brotha2Brotha

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Fishburne Movin' on Up

Laurence Fishburne is movin' on up to a deluxe apartment in the sky. But unlike the Jeffersons, it’s not on the UES.

Larry has decided to go west—not Jersey! or Aspen! but the lovely and exotic Upper West Side. A two-bedroom penthouse in the West 80s, according to today's real estate section of the New York Times—required reading boys, for cocktail party chatter and industry parties.

The star of the Matrix trilogy, What's Love Gotta Do With It and the new Assault on Precinct 13 purchased the co-op for an undisclosed price. Fish bought the apartment from Alberta Wright, the owner of Jezebel, a theater district restaurant that specializes in Southern cooking. Jezebel is upscale soul with a dramatic ambience, like a Louisiana plantation. One table even has a swing, which my exRyan and I sat at once.

The West 80's penthouse was last on the market in the early 1990's, when it had an asking price of $785,000. It's probably tripled in value since then.

Fishburne is married to his Matrix-trilogy co-star, the lovely Gina Torres. The couple previously had a three-bedroom, 3,300-square-foot condo at the Parc Vendome, West 57th Street btw 8th/9th. (Its a fab building. I used to see Beverly Johnson coming out of this building, when I worked at CBS News two avenues down.) That apartment was sold for $3.5 million in December.

Currently, Fish is filming Akeelah and the Bee, about a South Central girl from who competes in the national spelling bee.