Like every decorator in town, Steve Appel of Nouveau Contemporary Goods has been awaiting the day Michael Phelps calls looking for help decorating his Fells Point bachelor pad.
Appel got the next-best thing last week, when a crew filming Phelps and Jared Fogle in a Subway commercial called asking him to outfit the set.
Nouveau lent them a coffee table, end tables, an entertainment center, a wine rack, pillows and some brushed copper lamps, all of it "very, very hip, sort of very Laura Petrie, midcentury modern," Appel said.
Apparently they did not need a couch for the ad, filmed Monday at the home of real estate agent Heidi Krauss, who did not return calls seeking comment.
Chat chatter
Spotted in "animated conversation" at Cosi in Bethesda: Former Montgomery County Exec Doug Duncan and Paul Schurick, Bob Ehrlich's communications guy. So says an e-mail tipster by the name of MD4MD. What should we make of this? Ehrlich-Duncan 2010? Schurick wasn't talking. Duncan confirmed they'd met for coffee but said not to read too much into that. "I talk to a lot of people," Duncan said. "He's an old friend."
Connect the dots ...
Just before assistant White House chef Sam Kass and U.S. Department of Education bigwigs arrived to tour the Baltimore school system's organic farm last week, the goats got loose. Used on the farm to clear land - they eat their way through brush - the goats were instead munching on garden veggies. School food director Tony Geraci and assorted state education honchos did a quick round-up before the Washington entourage pulled up. ... Matthew Hornbeck, principal of the Baltimore charter school Hampstead Hill Academy, to Kass as they sat down to school lunch later that day: "When was the last time you had a spork?"... Saturday is "Beard and Mustache Appreciation Night" at The Parkside, 4709 Harford Road. "Drink specials for the Bearded, Mustached, Sideburned and Goateed from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m." Organizer is Mickey Fried, the Bolton Hill hardware store owner who traveled to Anchorage this year to compete in the World Beard and Mustache Championships.
Laura Vozzella's column appears Fridays.
