Why your doorman doesn’t care that Gus Bevona is dead
What? Was the Kleenex not passed around your lobby when your doormen's ex-union boss, Gus Bevona, died two weeks ago? A bloggy flashback the other day by union consultant Ray Abernathy (apparently smarting over an unaired interview with Anderson Cooper) helps explain why.
Back in 1994, Abernathy visited Bevona in the union kingpin's multimillion dollar downtown Manhattan headquarters to ask Bevona to voluntarily cut his $450,000 salary in half. (Awkward!) The union head's salary, Abernathy explained, was making the $15-an-hour union members feel, um, bad.
Bevona refused: He worked 24-hours-a-day and the people he was bargaining with earned 3x his salary. Plus, some Yankees were making 10 times more.
On top of his take home pay, there was Bevona's home itself. Like any union pasha worthy of his alleged mob ties, he had constructed a luxe apartment for himself on the 23rd floor of the union’s headquarters, complete with spy equipment. According to the Village Voice, the posh palace included, among other things: Cherry-paneled walls, marble floors, multiple terraces with stunning views, his-and-her bathrooms, and a 6-foot wine fridge in an industrial-style kitchen.
The kicker: Keys in Bevona’s desk discovered after his resignation led officials to an apartment in a nearby neighborhood that was an exact duplicate, down to the fact, we infer, that it was also built on the backs of the city's doormen and porters.
