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    A Former Leader of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Gang Joins Trump in Court

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    An entourage of more than a dozen supporters who joined President Donald J. Trump in a Manhattan courthouse on Monday included a former president of an outlaw motorcycle gang in New York City who spent years in prison on drug charges.The man, Chuck Zito, helped found in the early 1980s the New York Nomads chapter of the Hells Angels, the infamous club that started in California. The Justice Department described the organization as a criminal enterprise and linked the New York chapter to the Gambino crime family. Mr. Zito later left the biker group to try become a movie star in Hollywood.Mr. Trump has long shown an affection for macho bikers, and addressed a rally of them in Washington in 2016 before the election. (“Do we love the bikers? Yes. We love the bikers,” he told the crowd.) A group called Bikers for Trump took part in several so-called Stop the Steal rallies after Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election.Mr. Zito was joined in the courtroom on Monday by several Trump allies who have been charged with crimes.They included Boris Epshteyn, a legal adviser indicted in an Arizona case related to attempts to keep Mr. Trump in power after the 2020 election, and Bernard Kerik, the former commissioner of the New York Police Department, who was imprisoned for tax-related charges and later pardoned by Mr. Trump. The entourage was so large that Mr. Epshteyn helped coordinate seating.Mr. Zito has experience with the criminal justice system, having served a prison term from 1985 to 1991 on drug conspiracy charges. In recent decades, he has created a new career as a stuntman and occasional actor, starring most prominently as Chucky “The Enforcer” Pancamo in the HBO prison drama “Oz.”Mr. Zito is also something of a professional tough-guy-about-town with many acquaintances in New York and Hollywood. He once served as a boxing trainer for the actor Mickey Rourke, and when the mob boss John Gotti died of cancer in 2002, Mr. Zito was one of the few non-Mafia members to attend the wake at a funeral home in Queens. More

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      Soho House Seeks to Knock Back Its Critics

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      The members club operator disclosed improving financial results as it faces criticism from a short seller and weighs going private again.Soho House has refocused its business on operating members clubs, including a newly opened location in Portland, Ore.Mason Trinca for The New York TimesSince going public nearly two years ago, the members club chain Soho House has endured a sharp decline in its stock price, economic turmoil and a short seller declaring that its shares are worthless.But the company’s chief executive, Andrew Carnie, insists it is on the right track — even as its main shareholders consider taking the business private again.“There’s no looking back,” Mr. Carnie said in an interview. “We’ve been pretty consistent over the past 12 months in delivering results.”The company released its latest quarterly financial results on Friday, reporting that it lost $118 million last year, down from a loss of $220.6 million in 2022. Using the pro forma earnings measure known as adjusted EBITDA, which excludes some expenses, it doubled its profit to $128 million.The results come amid a shift in strategy since the company’s initial public offering in July 2021.Back then, the company was still navigating pandemic-related restrictions and said it was focused on new offerings like digital memberships in countries without clubs, as well as its nascent co-working business.Soho House now believes its core business of high-end private clubs in major cities is enough to deliver the robust growth demanded by the stock markets and maintain its cool reputation.Soho House has continued to grow. Over the last year, it has opened locations in Mexico City; Portland, Ore.; and other cities. It operates 43 houses and has a membership waiting list of more than 100,000 people.In its results on Friday, Soho House reported rises in revenues both from membership fees and spending at its houses.But the company’s stock is down nearly 60 percent from its initial offering price. Developer partners have been hurt by the decline of commercial real estate and an increase in labor costs. And in November, the company blamed bad weather and the temporary closure of its location in Tel Aviv for disappointing quarterly results.The earnings announcement on Friday will be closely scrutinized in light of a report last month by the short-seller Glasshouse Research that derided the company as having a “broken business model and terrible accounting” and compared it to WeWork. Short sellers profit from declines in a company’s stock price.“The report is pretty false and inaccurate,” Mr. Carnie said. “The way it was written, it was designed to grab headlines.” (Soho House’s stock price dipped after the report was published, but it has largely recovered.)A bigger question is what Soho House’s biggest shareholders, including the billionaire Ron Burkle, have in mind for the company. In its rebuttal of the Glasshouse report, Soho House disclosed that a special committee of its board was weighing potential transactions, including taking the company private.Mr. Carnie declined to comment on those deliberations, but said he would be happy to keep running Soho House as a publicly traded company.“There are no regrets,” he said. “I’m really happy with our progress over the last 12 months.” More

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      Looking to Watch Movies and Make Friends? Join the Club.

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      Around New York City, there’s a robust circle of film enthusiasts showing offbeat movies in bars and shops, where lingering afterward is welcomed.At Heart of Gold, a cozy bar in Queens, a mad scientist recently brought to life a corpse that went on a blood-drenched rampage. But the people nursing their beers there didn’t call the authorities. They cheered.That’s because the undead were marauding on a screen, set up at the front of the bar, that was illuminated by “Re-Animator,” Stuart Gordon’s 1985 horror-science fiction splatterfest. The occasion was a Monday night gathering of the Astoria Horror Club, which meets regularly to watch scary movies over hot dogs, mulled wine and other anything-but-popcorn concessions.Before the film, Tom Herrmann and Madeleine Koestner, the club’s co-founders, introduced “Re-Animator” with a trigger warning about a sexual assault scene and a reminder to generously tip the staff. About 35 people watched the movie seated, but others stood, complimenting the onscreen mayhem with shrieking, gasping and, as a decapitated head got tossed around, an explosion of applause.The Astoria Horror Club is just one of many film clubs that, while not new in concept, are quietly thriving in and around New York City. At many of these events, movies are shown not in traditional theaters but in bars, shops and other makeshift spaces, for small groups of people, many of whom arrive early for good seats and stay afterward to gush and vent.The screenings are open to the public, but mostly it’s Gen Zers and millennials who are joining strangers to watch movies that, in many cases, are for niche tastes and were made before streaming was a thing.These kinds of films are programmed regularly at the city’s revival houses, like Film Forum and Metrograph. But what these film clubs offer is ample space and time, where debate and friendships can blossom without leaving your seat. For cheap, too: At chain theaters, tickets can be more than $20 apiece, not including food and drinks. Many of these film clubs are free to attend, although patrons are asked to pony up for beer or bites.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More