god, new yorkers have to make everything sound so cool and elite that they have to go renaming house parties. what a bunch of douchebags.
BLIND SPOTS
By MAUREEN CALLAHAN
March 17, 2005 — WHEN Doug Jaeger wants to throw a party that will have young, creative types clamoring to get in, he does two things: calls it a private party and tells his friends not to reveal the location.
Sure enough, on Monday night, about 400 people showed up to M1-5 bar for the party, thrown by Jaeger and a few friends who form a loose collective called LVHRD (as in “live hard”).
Many guests had read about the so-called “secret” event on the popular blog Gothamist.com, complete with a link to the group’s Web site.
“We create a barrier for entry,” says Jaeger, “because people want to feel like they’re part of a community.”
Jaeger, like many of his peers, has mastered the sly art of scene-making, in which the hosts pretend to hold a club, event or show just out of reach.
The appeal of the game, says Jaeger, is simple: “New York is such a large city, people want to find other cool people - and to feel cool.”
Anyone can dine at West Village gastro-pub the Spotted Pig, which is frequented by Jay-Z and Bono - but have you been invited by the owner to hang out in his speakeasy, which seats fewer than 12? (If not, one proven tactic has been to simply call the restaurant and confidently say you want to go.)
Maybe you’ve been invited to private art openings by the Beastie Boys or John Waters at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise in Chelsea, or caught one of Fischerspooner’s earliest performances at his adjoining bar Passerby - but have you attended one of Brown’s secret after-parties at his apartment over the gallery?
(If not, don’t worry - even though one such bash, an after-party for artist Damien Hirst, was written up just this week in Artforum, Brown denies hosting secret soirees: “I have parties every now and then - I wouldn’t say they’re secret,” he says. “And if they were, I wouldn’t tell you about them.”)
Or you may read scenester blogs (Manicmess, Goodtimesroll) that tip you off to, say, a secret after-party for Interpol at the Dark Room - but have you been invited to hang out in the secret back room?
Don’t worry; according to owner Jason Baron, it doesn’t exist.
“Secret back room? What did you hear? No, there’s no secret back room there,” insists Baron, contrary to word-of-mouth testimonials.
Even if you’re hooked up enough to know that Interpol’s having their after-party at the Dark Room, “there’s always a secret after-party to the secret after-party that you’re not invited to,” says one downtown insider who - surprise! - asked not to be named.
“Unless you’re in Paul from Interpol’s living room and he’s like, ‘Can I go to bed now?’ you haven’t made it.”
Though secret societies and speakeasies have always been crucial to socializing in the city - how else do bohemians differentiate themselves from dilettantes, and dilettantes from the herd? - they have morphed into something entirely new.
In reality, anyone who tries hard enough can be part of the club - but the information they have, and the earlier they have it, has become a true form of cultural currency, with blogs helping to democratize the flow of information.
Right now, says the unnamed insider, “the thing to know about is the secret Queens of the Stone Age/Fatboy Slim after-party and the secret Coldplay gig” - both happening thousands of miles away at this week’s annual South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas.
“If you know the right message board, you’ll know what’s up,” he advises. “You’ll know what albums have been leaked” - so you can hear them and weigh in before they’ve ever been released.
He points to the 4-year-old NYHappenings as the premier site for insider information - and though it’s open to everyone, founder Dan Selzer says that a sizable number of his 3,000 subscribers have convinced themselves they belong to a private site.
“There are people on the list who think it’s a secret,” says Selzer, laughing. “When I first started it, I was handing out flyers to get people to subscribe!”
Typical postings on NYHappenings involve underground parties and secret shows.
“It’s democratic - insiders trading information,” says Selzer, for whom the notion of a secret Interpol after-party is hardly a stealth scene.
“To me, a band like Interpol has already jumped the shark,” he says, noting that in his site’s early days, Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs would personally e-mail subscribers to tip them off to gigs and after-parties.
“It’s really people who want to feel like they’re in-the-know who read the site,” says Selzer.
And now that it’s so heavily trafficked, he’s planning to make NYHappenings more “official looking” to attract advertisers - “but I want it to feel illegal to a degree, so people will feel that the stuff being promoted is cool.”
Publicist Shawn Sachs, a VP at Ken Sunshine Consultants, finds the whole phenomenon competely transparent.
“If anything was that much of a secret, the people behind it wouldn’t bother,” Sachs says. Indeed: Sometimes, even stealth spots need publicists, like the 6-month old L’Asso, a pizza place on Mott and Kenmare.
The restaurant itself is open to all, but through the kitchen and down a flight of stairs is a small, hidden room where the chosen few hang out while deejays spin or bands play.
“It’s first-person 101,” says a frequent patron, who loves the illicit feel of the space, even though he knows he’s being manipulated. “You have to know someone, or be invited by the owner.”
The owner, a 30-something engineer named Robert Benezenga, wouldn’t talk to The Post - but his publicist was happy to, and helpfully added that the “secret room” is called Mr. Yee’s.
But at the 1-year-old Frederick’s - an uptown members-only spot that costs $800 down and $200 per quarter, if you’re invited to belong in the first place - louche behavior and secrecy are taken far more seriously: Their secret back room has its own guard.
“You would never know there’s a back room there - it’s pretty obscure,” says one member. “It’s beautiful. Its very ’80s and decadent. You have to have a special key, or be invited by Frederick.”
Even LVHRD’s Jaeger knows that it may be time to reclaim a sense of exclusivity to his salon’s next event - he says that the board is considering pruning the invite list considerably and forbidding any members who run blogs to post anything at all.
And the next event?
“It’s music-based - a secret show idea,” he says, admitting that their secret show will be mocking the entire idea of secret shows, and that in itself presents an enormous challenge.
But there may be one way to get around leaks, blog posts, and gate-crashers to keep it super-stealth: “It might,” he says, laughing, “be a secret show that never happens!”
- Additional reporting by Sara Stewart
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