Department: Craig Drake and All That Glittered
In the fall of 2008, his eclectic penthouse atop the Touraine on Spruce Street, with its expensive oil paintings, antique clocks and other accoutrements of the affluent and eccentric, was included on the “Lifestyles of the Union League Rich and Famous” tour. A month later, he co-chaired a fund-raiser for Sarah Palin at the Bellevue, for which guests paid up to $25,000 for the chance to meet and greet the GOP vice presidential nominee. And what could be more fitting? Wasn’t it Craig Drake who, with the nickname “Duck Drake, Private Eye,” had befriended John McCain during a frat party at Penn 50 years earlier? Who had been one of only a handful of guests at McCain’s first wedding, at the home of Connie and Sam Bookbinder in 1965, where he toasted the happy couple over lobster and three Beefeater gin martinis?
Today, though, less than two years after the Palin fete, Craig Drake, 73, is trying to pick up the pieces of his business, which he closed in January. He’s gone missing from the international party scene; his name has all but vanished from the society columns. He’s fighting multiple lawsuits. His penthouse is up for sale. And the powerful, pretty people in Philadelphia who once constituted the backbone of both his business and social lives are wondering: What the hell happened?
For the answer, you need to go back to last fall. When the police crashed Craig Drake’s party.
CRAIG DRAKE IS APOLOGIZING, something I suspect he is doing a lot of these days. “I’m so sorry,” he says, striding toward my table at fashionable Parc on Rittenhouse Square, where we are supposed to be commencing lunch. A deal has sprung up to sell a $250,000 gem, and Drake has to meet the buyer, which means our lunch is suddenly on hold. Because, in the ultra-high-end jewelry business, “you have to go when you have to go,” he says.
The day before, when we picked this spot for our first interview, he asked me to reserve “Table 74,” because “it’s their best table.” Having the best table is among the things that are important when you’re Craig Drake. He looks at his watch. “I know this guy,” he says, “it’s okay if I’m a little late.” He nabs a passing busboy, who murmurs, “Oh, hello, Mr. Drake,” and he orders a glass of chardonnay.
It’s a beautiful sunny day, and Drake is dressed like the Union Leaguer he’s so proud to be, decked out in a blue blazer, gray slacks, and a white-and-blue pinstriped shirt. He has a big, doughy face, with wild gray haystacks for eyebrows and basset-hound jowls that drop on either side of his nose like giant fleshy teardrops. The wine comes, and as I sip my pinot grigio, only one thought enters my head: Try to keep up.
Because when Craig Drake talks, you don’t listen; you strap yourself in. The stories zip across the table, a jet stream of jet-setting. Anyone who knows him — and Craig Drake knows anyone worth knowing in Philadelphia — inevitably characterizes him as the king of the one-liners. (“People ask, ‘Where did you grow up?’ I say, ‘Whoa! You’re moving too fast!’” Ba-dum-bum.) It’s like sitting with Joan Rivers trapped in Bert Lahr’s body.
