Class in New York City

Granted, I gave this blog entry a really sexy title because I wanted you to head right on in, tossing caution to the wind, because no one really wants to talk about the pecking order in New York and I now will do so, somewhat, tentatively. Somehow the subject is deemed un-American, too British, and we, still trapped in what the now forgotten but once influential American sociologist VF Calverton (United States of Amnesia?) termed the "colonial complex," have issues with the idea of class, an idea that is at the backbone of Our Daddy Britain's sense of history and order.

But there is a complex system of class, of course, as this Sunday NY Times Styles column makes painfully clear:

"I have been working at Hue, a Vietnamese restaurant and lounge in the West Village, since shortly after it opened last summer. In the beginning it was a hit with a young, fast crowd because of one of its owners, Karim Amatullah. He has been in the night life business for years, starting as a promoter and most recently as an owner of Halo. So many celebrities have been coming that we have grown selective. Once, Chad Lowe's assistant called and asked if he could have a table in the next hour. 'Sorry,' I said, 'we're all booked.'

"'Really? That's a shame because his wife, Academy-Award-winner-Hilary-Swank, is very hungry.'

"'Ah, yes, something just opened up,' I say."

A cautionary tale, to be sure; but one that is very, very indicative of class and power relations in the Big Apple. The degree to which the class system is in operation in our American democratic social experiment is, indeed, staggering. Anyone whose ever been on the unforgiving end of the velvet rope, as Sandra Bernhard brushes past you, says something to the rather plain looking lady with the clipboard and the headset, and is ushered right in behind the velvet rop (You didn't even say "pardon me," Sandra, you bitch). Or if you've spent some time in the tents at the fashion shows knows this to be true. I once had dinner with Greek millionaire playboy Taki Theodoracopoulos at Elaine's. After the dinner, as me, Taki and Christopher Buckley proceeded to down the volume of the Chesapeake in liquor he mentioned that if he had known I was such a good drinker he wouldn't just have seated me at the "second best table." Out of maybe 7 or 8 tables, Taki, ever the hierarchical-thinking European conservative, had created, at Elaine's, his own system of class, through the seating arrangements, from most important to least important table, all, I must add, in good humor, in relation and proximity to Taki. Our Sun God. (Ed Note. You are a marvelous host, Taki)

That British asshole Toby Young also had an interesting story about Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter in his appropriately titled book How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (Little, Brown U.K.). On the first day on the job at Vanity Fair, Carter tells Young:

"'You think you've arrived, doncha?' he said. 'I hate to break it to you but you're only in the first room.' He paused. 'It's not nothing -- don't get me wrong -- but it's not that great either. Believe me, there are plenty of people in this town who got to the first room and then didn't get any further. After a year or so, maybe longer, you'll discover a
secret doorway at the back of the first room that leads to the second room. In time, if you're lucky, you'll discover a doorway in the back of the second room that leads to the third. There are seven rooms in total
and you're in the first. Doncha forget it.''This, I later discovered, was Graydon's 'seven rooms' speech, a pep talk he gives to all new recruits."

Dirk Standen of Gotham Magazine reviewed the book, saying:

"At times, Young exhibits a level of admiration for his ex-boss that borders on hero worship. But Carter, the erstwhile editor of the satirical monthly Spy, also comes across as an occasionally grandiose character in the book. He likes to greet new recruits with an intimidating speech about the 'seven rooms'of power, and he boots Young out of a front row seat at a Calvin Klein fashion show with the words: 'Toby, you can't sit in the front row. You're still in the first room.'"

If there are indeed seven rooms, and Graydon Carter is not just a bloviating gasbag, then Richard Johnson and his merry band of Page Sixers stand at the gate guarding the keys. From personal experience of one who was once mentioned in Page Six (it was about an interview I did with David Lynch) I was the beneficiary of one day of glory. It was something, I'll tell you.

And, similarly, the keys to the Avant Garde room, the Downtown Room, the place where everything experimental and new is going on -- wait: would they even have a room, and wouldn't keys be considered too bourgeois? -- are held in the hands of the excellent Michael Musto and David and Kim at Paper.

There's no way I can really get into the subject in this blog because there are so many levels of power and class in the city -- restauranteur spheres of power, lawyer spheres of power, business relations of class, publicist social distinctions, independent film centers and players, journalist clas protocol, even, down the line to -- dare I say it -- blogger class, with Choire Sicha holding those keys -- the elite eyeballs, along with the mysteriosu TMLTMF, at the top of the food chain, dispensing glory, or, more importantly, links.

It's all so fascinating but I'm never going to get to the bottom of it here; I'm just trying to start a conversation.