Under Cover

Exam Jam

“We’re gonna party till our eyes close,” mumbled Jeff Hodges, unshaven and clutching an Amstel Light. He didn’t look like a man in the mood for a party. He looked more like a man in need of a bed. But here he was, mingling with a score of compatriots at a recent soiree for aspiring attorneys who had just completed the two-day test-taking marathon known as the New York Bar Exam. Hodges had not seen any of his friends in two months.

A record high of more than 10,600 legal hopefuls took the New York Bar Exam last week, but only a handful made it to the Exam Jam — a free event for exam takers at The New York County Lawyer’s Association Home of Law at 14 Vesey St. After enduring one of the most stressful times of their lives, most exam takers sipped cheap beer as they appeared to drift in and out of consciousness.

“Tomorrow I am getting a massage at a day spa,” shouted Ivan Torres over the music of Jude Me Not, an excessively loud band comprised of a judge and five lawyers, blasting rock music from the stage. “Then I’m going to sit on my couch and watch T.V. Maybe I’ll go on vacation,” he added.

The test takers spent weeks — and in some cases months — studying, often in seclusion, and refused to think about the possibility of failure. “If I didn’t pass, other people didn’t pass,” shrugged Hodges.

For Paola Garcia, the test was harder than she expected, but with it behind her, she is now gearing up for a summer of lounging. “I have a lot of books I want to read, I want to take my dog out, and I want to drink Don Julio.”

Tribeca sales

The condos at 200 Chambers St. in Tribeca are selling like hotcakes. The new 30-story luxury condo building, designed by architects Norman Foster and Costas Kondylis won’t open until the fall of 2006, but 41 percent of the one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments sold within three weeks of hitting the market. The apartments, with floor to ceiling, “wall of glass windows” with unobstructed river and city views, range from about $750,000 to more than $3.3 million a pop. Developer Jack Resnick & Sons broke ground on the property – formerly known as Site 5C – earlier this year.

Bats on the river

Fear not if you enjoy working on your batting swing with the cool breeze of the Hudson. As we reported two weeks ago, the Hudson River Park’s batting cages are slated to get thrown out of Tribeca this fall in order to build the permanent park. Chris Martin, the Hudson River Park Trust’s spokesperson, now tells us the cages are likely to be moved to Pier 40 near Houston St. Who knows, perhaps they’ll even slow the pitches down to Downtown Little League speed.

Bi-coastal moguls

Literary magnate Judith Regan has relocated to Los Angeles, but she still has one foot in New York. TheRegan Books publisher dropped $2.74 million on a brand spanking new three-bedroom, 2 1/2 bath loft on Lafayette St, the New York Post reports. Her new building housed printing and bookbinding firms before it transformed into a luxury condo. What a fitting choice for the publisher of porn star Jenna Jameson’s autobiography and her Battery Park City-trysting, ex-boyfriend Bernie Kerik’s pre-Homeland Security scandal memoir.

In other westerly news, Tishman Speyer sold its portion of 40 Broad St. and invested in a San Francisco Bay Area tower with the windfall. The real estate firm sold its percentage of the Financial District building (45.9 percent to be exact) last week for $64 million and swapped it for 45.9 percent of Bayside Towers in California for $67 million. The swap “significantly improves the quality of the portfolio,” said company director Rob Speyer in a company statement. Tishman invested in 40 Broad last December.

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