The daugther of a poor sugarcane cutter and one of nine siblings, Velazquez was born in rural Puerto Rico in 1953. She started high school at 13, and enrolled in the University of Puerto Rico at 16. She graduated magna cum laude and was the first in her family to graduate from college in 1974.

A self-described "true Gemini," Muz was born in Detroit, MI as Julia Ann Muz. She attended Oberlin for college where she majored in dance and history. She then grew up to become a burlesque dancer. That's what a liberal arts education gets you these days.

Manhattanites and tarted-up bridge and tunnelers alike flock to Birnbaum's meatpacking district club TenJune and luxe steakhouse STK, both of which he co-owns with nightlife impresario Eugene Remm.

Along with partner Mark Birnbaum, Remm hosts New Yorkers as well as hordes of bronzer-doused Jerseyites at his meatpacking district club Tenjune and steakhouse STK.

The wife of director and Moviefone mega-millionaire Andrew Jarecki, socialite Nancy has plenty of cash to throw at pet projects like Betty, her line of pubic hair dyes. Yes, really.

A social fixture and pal of Barbara Bush, Betts is the daughter of Chelsea Piers developer Roland Betts, a Bush BFF himself.

Bell is distantly related to the Norse royal family, but she's much better known as the hot-looking young girl-about-town who (surprise, surprise) has acting aspirations.

Thom Browne

Merritt is the bass-voiced singer/songwriter who fronts indie rock group The Magnetic Fields.

Howard Milstein

The founder of high-end residential real estate firm Stribling & Associates, Stribling specializes in the sale of tony apartments on Park and Fifth. She works closely with the director of the private brokerage at Stribling & Associates, Kirk Henckels.

Lotto legend Yolannnnda Vegaaaa is the cheery New York Lottery personality who announces the nightly winning numbers.

Celebrity neurologist Oliver Sacks is known for the non-fiction books that detail his cerebrally irregular patients, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (featuring the most famous account of visual agnosia ever put to paper) and An Anthropologist on Mars. Now a professor of clinical psychiatry and clinical neurology at Columbia, he's since published Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain.

Reverend Billy is the kitschy faux-preacher who organizes rallies against consumerism and corporate monoliths like Starbucks and Disney. The Reverend and his 40-member Earthalujah Choir tour the world (but primarily the United States), racking up arrests as they spread the gospel of their Church of Stop Shopping.

Paul Booth

Fabien Baron

As the daughter of Russian business titan Vassily Anisimov, whatever socialite/"model" Anna Anisimova wants, she gets. And that includes a $15 million, 4,000-square-foot apartment at the Time Warner Center. In 2010 she married film producer Peter Schafer at the Waldorf Astoria. The wedding décor included a white forest with "trees" made of crystal and pearls and a nine-foot-high floral sculpture of a bear bride made of carnations, roses, hydrangea and orchids. Naturally.

Since immigrating to the U.S. in the late '70s, Russian-born Blavatnik has accumulated a $11 billion fortune with canny investments in oil, copper, aluminum, and real estate.

Born in DC on Valentine's Day, 1944, journalist Bernstein secured himself a place in U.S. history books when he and fellow Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward broke the story of the Watergate break-in. He attended the University of Maryland briefly, but didn't graduate.

The TV critic for the Times, Stanley lives the American dream: She gets paid to watch the tube. Unfortunately, she's also saddled with a reputation for being notoriously inaccurate.