Admirable party behavior
I snuck in uninvited and learned a great lesson. Plus new natural-dye socks, running toward fear chaddedly & more
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In today’s Plane we’ve got
Follow-up “cool wallets” intel for the Cashless ‘n’ Swagless era
When fear is how you know something’s worth doing
New natural-dye socks dropping tomorrow from of our favorite one-man clothing lines
More unbeatable recon
But first —
If you want to sneak into a party that you haven’t been invited to, there are worse tactics than to simply convince yourself that you have been invited, and proceed devil-may-care-style from there. I (Jonah) did exactly that in Paris last month, where Our Legacy booked out Le Dauphin, the famous Rem Koolhaas-designed restaurant, for a Friday evening cocktails-and-small-plates event.
Our Legacy cofounder Jockum Hallin is a Spyfriend, but I was not on the list for this s--t. No matter: “VIPs don’t RSVP,” Lawrence Schlossman told me when we discussed it over text earlier in the day, which was just the right kind of delusional bravado I needed to approach the phalanx of iPad-wielding list-checkers guarding the door, and give them my name with unearned confidence.
Worst case? I’d get turned away and go do something else. No tragedy in Paris. Best case, they’d let me in and, unlike someone who had been invited, my experience of the party would crackle with an illicit, invisible electricity known only to sneaks, cheats & other liars. If “last night was a movie,” it logically follows that the people who were actually on the list are extras. The deceptive gatecrasher is a “world builder,” baby!!
It worked — they didn’t find my name on the iPads but waved me in anyway. I grabbed a drink and posted up against a gleaming white marble wall with some homies I’d spotted.
It was then that Jockum came over, said what’s up, and did something truly wonderful and unexpected: Cornered me.
You can measure Party Chitchat in terms of how many volleys transpire before you keep it pushing. The shortest possible chitchat unit is one brief volley: “How’s it going?” “Yooo, how are you?” and then you keep it pushing. With a two-to-three chitchat volley, you ask them, “When did you get to town?” they tell you their lost-baggage story, you commiserate — and then you keep it pushing.
Jockum and I got through like five or six volleys, to the point that there was a lull, a leisurely conversational downshift, during which I expected him to dip — instead, we just kept volleying. In the back of my head I worried I’d trapped him, only to remind myself that he was free to float off and resume his hostly duties elsewhere at any time, because my back was literally the one to the wall.
This gave me a pleasant flashback. Last October in New York, Erin and I crashed a launch party for Spyfriend Alison Roman’s new cookbook, and the same thing happened. We stood in a corner and got in something like 22 volleys with Alison, whom we both worried we’d cornered, except for the reassuring fact that we were the ones in the corner.
This is admirably menschly, Mach 3+ Party Behavior of the type we can all admire. Guests: Chill in a corner. Hosts: Corner your guests.
All the better if they snuck in, because it means they really wanted to be there 😉
Meanwhile —
After the topic of Cool Wallets arose in the sletter last week — and after my brave Spyplane Confession that I just toss my cards & cash in my pocket loosey goosey — we got several intriguing Wallet Tips from Spyfriends: