featured auction items at the Bailey House Auction and Party included a guided tour of ABC’s set of All My Children by Soap Star Susan Lucci, backstage at ABC’s the View and a wonderful lunch with Barbara Walters, lunch with CNN’s Anderson Cooper followed by a taping of 360, 4 VIP passes to Good Mornings Summer Concert series for 2007, four Guests in ABC’s Times Square Studio New Years Eve 2008, California get-a-way with tickets to the finale of Dancing with the Stars, Dinner with Chef Art Smith a personal chef to Oprah Winfrey at his private resident, personal make over with acclaimed Vincent Longo, four tickets to Grey Gardens and dinner with the creatives, a stay in Miami at The Standard Hotel, and a Nine day Italian Adventure among other pieces of art that will be auctioned off.
Some of fabulous celebrities in attendance that I interviewed were Tim Gunn-Project Runway, Simon Noonan, Brian Ross-ABC-TV and Jane Pauley.
To Learn more about Bailey House please visit www.baileyhouse.org.
