Those "lively" Bush Twins

[hangemhigh]

In a city where their dad is an interloper, the Bush twins are totally at home.

By Vanessa Grigoriadis


Lauren and Barbara Bush at Zach Posen's fall 2004 show, next to director Vincent Gallo. Jenna Bush at an Iowa campaign event. (Photo credit: AP photos)

On August 2, day two of the summer terror scare, Jenna and Barbara Bush had to go to midtown. They were said to be staying with friends in Battery Park when the First Lady asked them to accompany her to the Citigroup Center tower, which had been identified a day earlier as the site of a possible Al Qaeda attack. It would be the Bush twins’ first public appearance in the city that has been their nocturnal playground for the past few years. They stood there as their mom told a few hundred Citigroup employees that there was nothing to fear. There were more photos as Jenna and Barbara stopped at Cucina, a coffee shop in the seven-story Citigroup atrium. Then they were off to dinner with Laura at Nobu—their favorite restaurant. An hour and a half later, they went off to meet their friends.

This was the day’s real event. At the sleek, dark bar on the first floor of BondSt, a Noho restaurant, they met up with their friend Maggie Betts, the quick-witted African-American daughter of Roland Betts, the developer of Chelsea Piers and President Bush’s closest New York connection. Betts was hanging out with two guys Jenna and Barbara didn’t know but who had famous dads of their own: Chris Miller, the portly, jovial son of the Miller Gallery owners, and Jamie Johnson, director of the documentary Born Rich and an heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune. Fabian Basabe, the handsome son of an Ecuadoran businessman who made the front page of the Daily News in February dirty-dancing with Barbara at a Chelsea club—and who was subsequently rumored to have been banned from the White House—was on hand, too.

Barbara—friends call her Barbs—text-messaged some other people to come meet them, friends they hadn’t seen since their graduation trips abroad (Barbara experienced the postcollegiate bohemian life in Eastern European cities; Jenna hiked the Pyrénées). The twins once talked about how much they hated doing “political stuff,” how they wished they didn’t have to have a role in their dad’s campaign but felt obligated to do so. “People want us to be political, like Karenna Gore, but we’re not,” a friend reports Jenna as saying.

Later, Miller invited the whole group, about a dozen of them by now, back to his loft farther down Bond Street, where they drank wine that someone had brought from their dad’s wine cellar. The party continued till 3 a.m. or so, which made it kind of an early night for the twins, who have been known to shut down meatpacking-district clubs like the tiny, exclusive Bungalow 8. Once, at that club, Jenna saw Joey co-star Jennifer Coolidge and a few friends in a banquette across the way. “I loved you in Legally Blonde 2,” gushed Jenna (Coolidge played Reese Witherspoon’s hairdresser confidante).

Coolidge didn’t know who she was, and smiled wanly.

“My daddy’s the president,” offered Jenna.

At a party, a Secret Service man knocked and asked if Barbara would be spending the night. “Barbara,” said a guest. “Your dad’s at the door.”

Coolidge and her friends were still confused. One person wondered if she was talking about the president of Bungalow 8

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[XNASA]

1. It would have been funnier if Jenna had said to Vincent Gallo....

"I loved you in 'The Brown Bunny'"