Let’s go to Laundromat!” my friend Sam pleaded. I was wearing no makeup, my ponytail scraped back in an almost matronly fashion with a ragged Goody band and wearing my Petit Bateau basics. “Sam, I need to go to the laundromat,” I said, giving him a knowing look and waving my hands at to my ready-for-popcorn-and-TV outfit. “And it’s Automat,” I corrected, referring to the new hotspot in London that everyone was raving about. “Well, who cares? Everyone is there!” he said with an almost scary persuasion.
Just then his Blackberry rang. “Yes, yes, of course I’m there! I’m at the back table,” he said to the mysterious Automatter — truth was his ass was at the kitchen counter while I ate leftover pasta. Several people were on the porch smoking various cigarettes and sipping various wines and, yes, even wine spritzers. Sam flipped his phone off before the Automatter could figure out that their background music did not match. He grabbed me by the arm “Let’s go! It’s so happening that….” I finished for him: “…That it’s not happening.”
“You used to be fun, you know!” he said with an icy stare. “I know,” I answered, resigned to my new life of enjoying the great indoors. I dropped a Berocca into a glass of water: “See, I’m still fun!” With that Sam drove away in his Bentley to Laundromat.
Clubs and their ilk. It used to be my barometer for my being and cool factor. At 20, I remember shivering my knees off so I could get into Lotus in the dead of winter. At Parsons, I had a beautiful friend named Jessica whose amazing face and body always got us into Bungalow 8, when it just opened. We had to know every event, every festival and making work commitments secondary. After all, we were only young once.
I never knew why I had to follow the cool. I couldn’t even dance. I was not cool in high school, not cool in life. I loved REO Speedwagon and watched Heathers like a spasm. More often than not it was always a bitch to arrange a crew. There had to be more women than men as the door bitches were quite a calculating bunch. Except when a random celebrity decided to join, then all bets were off. So stressful.
In Paris not so long ago, I did the club scene again after years of doing hole-in-the-wall dives. There it was: the old nylon rope. The border that decided if you were worth it or worth the other club in the next block where drinks were sold buy one, take one. A cool club can never be bought. My friend, a recent expat from a ravaged New York, Wall Street in particular, decided that it was an awesome idea to go to this new underground club. I was pretty game. Those places had less drama than the celebrity hotspots and better music. He being an in-denial Wall Street frat boy, I almost cringed when we got out of the restaurant and he hopped in a pimped-up Porsche. Somehow, Pimp Porsche and underground club did not make sense together. It was like the pillage of the meatpacking district. He brought his Germanic ways to the hallowed streets of punk Paris. I took a cab. I BBMd him that going to the club with no name in that tin can would cost him dearly. True enough they let every douche in and let my Porsche-wielding friend shiver on the outside. I tried to tell the bouncer in my very poor French that he was my lover; I think what came across was me telling him that he was my child or baby instead. The worse my French got, the less chances he had. We were on opposite sides of the rope; my only winning card was that I was a girl. My friend, feeling the Bear Marche in full effect, had seen the revenge of the starving artist. When the Rose Bar starts holding discounts for its cocktails, you know that it’s trouble.
In this age where it is not the Great Depression but what Tatiana Boncompagni calls “the Great Correction” times have definitely leveled. When the hottest place in London rhymes with Laundromat we’re kind sure that things are about to get down to earth. Try wearing a tinseled cocktail dress and watch stares turn on you like you’re a character from Diane Arbus’ “Circus of Freaks” series. A recent HBS case study made the rounds on Marquee and the longevity of its success. It was never too hot for it to burn. It’s kept the cool factor buy not being so cool. The science of being cool indeed.
The fling with bling is over. And nothing can club your delusions far more efficiently than a club.