What is it with these European rakes? They come here, take over the Upper East Side of Manhattan, flirt with our women, wear their little scarves, work in “merchant banks.” One of them, Thierry Klemeniuk, last seen assisting Patrick Demarchelier on shoots, propelling Bananarama to stardom, and operating the Miami Beach club Bash, is opening a branch of his Paris restaurant, Man Ray, in New York this month. Klemeniuk is aided by partners Johnny Depp, Sean Penn, John Malkovich, Harvey Weinstein, and, most important, his dueling Sanyo and Motorola cell phones— good for arranging projects such as Man Ray Beach, a complex of Moroccan-style tents fronting the Carlton for the Cannes Film Festival. Penn is curiously low down on his speed dial (No. 12). “He’s on the set; I don’t want to bother him. But we’re very good friends.” Klemeniuk calls Simply Red singer Mick Hucknall, No. 5, his best friend. “We’re shrinks to each other.” A millennium New Year’s Eve party on Bali was staged with club impresario Mark Baker (No. 11), lately of Lotus fame. While Chris Hanley, producer with Klemeniuk of Larry Clark’s film Bully, gets his own space at No. 7, the next slot is reserved for an entire subspecies: “My ex-girlfriends. They call and say, ‘I have a problem with my boyfriend—what do I do!?’ They’re all models or actresses. It’s not my fault.” We don’t blame you, Thierry. But won’t opening a restaurant in America in summer mean ... missing Saint-Tropez? “I work in this business all year—what’s the point to go on the beach and see all my clients?” he says. But there is always Southampton. “Yes, but,” he insists, “the Hamptons is the weekend. It’s not vacation.”