NEW YORK— Police on horseback, Asian television crews and anti-aesthete insults hurled from trucks driving through the neighborhood were just a small part of the scene that greeted the great horde of art lovers—thousands upon thousands of them—who descended on Chelsea for the fall season’s debut. More than 80 galleries had their preview parties on Thursday evening, and ArtInfo’s entire New York editorial team was there to capture all the drama of opening night.

A New No. 1

David Zwirner has made a big statement to start the year: It tripled the size of its 525 W. 19th St. gallery by moving into two adjacent buildings. The expansion gives Zwirner a total of 30,000 square feet of exhibition space, making it the largest in Chelsea. It knocks Larry Gagosian's cavernous, 26,000-square-foot warehouse on West 24th Street into second place. But given the way Chelsea is growing these days, Zwirner’s record may be broken before Hank Aaron’s homerun record is.

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Collectors (and A-List Artists) Only

And speaking of Zwirner, the gallery kicked off the season with a strictly invitation-only event that welcomed high-profile collectors and forbid wandering civilians from stopping in for a quick drink. An A-list crowd dropped by to see the Minimalist sculptures of John McCracken and folksy drawings of Jocken Nordstrom. Among those in attendance were some of the brand-name artists Zwirner represents, including Francis Alys, Sue Williams, Michaël Borremans, Mamma Anderson, Lisa Yuskavage and Marcel Dzama.

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A Jong Wait for the Bathroom (or Jong on the John)

Who was caught using the loo in the private offices at Sara Tecchia Roma New York? None other than feminist/erotica author Erica Jong.

"I thought if someone's using my bathroom, it must be someone important," Sara Tecchia told ArtInfo. (Or someone with a lot of chutzpah, anyway.)

Upon exiting the john, Jong politely introduced herself to the gallerist, saying she has a taste for collecting—American artists in particular. The news might have been somewhat disappointing to Tecchia, who, for her opening exhibition, chose to show three painters from the German-speaking world: Mathias Koster, Marc Lueders and Klaus Wanker.

But Tecchia said she was nevertheless psyched to meet the renowned writer, who shook up sexual politics back in 1973 with her famous book Fear of Flying. "It was incredible," Tecchia said. "I read all her work 15 years ago."

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Send Nudists, Guns and Money

There's no better way to attract a crowd than with guns, money and nudity, so it seems the new gallery Art & Idea was on the right track with the opening of its first official exhibition. To mark its debut, it presented the work of Máximo Gonzalez, an Argentine artist who constructs elaborate and fragile paper landscapes of tanks and battlefields. Those who look closer will find that the works, which sell for $1,000 to $18,000, are made with colorful bits of currency from around the world. And those visitors curious enough to peek behind a curtain in the rear of the gallery got another surprise at last week's opening: a very thin, very naked young man sat in the darkened room carefully sewing bright sequins onto a military uniform.

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Lock Out

Gallery owner Zach Feuer reported that an unknown prankster-cum-vandal tried to sabotage the opening-night festivities by breaking the locks “at 20 to 30” galleries that had scheduled openings for the night of Sept. 7. When Feuer, and many of his gallerist peers, arrived in the morning to open up and prepare for the evening’s events, they discovered that a tinfoil-wrapped toothpick, with a string attached, had been placed in their keyholes. Pulling the string removed the obstruction, but destroyed the locks. The problem was quickly resolved by locksmiths (who charged at a rate that seemed to indicate they knew how important it was the galleries open ASAP), and no galleries had to postpone their parties. Police reportedly have no leads; and it seems as though Banksy has an alibi?