A Goode Cause

Eric Goode has a knack for bringing people together. First, it was with his iconic eighties New York nightclub, Area, and again last night, when many of those Area veterans gathered for a fundraiser at The Bowery Hotel for Goode's Turtle Conservancy in Ojai, California. Drawing together a crowd of friends from the eighties inevitably means one thing: nostalgia. "We probably met at Area, but my sober memory with Eric doesn't really start until the nineties, when we used to play basketball on the streets," said Fisher Stevens , who accepted an award for his support of the Conservancy. "It wasn't until recently that our relationship became about saving animals." Turns out, saving animals is a cause that can get a lot of people together: Peter Beard , Harvey Keitel , Scout LaRue Willis , Padma Lakshmi , and Stella Schnabel all came out to support the initiative.



An eighties photograph of Madonna taken by her then-stylist Maripol was a crowd favorite at the silent auction, as was an embellished turtle shell by Julian Schnabel (also in attendance). Wait, turtle shell? One guest took a double take: "I hope that thing died of natural causes! We're at a turtle fundraiser!" The origins of the shell weren't clear, but no matter: It ended up going for $40,000 at auction.



All jokes aside, as Goode explained, turtles are the most threatened group of animals on the planet. In addition, honeybees are mysteriously disappearing, as are crucial oxygen-producing plankton. Said Goode: "There have been five big extinctions on Earth; the last one was the dinosaurs. This extinction is the sixth, and unfortunately it's because of humans. But that also means that we hold the keys to the future." Stevens added: "And we have to do something. When the ecosystem falls apart, we fall apart." Club kids have to grow up at some point, right?

—Todd Plummer