For a moment, the Bubbleman, a female boxer, a recovering alcoholic and others shone in our pages. Here are updates on their remarkable lives.

Whether you thought of it as the first year of the third millennium or the last year of the second millennium, 2000 was a rich time for purveyors of feature stories. Today, Southern California Living publishes postscripts to the tales of some we’ve profiled in the previous 12 months. Together, the stories give a glimpse of the startling range of life that has been chronicled in these pages.

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The “Bar Wars” (“A Shot of Trouble, Served Straight Up” Aug. 21) have ended with the signing of a peace treaty.

Hotelier Ian Schrager and his longtime business partner, Rande Gerber, husband of supermodel Cindy Crawford, have settled their dueling lawsuits out of court, with Schrager paying just over $1 million and Gerber relinquishing his interest in the trendy Skybar at Schrager’s Mondrian Hotel on the Sunset Strip.

When Schrager and Gerber sued each other last August, Gerber charged Schrager’s companies with, among other things, “misappropriation” of Skybar funds. Schrager, in turn, charged Gerber with disloyalty, dishonesty and “filching” of trade secrets while making underhanded deals with rival Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide.

Both sides are claiming victory. “I feel I win because I don’t have to do business with him anymore,” Gerber said of the end of the decade-long partnership. Countered Schrager, “I don’t think there should be any doubt about who won. I got everything that I wanted.”

Under the terms of the agreement, Gerber is gone from Skybar, the hip watering hole he’d managed since its 1996 opening, earning 50% of the profits. He also severs ties with Schrager at bars in two Schrager hotels in Manhattan--Morgans and the Paramount--and gives Schrager ownership of the Skybar trademark, over which they’d also quibbled.

Further--and this was at the heart of the dispute--Schrager says he prevented Gerber and his brother Scott from “opening next door.” Earlier, Schrager had forced Scott to scrap plans for a Cuban-themed bar at the Grafton on Sunset. Although Rande contended he had no role in the Grafton deal, Schrager charged that Scott was fronting for Rande, who was making an end run around him in violation of their contract prohibiting him from going into direct competition with Skybar.

Acknowledging that $1 million is “a lot of money,” Schrager said, “These bars make a lot of money.” (Annual revenue from private functions alone at Skybar exceeds $750,000.) He said it would have cost about $1 million to pursue his case in the courts. And, he added, the settlement means “I don’t have to deal with the Gerbers anymore.”

Their settlement stipulates that Rande Gerber, whose Midnight Oil company operates a chain of bars nationwide, will be restricted for 10 months from opening a bar in the vicinity of Skybar. But Gerber says he plans to do so in the future and is “looking at locations” along the Sunset Strip.

Eighteen months ago, Gerber sold a 49% share of his multimillion-dollar Midnight Oil to Starwood, which owns Westin and ITT/Sheraton. Gerber calls his split with Schrager “a smart business decision. I’m very happy with the outcome. I have a great relationship with Starwood [but] I’m not exclusive to them.”

He’s now free to expand his night-life empire of Midnight Oil-operated bars, which includes Whiskey Blue at the W New York and Whiskey Los Angeles. Schrager had obtained an injunction barring Gerber from operating Wetbar at Starwood’s W New York, which is close by Schrager’s Morgans hotel, but the agreement means that no longer holds.

Schrager, whose hotel empire includes the Miramar in Santa Barbara, now undergoing extensive renovation, said, “I wish Rande well,” adding, “This whole thing was . . . ridiculous, silly, bad karma.”