New In 1965, not long before she moved out, declaring that the place had simply become too expensive, Marya Mannes commented with her customary asperity that the Dakota just wasn’t what it used to be and that she simply didn’t understand the new breed of people that had moved in. “Now it’s getting to be all Café Society,” she said. “I just don’t run with this new set. There’s a great emphasis now on show biz, on ‘in’ people. There are people now who belong to the extremely up-to-date group of op art and Courrèges fashions and all these fads. It’s all quite new here.” To her, the gulf between the old and the new, between elderly matrons and young socialites, had become as wide as their differences in ages, styles and tastes. Though, as in every neighborhood, a few dowagers in black velvet suits and heavy pearl earrings still gathered to sip sherry in their apartments at four in the afternoon, most of the new Dakotans, it seemed to Miss Mannes, now darted in and out of the building in white shaggy furs, short skirts or blue jeans.
