Fabian Basabe is a high-end import, so it's somehow appropriate that our night out on the town starts at the Ferrari/Maserati showroom. Fabian was born in New York but spent part of his childhood shuttling between Miami and Ecuador; he made a triumphant return to the Naked City in 2000 and quickly became a social sensation on the party pages. Joining us on our party train tonight is Fabian's wife of eleven months, Martina Borgomanero, and his friend-cum-unofficial-publicist Christiaan McPherson. We're meeting up at the showroom at Park and 55th for Q magazine's launch party. It's an uptown crowd and so the party publicists are tickled pink to see Fabian and Martina arrive. They quickly usher the couple into the cars for photos. Fabian and Martina are both super-cooperative—the kind of guests anyone hosting a party dreams of.
"I don't have a driver's license!" says Fabian, laughing, as the party publicists position him in front of a blue Spyder 90th-Anniversary Maserati and then lead him over to a wall mural of Ferrari Formula One cars. Andrew Black, the hip young gossip columnist for Quest, the parent magazine of Q, is one of the 27-year-old's biggest fans. "How could you not like him?" asks the scribe with a smile. "He's a supportive friend. He's adorable. He's good copy for my column."
Fabian—a male Paris Hilton, minus the porn—first skyrocketed to Page Six stardom as a party boy, a sidekick of boldface females like Barbara Bush. As with Paris, it's reality TV that has catapulted Fabian to the next level of fame and notoriety. The show he appeared on, Filthy Rich: Cattle Drive on E!, featured Brittny Gastineau, Alex Quinn and Courtenay Semel; the idea was to take rich kids, drop them in the middle of a cattle ranch and then broadcast their heavily edited, bratty exploits in a cynical attempt to show how shallow and useless the young and wealthy really are. One of the show's producers, Joe Simpson, father and Svengali of Jessica and Ashlee, had a starring role in mind for Fabian from the beginning. Fabian tells me, "Before the show began, Joe said to my wife, 'We're making Fabian the Manhattan bad boy at his worst.'" The public's reaction to Fabian has been extreme. (For instance, the pro-Fabian post I wrote on Papermag.com's blog received dozens of scary comments, including a petition to have Fabian deported.) Still, Fabian takes it in stride: "I might have taken it too far, but when you have a 300-person crew thinking of how to make your day more difficult, you might say something obnoxious." He thinks for a second and says, "Deep down, I'm good-hearted." Also, Fabian is slightly surprised that he's such a popular topic in the columns. "I'm always flattered. I'm a little curious as to why. They write the silliest things."
