Leslie Bibb Hearts New York

“I love you New York!”

Leslie Bibb is screaming her feelings from a literal rooftop, six stories above Tribeca. It’s an appropriately cinematic spot for an actor who’s been unmissable over the last 12 months, her performances in Palm Royale and The White Lotus filling opinion columns, sparking TikTok trends, and those endlessly expressive eyes inspiring a Reddit-ful of memes.

As befits someone who started out as a model—at 16, she won a modeling competition on Oprah, and fell in love with New York when she spent the summer of junior year there, working for Elite—Bibb is dressed to kill from the minute we meet. There’ll be costume changes throughout our journey together, as she cycles through some of her favorite designers. It’s something like a warm-up for the imminent Fashion Week, where she’s increasingly a staple, immersed in its energy.

“There's just an even buzzier vibe in the air,” she says. “Fashion Week feels like you're watching someone's dreams walk down a runway.”

Velocity Black will be there throughout, from runway shows to dinners to private parties. And it’s the ephemeral nature of the week that Bibb finds so enticing, months of work for minutes that are experienced only by the people who were there, but that can move them to their core.

“It’s like theater,” she says. “You do all this work, you come out, you do that performance, and nobody will ever see it again. Nobody will ever see that exact show ever again. You'll do it the next night, but it will be different.”

There’s a dramatic bent to our rooftop setting, too, and in more than just the mise en scène. As well as Tribeca’s innumerable film appearances, each summer, the eponymous film festival takes over the streets below, and The Greenwich Hotel shares a building with its home, the Tribeca Film Center. They’re all the fruit of film’s consummate New Yorker, Robert De Niro, who grew up a mile to the north. And whose penthouse sprawls on the other side of the glass doors.

“For me as an actor, anything that Bob De Niro is even affiliated with, I’m excited by,” Bibb says, back inside. “I did a movie with him [2023’s About My Father], and he's such a good person, such a kind person.” She gestures around the room.

“And he knows how to do a hotel.”

It’s a familiar building. When she dines downstairs, she always makes time to ensconce herself in the Drawing Room, the hotel’s private bar. “It’s like a library, and it’s just for guests,” she says. “But if I have dinner with Bob, I get to go there and sit in that library. And it's so fun, and you're surrounded by his father's artwork, which is so cool, because I like hotels that make you feel like home.”

Right now, she’s known for spending time in environs that do quite the opposite. Palm Royale’s Sixties country club is more like a viper’s nest, where Florida society battles over status. In The White Lotus, apparent paradise explodes first in interpersonal conflict, then in the bloodier kind.

Both explore the cloying, constraining effects of a certain strain of luxury, which insulates its subjects from reality, and then themselves. In both, Bibb is phenomenal, kind then conniving, familiar then strange, plunging knives into backs but always with that megawatt smile.

She’s smiling on the way to Sotheby’s, a cultural institution she’s somehow never visited. They say you aren’t a New Yorker until you’ve lived here a decade. Bibb’s more than logged her hours, but the city is still full of secret spaces. Enter Velocity Black, to open them up. First stop: the fabled vault at Sotheby’s.

Bibb’s an art buff, so we’ve laid on something special: a private viewing of a painting by Helen Frankenthaler that hasn’t been shown in 30 years. “I got chills,” she says later. “It was really something else to see her art. It was the fact that I was the first. I don't think that’s sunk in. It felt really special, and that's what's cool about Velocity Black. They help you have those experiences. Isn’t that what life’s about?”

Bibb’s generous, so she also wants to share her own secret spaces, the places she insists any Velocity Black member has to visit when they’re in New York. So we’re off to the other side of Manhattan where, tucked in an impossibly small space in the East Village, Bibb points out a life-changing bakery: From Lucie.

“You have to go outside to change your mind, right? It's so tiny,” she laughs. “And I just loved this young woman opening this postage stamp-sized bakery. And she’s making these delicate works of art. She puts flowers on everything. They all look like floral pieces. I love it. And I always root for someone doing their own thing in New York.”

Her go-to is a gluten-free carrot cake, which she deploys as frosting-covered proselytism to cynical friends. “I'm not trying to be like, cool, gluten-free,” she says. “But when I give it to other people as gifts, they're always so happy. I have a friend, she’s not gluten-free. But she always picks it.”

Gourmand gauntlet laid down, we counter with a journey eight blocks south, to a rather harder to miss palace of steel and glass where, deep below Houston, astonishing things are happening. To experience them, you need to first enter Flyfish, the city’s hottest new members’ club, then head to the members’ club inside the members’ club—a snug omakase bar where seafood becomes culinary art.

Most diners don’t get to handle the knives and blowtorches themselves, but Leslie Bibb has Velocity Black. So she’s there behind the counter, learning the ways of the sushi masters. “It blew my top off,” she says afterwards, full and happy. “There’s a whole sushi members’ club under Houston? What are you talking about?”

But then this is the beauty of New York (especially with Velocity Black in your pocket). “It's not that big of a city, but so much is happening, and it's all happening in real time, and it's all happening everywhere. So to have a concierge service be able to take out the hard work so you get to enjoy yourself. That's a no-brainer. Just do it, so that you can really be present for the experience.”

And more experiences await. More art at the Whitney, guided around its masterpieces. Browsing at her favorite interiors store, to find inspiration for the 18th-century house she’s bought upstate. More inspo, for her wardrobe this time, in a private session with stylist, designer, and New York icon LaQuan Smith. Helicopters, sunsets, more food, more fashion. At some point, she’ll need to sleep, even if the city won’t. But not yet. There’s still more to experience.

“I thought I was going to show Velocity Black my New York,” she says. “And what really ended up happening is Velocity Black showed me the New York I've been missing.”