Reading The New York Times can, at times, be embarassing. This morning in the infamous "Sunday Styles" section, the Times ran a piece about Party Buddies, a service where you can pay $350-$1200 to have a "Party Buddy" whisk you past the velvet rope into a cool Manhattan (not Brooklyn, I'm thinking) club, one you probably would have been too frumpy, old, or unhip to get into on your own ("An In With the In Crowd, for a Fee", 1/16/05)
This article is part of a pattern: articles about how old, rich, conservative, and unhip people can pay money to party like rock stars and appear (sort of) cool to the outside world. First, there was the article about sexually healthy men who take Viagra to psychologically immunize themselves from the pressures of dating in New York (one guy in the article equated taking the drugs in New York to "having snow tires on your car in a blizzard-prone region") ("In an Oversexed Age, More Guys Take a Pill," 12/14/03"). Then, the article about female "wingwomen," who, for a price, will go with you to a club and pretend they're your friends just to strike up conversations with other women and lure them over to you ("Are You With Him? Why Yes, Want to Date Him?", 10/10/04). And today... the "Party Buddy," who will get you in, get you booze, get you a table. You can even pay extra to be accompanied by a "body guard" or to have fake paparazzi photograph you as you step onto the red carpet.
And those are just the examples I remember offhand. Reading these articles week after week can make you feel part of a strange readership. I guess no one who reads the times is actually cool, but worse, they must be the kind of person who wants social acceptance so badly, and who has so much money, that he is willing to pay lots of money to buy his way into hippitude. I guess all there is to take from this is to be forewarned - those people reading a NY Times, folded up a million times, on the subway, may not actually be the languid, super-cool hipsters they appear. But, then, you knew that already, didn't you?
Posted by jess at January 16, 2005 11:04 AMGlad to see someone else is grossed out by the Style section of NYTimes. Sometimes I think I should cancel my subscription just on account of how insultingly petty that section is. The issue that recently raised my hackles higher than usual featured 2--count 'em--2 hurlable articles both on the first page: One about how drugged out New Yorkers have to be to survive the holiday blues, and the other, even more hurlable, about how women are having plastic surgery on their genitals to make them more....um....palatable?
That section is equivalent to New York Magazine in terms of how insipidly unnecessary and superficial is every single article they print. But the, I tend toward reading Atlantic Monthly and Mother Jones. Well, chacun a son gout.
yuck! and we wonder why the rest of the country thinks new yorkers are superficial and self-absorbed.
you're right - this all smacks of new york mag. i always though the times' readership was the AM/New Yorker crowd, too. Guess not, though.
Posted by: jess at January 18, 2005 9:54 AMI loved reading this article. I look forward to the next.
Posted by: Christine Collister at October 29, 2006 7:56 PM