The Place to Buy Kurt Cobain’s Sweater and Truman Capote’s Ashes
As the art market cools, Julien’s Auctions earns millions selling celebrity ephemera—and used its connections to help Kim Kardashian borrow Marilyn Monroe’s J.F.K.-birthday dress.
The sidewalks of Lower Broadway in downtown Nashville are filled with people moving among neon-lit venues owned by celebrity musicians: Kid Rock’s Big Ass Honky Tonk & Rock ‘n’ Roll Steakhouse, Jason Aldean’s Kitchen & Rooftop Bar, Miranda Lambert’s Casa Rosa. The Hard Rock Café, which opened in 1994, when the neighborhood could still reasonably be called eclectic, sits at the far edge of the strip, overlooking the Cumberland River. One evening last November, Julien’s Auctions took over a private room at the restaurant for a three-day sale in honor of the company’s twentieth anniversary. There was a spotlighted stage full of objects that musicians had worn or touched or played: a scratched amber ring that Janis Joplin wore onstage at the Monterey Pop Festival, in 1967; Prince’s gold snakeskin-print suit, small enough to fit on an adolescent-size mannequin; ripped jeans that had belonged to Kurt Cobain.
Mike Johnson, the First Proudly Trumpian Speaker
Though he has adopted a “nerd constitutional-law guy” persona, he is in lockstep with the law-flouting former President.
The Capitol Hill Club, in a white brick town house a few blocks from the House of Representatives, is a social institution exclusively for Republicans. One evening in October, Representative Mike Garcia was eating there alone when Representative Mike Johnson stopped to chat. Garcia is a first-generation immigrant and a retired Navy pilot from a Democratic-leaning district in Southern California. His predecessor, a Democrat, resigned after a scandal four years ago, and Garcia highlighted disagreements with his party to win reëlection in 2022. He was also a loyalist to former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a fellow-Californian who had just been ousted by a small band of hard-line conservative rebels annoyed at his willingness to compromise on budget disputes. Garcia had formally nominated McCarthy as Speaker at the beginning of 2023, and his removal deprived Garcia of a patron.
Boomers Daily 