Last week, a Brooklyn countertop company sent out a press release, telling potential customers that they were just a couple of clicks away from having a sparkly, color-flecked counter that looks like someone detonated a Tampa Bay Rays outfielder in the middle of their kitchen.
“One of the amazing things about IceStone’s patented process for making the most environmentally friendly surface in America, is that we use recycled glass that can be found in almost any color imaginable,” the release said. Although the most amazing thing about IceStone could be that the company’s new CEO is former Congressman Anthony Weiner.
Videos by VICE
Yes, the Anthony Weiner who apparently had a habit of sending pictures of his penis to a Twitter follower; the Anthony Weiner who called himself “Carlos Danger” when he sent a picture of his junk to a 22-year-old woman; and, indeed, the Anthony Weiner who spent 18 months in prison for sending sexually explicit messages to a 15-year-old North Carolina girl.
According to Weiner’s LinkedIn account, he was hired as IceStone’s CEO in May of this year, listing his location as “Anywhere People Care About the Environment.” Dal LaMagna, the company’s owner (and the founder of the Tweezerman brand of beauty tools), told the New York Post that he’d known Weiner for several years, and had even visited him in prison.
“I wanted to help him any way I could. He served his time and coming out is tough. And so I said, ‘Can you work for IceStone?’ because he knows everybody in the city and the company is in Brooklyn,” LaMagna said, before adding that Weiner is “a better CEO” than he is.
The New York Times contacted Weiner to confirm his new gig and, although he seemed happy to chat about the company’s recycled glass surfaces, he was less willing to talk politics. “Republicans like environmentally sustainable countertops as much as Democrats do,” he said, because apparently he watched _The Last Danc_e, too.
But what about the countertops? According to a 2015 Curbed profile, the 17-year-old company’s mission has always been to offer a sustainably made surface for kitchens and bathrooms, one that doesn’t rely on shady labor practices or environmentally hazardous production processes.
One of IceStone’s signatures is its use of recycled glass, which provides the bright colors and hint of shimmer in its surfaces. Every year, the company sources more than a million pounds of glass from industrial recycling facilities in the United States. (It also reuses 90 percent of the waste water that it generates, a fact that Weiner dropped on LinkedIn, too.) IceStone sells its products to both residential and commercial customers; some of its biz clients include Campbell’s Soup, Heineken, NASA, Wells Fargo, and Whole Foods.
Although LaMagna said that one of the first things Weiner did after joining the company was to rebuild the website, the new CEO hasn’t added his picture, his bio, or any reference to himself to the “Meet Our Team” section. “At IceStone, we are proud to be judged by the company we keep,” the site’s homepage says. Maybe that’s what Weiner’s lowkey afraid of.
