Bruce Helander (Michele Sandberg/Special to Page2Live)

West Palm Beach collage and pop artist Bruce Helander, a darling among Palm Beach’s art collectors and a popular figure on the society circuit, may soon lose his beloved classic home.

The bowler hat-wearing artist and his wife, Claudia, were notified last week that the U.S. Bank National Association filed a notice to have the home sold on the proverbial courthouse steps unless the couple comes up with $945,033.

That includes the principal on an $882,970 mortgage in 2006, and more than $2,060 in late fees.

Helander bought in 1998 for $195,000 but, according to court records, routinely borrowed against it. The digs are well-known for being the stage for some of the best parties in town and its second-to-none lush backyard.

Helander, whose art has been shown nationally, was the first hipster to buy a home in one of the downtown’s most neglected and blighted areas. He was soon followed by dozens of others, and Grandview Heights became livable again.

Helander listed the house in 2005 for $1.2 million.

“We didn’t know the bank was filing,” Helander said. “We were negotiating a new traditional mortgage. But this is a classic case of being upside down. The house appraised at less than $500,000.”

Satan protecting the vodka bar? A good call with this crowd! (Michele Sandberg/Special to Page2Live)

Nearly 400 people — culled mostly from local young society — passed the gates of party hell Friday night for the Ann Norton Sculpture Garden’s yearly bash known as Devil’s Night.

Devil’s Night is, bar none, one of the best Halloween-themed event in SoFla. I’m told students from the Dreyfoos School of the Arts spent most of the week decorating with ghouls and skeletons and graves and spider webs a garden that seems to have been designed only for this party.

And as they do every year, the dark nooks and crannies filled up, on the late side, with those seeking a little privacy.

At $160-per, the affair is the Gentlemen of the Garden’s richest fundraiser of the year. Proceeds go to the waterfront sculpture museum.

Check out Page2Live’s largest ever party photo-gallery, by Michele Sandberg:

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– Yikes. Model Samantha Burke, the Red Neck Riviera-based Jude Law baby mama, is bursting at the seams a week after she gave birth to a girl she says is the 36-year-old actor’s love child. Burke, 24, revealed her voluptuous new bod Monday as she drove around her hometown of Pensacola in search of baby things. Unfortunately, pictures of the little girl, Sophia, are still under wraps. Burke says she got pregnant during a short, intense affair with Law as he shot Sherlock Holmes in New York City. The British actor starred in The Talented Mr. Ripley and Cold Mountain. Should you feel generous, check Burke’s baby registry at Babies R Us here.

Samantha Burke in Pensacola on Monday (Courtesy dlisted.com)

– Holy pony, Wellington polo player Nacho Figueras is getting even bigger as the local season looms. Figueras appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show on Monday, telling Oprah Winfrey: “You can actually die playing [polo], so it’s a very dangerous thing. You have to be conscious, but you’ve also got to be a little bit crazy.” Well, audiences everywhere, it seems, are crazy about the 32-year-old Figueras. He was also featured on CBS’ Sunday Morning on Sept. 20, and the Ralph Lauren pitchman was voted second-most handsome man in the world by the readers of Vanity Fair in June. He placed ahead of Brad Pitt, but second to Twilight’s Robert Pattinson. Oprah airs at 4 p.m. daily on WPTV-Channel 5.

Nacho Figueras in Wellington (Bill Ingram/The Palm Beach Post)

Move over macho man Tommy Lee Jones!

You and those manly South Americans you share the field with in Wellington every winter won’t get so much attention this time around.

Make way for the GPL — the Gay Polo League.

The founder of the California-based league says his boys are planning to spend several weeks in the East Coast’s polo capital in suburban West Palm Beach to observe how it’s done — and field the GPL’s top team.

GPL match (Courtesy gaypolo.com)

In time, the GPL hopes to accede to the U.S. Open, rough-and-tumble polo’s equivalent to the Super Bowl. It’s played at the International Polo Club Palm Beach, whose most famous member is Hollywood actor Jones (The Fugitive, No Country for Old Men).

“The ladies with the floppy hats may not be the best looking people at the club on Sundays,” said Mason Phelps, an openly gay local equestrian and Olympics TV commentator. “Every drag queen from Miami will be tailgating at the games. It’ll definitely bring another fan base. Sure, it will grate on the nerves of some of the macho guys, but who cares what a player’s sexual orientation is. If they can play a good game of polo, so be it.”

GPL founder and former show-jumping specialist Chip McKenney says the league has fielded three teams in tournaments up and down the Left Coast so far, in places like Indio and Los Angeles.

But to get any credibility, the league needs to come out into the Florida sun, so to speak.

For more on the boys of winter and the poll, look below or click (Read more…)

– Figures! West Palm Beach’s own racist crew, former KKK grand wizard Don Black and his politically minded son Derek, once gave a platform to sickos who admired James Von Bruun. Von Bruun is the white supremacist who shot up the Holocaust Memorial Museum in D.C. Wednesday, killing a guard. Postings back in the day on the Blacks’ stormfront.org, a worldwide supremacist website, lauded Von Bruun as “a white racialist treasure”  and “a modern hero to our race.” Von Brunn once wrote a book, Kill The Best Gentiles and also ran an anti-Semitic website.

– Forget pop star Chris Brown and his Miami cruisin’. The ex-galpal whose pretty face he allegedly rearranged earlier this year, songbird Rihanna, has been hitting the Manhattan clubs with a new beau.

Rihanna and new guy, Aubrey Drake (CelibrityRadar)

– Oh sure, that’ll go over real big in NYC! Tavern on the Green owner Jennifer Leroy, whose attempt to run a Tavern clone at Wellington’s showgrounds ended in disaster last year, now is trying to alter the famed Central Park eatery, according to Page Six. The 20-something wants to tinker with the looks of the breathtaking Crystal Room and make the joint more environmentally friendly.

(By Storms Media Group/Special to Page2Live)

Cute baby indeed, way too cute for her dad.

Guess who’s the mom?

Hint: She’s preggers again, maybe with twins.

To find out, click (Read more…)

. . . Here comes the spotlight on Palm Beach County again. The Bernie Madoff saga’s getting old, so two writers with Vanity Fair are in Wellington to look into the recent deaths of 21 polo horses before a U.S. Open match. TV equestrian sports commentator Mason Phelps is their guide. ESPN’s muckrakers, meanwhile, have already come and gone. The sports network’s newsmag E:60 explores the tragedy Tuesday at 7 p.m. with eyewitness accounts from the likes of star player Nacho Figueras . . .

. . . Don’t underestimate the magnetism of former American Idol winner David Cook. I’m told by a Sunfest official that when the $900-gold passes (backstage access, among other perks) for Saturday, the day of Cook’s show, were sold out, folks started buying five-day gold passes at $2,300-a-pop just to make sure they wouldn’t miss seeing rocker Cook close and personal . . .

A well-known West Palm Beach business owner died in a freak horse-riding accident while training at Wellington’s famed Palm Beach International Equestrian Center.

Serena and Turgut Kaytmaz

Serena Bostwick Kaytmaz, 46, who grew up in Palm Beach, was pronounced dead shortly after being Medevac-ed to Delray Medical Center Friday afternoon.

Kaytmaz was the owner, along with her husband of 15 years, Turgut Kaytmaz, of Café Centro, an eatery in the Northwood section of WPB that’s becoming increasingly popular among Palm Beachers.

Her death provides a strange and tragic exclamation point on a particularly sad horse season in Wellington.

In February, polo player Tracey Mactaggart passed away from the injuries she suffered when her horse stumbled and rolled over her during in match. And last week, 21 polo ponies died, possibly from a tainted batch of vitamins, before one of the year’s biggest matches.

But the accident that took Kaytmaz was just as unusual. (Read more…)

Two days after a mysterious illness killed 21 polo ponies from the same team before a U.S. Open quarterfinal in Wellington, polo’s governing body issued a new directive mandating the presence of team veterinarians during matches.

Horses eat in a corral at the Lechuza Caracas stables Monday morning. (Lannis Waters/The Post)

Teams at the International Polo Club Palm Beach were told Tuesday afternoon that for the remaining games of the tournament, vets would have to check horses before, during and after a match for “soundness and wellness.” International Polo Club also has been asked to provide its own doctor.

Lawyer Craig Galle, who represents the group that issued the order, the U.S. Polo Association, had no comment.

Welly vet James Belden, who was contracted by the stricken team, La Lechuza Caracas, said he had no idea why the USPA issued the directive. (Read more…)