Not enough is written about the nyc social club scene. It is an ethnographer’s wet dream, assuming the population of interest is PE guys and Wilhelmina models. My buddy invited me to Casa Cipriani the other night.
There is a certain etiquette at all these places. Usage of normal, functional access tends to be looked down upon. You don’t, for instance, open the door for yourself. It is, for all intents and purposes, part of an automatic machine that for some reason involves a stiffly clad man in a suit rather than technology that even my local Gristedes can afford to employ. Economic inefficiency is the luxury good par excellence. At these bastions of high society, luxury isn’t only or even primarily about the output. It is a matter of some maximization function involving semi-concealed effort of input against minimal energy expenditure on output. Inefficiency of spend in a potlatch-type way is a feature, not a bug. They want to bend over backwards for you, and make it mountain-movingly apparent they are doing so. But not, of course, in a sweaty or unappealing way. That would be uncouth.
Entrance always looks the same: member check-in. This is where, as an invitee, you are immediately and ceremoniously depantsed. Made to feel like you’re sullying the sacred in a social darwinistic sense. They aren’t particularly kind, or unkind for that matter, but cold, disinterested in your kind. To members, their binary switch flips and they welcome you back, by first name and with deference. In a world where status games operate effectively only inasmuch as they maintain subtlety, this members club treatment offers an exception that to me seems downright distasteful and dare I say low status?
Anyway, when you do manage to make it past the guards, the inside is, I must admit, quite nice. It’s opulent, borderline ostentatious. You are flanked by so many beautiful women that you’re made to wonder whether they work there or simply accept the perks of being beautiful via more indirect means.
As far as the people at this place, there is a somewhat disappointing lack of speciation. This presents itself both physically and metaphysically, in looks and in affect. I believe in some form of Jungian physiognomy, innards reflect outwardly. Something must happen when you spend enough time talking about deals and the same private school you both went to and how your distant relative is none other than Cornelius Vanderbilt, that manifests in distinctly physical ways. To my fellow prosopagnosiacs, good luck out there.
In these circumstances I tend to be more of an observer, not by choice but in a state of paralyzing curiosity. I wonder how many times you can talk about a Hamptons party or that trip in St Tropez and whether I’ve heard the same story from many different people or this is just The Story in some Homerian archetypical type of way. Or, I’m beginning to think, St Tropez is not actually a place in the physical sense but rather some collective experience engaged in by this in-group in the same way hitting the slopes or going down the k hole doesn’t actually involve any skiing or snowboarding or jumping down some hole. And The Story works as a social semaphore to establish the status hierarchy. You’re either someone who’s been to St Tropez or you’re not and you would do well to behave accordingly.
I struck up a conversation with a woman, probably around mid- to late-twenties. The usual first topic at these places centers around who you know, reminiscent of fraternity greek life but probably finding deeper roots back to the private school you attended (I didn’t attend one). I learned she had started a jewelry company. So I asked her about the inspiration for her designs. She said she didn’t know, she’s just always liked jewelry. And that was the end of that.
How about any other forms of art, visual, musical, cinematographic? What do you enjoy?
“I really like art. I like to go to museums,” she said.
“Yeah isn’t that one of the coolest parts about living here,” I continue. “Not that I can say I take advantage of it enough, but we have unparalleled access to some of the best art in the world. I did make it the Frick finally, the other day.”
“Oh I love the Frick. I was just there.”
“Did you have a favorite piece?”
“No,” pause, “not really.”
Ok, glad we had that talk.
I was reminded of the essay I wrote about finding people routinely boring and how that actually may mean you yourself are just boring. Casa Cipriani changed my mind. These people have, like with material possessions, a proprietary manner of appraisal when it comes to boringness, as if boringness itself were a form of curation, incuriosity the final luxury good.
If it were an acceptable and feasible thing to do, I should like to have a membership to all of these clubs. Or someone should write an ethnography of nyc social clubs. With this many people playing the field, these places are overdue for some fieldwork.
this*
It'd be good if you could dictate thus Zach, your voice is good