If you stand directly in front of the Statue of Liberty--at once shorter and kitschier yet at the same time somehow grander than you expect it to be--there's a tree-dotted sward to the right, facing lower Manhattan, of approximately football-field dimensions but kidney-shaped. In front of the sward there's a promenade and a railing with a battery of those coin-operated heavy-metal binoculars looking like silver alien heads perched on metal stalks and doing the usual truly mediocre job of magnifying things. Cataractic and tunnel-visioned, those things are always disappointing, and last night, with the brilliant megalithic skyline laid out before you in even greater and crisper grandeur than usual, with planes blinking their bright-lighted way toward JFK and LGA, with private and commercial boats plying the dark, sparkling waters of New York Harbor, you didn't need any kind of visual aid to be impressed with the view.

And when you turned around, to see the party--The Party; you must give it its due--you were nearly as impressed, in a different way. At least I was, and one of the main ways I, being a meteorologically preoccupied fellow, was impressed was with the party's climatological riskiness. I ran into Jay Fielden, an editor and a writer at The New Yorker, and he told me he was doing a piece about the party's "designer," Robert Isabelle.

"What would have happened if it had rained?" I asked him.

"Catastrophe," Jay said.

"So she just rolled the dice?"

"She just rolled the dice."

She is Tina Brown, of course, and she rolled a 7. It was a fabulous (Tina would say fabbelus) night, clear and warm, with a pleasant breeze animating the multi-colored Japanese lanterns depending from the trees. Scantily dressed women, most of them in black, and black-clad men lay about drinking wine on huge striped and solid-color cushions scattered about in groupings of three or four on the grass, or sat at the 30 or so tables beneath the trees. In the middle of each the tables was a huge picnic basket, in which, under cloths folded over in a pastry-looking manner, were napkins, plates, silverware, and plastic containers filled with corn salad and potato salad, and strolling waiters supplemented these dishes with platters of lamb chops and fried chicken. Some tables featured big galvanized tubs filled with ice and bottles of white wine; columns of bottles of red wine stood in front of the tubs. A few of the tubs had 20 or 30 small bottles of Evian nestled in ice. The low, slate-topped wall of the promenade was covered by comfortable cushions, and there were long bars in two or three places. A stage and temporary dance floor had been constructed behind the statue. Generally, whatever "concept" Mr. Isabelle had for this party seemed to be working.

The 1,500 partygoers arrived at South Ferry from about 7:30 p.m. on. The statue was closed to the general public, and only party guests were allowed on the two Statue of Liberty ferries that went to the island and came back continuously all night. My wife and I boarded the ferry at about 8:30. It would be foolish to drop names; they were as plentiful as the lights burning in the World Trade Center, which presided over the proceedings like titanic parents. When we got off the boat, we were ushered along the pier by, well, ushers. A lot of them had headsets on. Some motioned us on our way with chartreuse-chimneyed flashlights. Made me feel like a 747. Tina Brown stood stunningly on the pier illuminated by camera lights in the gathering dusk in a white number and greeted some arrivees individually, causing a traffic jam and throwing the headset/flashlight crew into frenzied pleading: "This way, please. If you'll just step this way." Oh, well, there's no way of avoiding the names: In my small clot of people dislodged swardward from the pier were Margaret Carlson, ICM agent Esther Newberg and her escort, newsman/artist John Johnson; illustrator/author/director Lane Smith; Buck Henry; Tony Schwartz; ???; ???; ???.

Lane Smith, on rounding the bend in front of the statue and seeing the multi-colored lanterns, said, "That works for me. I mean, they could have gone with the fashionably neutral colors--white, gray, maybe tan. But this looks good."

And it really did. People were chuckling about the Rome of the Decadence effect of the big lawn bolster recliners. Numbers began wafting about on the breezes: "I'd say at least five; it has got to be five." "750, min." "Over a mil--no question. Think of the one-night payroll alone, and renting the Statue of Liberty." "One point two. I heard that as known fact." These zephyr-borne estimates went way up after the Grucci fireworks barge floated between Liberty Island and the skyline with an electric sign on it that said Talk (did I forget to say that this was Tina Brown's party for her new magazine, Talk?) and hurled into the black sky a literally earth-shaking barrage of pyrotechnics. The first few were dedicated rockets. "This one's for Harvey and Bob Weinstein," George Plimpton said. He knew the names of each of these single shot items: "A silver-flanged fleur-de-lis," he said, or something like that. "A 12-inch golden-dragon magnolia." The one dedicated to what people throughout the night kept noisomely referring to as "Lady Liberty" (a moniker on the same unacceptability level as "The Big Apple") came way down on the list. She'd been privatized-for-a-night, I guess. Plimpton got lost in his list at one point, but despite referring to one of the contributors to the display's soundtrack as "Cecille Dion," he brought to the event his patrician sonorities and his fabled familiarity with fireworks. The finale left no one in the audience in any doubt as to the existence of his or her sternum and ribcage.