The Social Climber's Bible: A Book of Manners, Practical Tips, and Spiritual Advice forthe Upwardly Mobile (22 page)

Summer, of course, means Mountaineering out of doors. Because the whole point of social climbing as a family is that all the boats in your little family’s armada rise and fall together as one, we are against sending your child off for eight weeks to summer camp. Like boarding school, the camp experience does more to further your
child’s
social ambitions than your own. Camp is also expensive. If you’re already having trouble coming up with the private school tuition for your child or children, it’s
better value for the whole family to rent a summer house as close as you can afford to be to a beach, lake, or summer community where Big Fish swim. Or better yet, where Whales are known to surface.

It doesn’t matter that you don’t know any of the Whales or Big Fish that reside in your water hole of choice, or that you lack the extra scratch and entrée to belong to any of the right beach or country clubs. Send your seven-year-old over to the rich neighbor’s house with a fresh-picked bouquet and your fruit compote, and the Big Fish (especially if they have no children or grandchildren of their own) will soon be inviting you and your seven-year-old over for dinner. If you and your family tag-team them with your well-rehearsed charm, it won’t be long before they’re inviting you to their beach/country club. Bear in mind: At most clubs each member can bring the same guest only four times per season, i.e., start using your child to endear yourself to their Big Fish friends ASAP.

As your children get older and your family matures, they will have more complicated social climbing decisions to make. If, for example, you’re Jewish and your child’s thirteenth birthday is approaching, you as a family will have to decide whether you can afford to throw a bat/bar mitzvah that won’t embarrass you and your child. Yes, bar/bat mitzvahs are often as expensive as weddings, but given that a mediocre bar/bat mitzvah often gets you and your child invited to a great bar/bat mitzvah, we say go for it and hope that your child meets a future spouse at the event who has a trust fund large enough to benefit you and all your loved ones.

Nowadays, debutante parties are no longer an exclusively WASP tradition. Debutante parties present opportunities for the eighteen- to twenty-year-old daughters of social climbers of all races and religions to meet society spouses who can improve the cachet of the entire family. Compared to the cost of a bat/bar mitzvah, debutante parties are a bargain. In New York City there are three “coming out” galas: the International Debutante Ball and the Infirmary Ball, both held at the Waldorf Astoria, and the Junior Assemblies, held at the Pierre. All are by invitation.

The International sounds classier than it is. In point of fact, any young woman whose social climber parents can get their daughter to squeeze into elbow-length white kid gloves and a white ball gown that more often than not will make her look as large and poufy as a well-upholstered sofa and are willing to donate fourteen thousand dollars to the Soldiers’, Sailors’, Marines’, Coast Guard and Airmen’s Club can attend. Though a worthy charity, the International basically offers entrée to nothing but other social climbers. The Infirmary Ball, slightly larger and more exclusive, caters to a more metropolitan crowd and only requires a donation of seven thousand dollars. Think of it as the Lexus of debutante balls.

Though not all debutantes are WASPs, debutante parties are part of a WASP tradition that places as much value on frugality as it does on snobbery. In keeping with these values, the smallest, most exclusive ball of the season, the Junior Assemblies, is also the cheapest. It is so “exclusive” that the young ladies are not allowed to bring their grandparents, which is a
much-appreciated blessing for those debutantes whose grandparents live in a trailer.

As Ms. Johnson knows from personal experience, though debutante parties are chaperoned, there are perils in sending one’s daughter off to a ball in the Big City. She remembers wanting to use her debut to show her parents that she was a woman of the people, by opting to take the subway rather than their limo to the ball. An admirable inclination, but it was definitely a mistake to put on her ball gown and tiara and proceed to board a train that took her directly to Harlem. Parents should know that even the most docile of debutantes can make an unexpected wrong turn at any point in the evening.

A membership in the right club may entail less risk than having your daughter become a debutante, but here, too, status comes with a price. Whether it be golf, golf and tennis, or tennis and beach, club membership can open up a whole new exciting world of climbing opportunities to your family. We will discuss the pros and cons of club membership and the admission process in detail in our chapter on Advanced Mountaineering. But for now, the basic questions you will be faced with are: a) Given that
the initiation fee at one of the right clubs (the one that your child’s friends at the right school belong to) is in the neighborhood of $250,000, can I afford to join? and b) Do I really want to belong to any club that would have me and my family as members?

If you and your loved ones work as a team, you can flatter, charm, and manipulate that lonely old rich woman who lives down the block or on the other side of town into taking an interest in you and your children. Why? Because your local Big Fish, like everybody else in the world, need friends . . . even if they have to rent them.

To help you get a clear picture of where your family stands
with their social climbing, turn off the TV, shut down the computer, silence your iPhones, and sit down and have a serious conversation with your child, spouse, and yourself about how they can improve the prospects for the home team. Be open, honest, forthright, and responsible with your children. Compliment them on the important friendships they have already made and make a point of thanking them for getting their friend’s dad to invite you to play golf at his club before reminding them that if they don’t write better thank-you notes to Grandpa they might not get included in the will.

S
cenester climbing is for all of you who would like to win friends, influence people, and get luxury goods conglomerates and vodka companies to pay for you to party 24/7/365. This method of Mountaineering is ideally suited for young adults birthed by baby boomers, otherwise known as Generation Y, who know they are special but have yet to do anything special.

To find out if you have what it takes to be a “scenester,” ask yourself the following questions:

1. Are you a thrill seeker with a short attention span who feels entitled but isn’t sure why?

2. Are you twenty-five years old, or can you pass for twenty-five in a dimly lit, crowded nightclub/trendy restaurant/hot bar, and do you like to hang out with Swans, supermodels, professional athletes, rap stars, or Big Fish from the worlds of fashion, finance, and film?

3.
Do you enjoy alcohol and/or drugs, especially if someone else is paying for them?

4. Do you have the stamina and discipline to stay up until five in the morning, night after night after night, to catch a whiff of fresh-brewed zeitgeist?

5. Do you own a hoodie, not like to shave every day, or look good in black and not have a job to get up and go to in the morning?

6. Do you lack the skills, inclination, cognitive ability, or the attention deficit medication to actually sit down and do something creative but still consider yourself a creative person?

7. Are you the kind of upwardly mobile youngish person who believes that an essential ingredient for a meaningful life is knowing and doing what is hip, hot, sick, next wave, cutting edge, and au courant when it comes to nightspots, tattoos, piercings, bikini waxes, Third World condiments, the latest fashion in orthopedically damaging footwear prescribed in Paris, and other such subjects, so you can say “been there, done that” a week before the rest of the world reads about them in the blogosphere?

8. And most important, do you have the courage to be deeply, truly, and successfully superficial?

If you answered yes to any one of the above, then scenester climbing just might be the right method of Mountaineering for you. Obviously, scenester climbing will work best for those readers who live in a city where there actually are hot nightclubs,
fashionable restaurants, and trendy bars. Not that we at
The Social Climber’s Bible
are geographical snobs, but in the VIP section at the trendiest, hottest hotspots in Scranton, Shreveport, or Urbana, you will be unlikely to find a person who’s ever shared a toilet seat with a Swan, “It” girl, rap star, celebrity athlete, famous actress, movie director, or artist, much less someone who’s actually met a certified member of the twenty-first-century after-dark demimonde.

The good news for the millions of you who live in or near nightlife capitals of the world like New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Las Vegas, London, Paris, Berlin, and Hong Kong is that at eleven o’ clock tonight your time, in whatever time zone you live in, there are establishments open to the public that will be teeming with glamorous Big Fish, reigning celebrities, and happening somebodies who can change your life.

Want to meet them? Of course you do. The question is, how
much
do you want to meet them?

The names of these nighttime venues for personal advancement are not secret. If you’ve been doing your homework and keeping up with the gossip columns, nightlife blogs, and party pics online, you should know about them already. You should also know that the hottest spot on the planet in New York or Paris or Shanghai at this very moment will not be the hottest spot on the planet six months from now. And sadly, eight months after that it will be a watering hole for the bridge-and-tunnel set.

For example, in late 2012, the hip social climber in NYC would have found scenester celebrities and avant-garde Big Fish lurking in nightclubs like Acme (downstairs, of course) and the
Electric Room. The year before that, it was all about the Beatrice Inn.

We know what you’re thinking: If these ultra-hot spots full of cool, trendoid Big Fish are open to the public, why doesn’t every social climber go there? Because, though legally they are open to the public, they are in fact every bit as exclusive, restrictive, elitist, and discriminating in their admissions policies, dress and decorum codes, etc., as those legendarily impossible-to-get-into old-money WASP country clubs.

The grooveball establishment of the moment is no less snobbish and status conscious than the most bigoted of old-school clubs. They’re just snobbish and bigoted about different things. Though the criteria for admission to California’s Bohemian Grove club and, let’s say, French nightlife impresario and graffiti artist André Saraiva’s new downtown New York club, Le Baron, are totally different in terms of dress code and status accessories required for entrée, they are identical in that their primary appeal stems from the fact that they are both nearly impossible to get into.

As the
New York Observer
boasted, Monsieur Saraiva’s Le Baron would “offer the tightest door since the Beatrice Inn in its heyday.” In other words, its success and desirability depend on keeping people like you out.

The nightclub doorman serves the same purpose as the admissions committee of the country club. Their job is to deny entry to those who don’t belong, the wannabe scenester as opposed to the real scenester. Exclusivity has evolved since the days of Studio 54 and its famed velvet rope. Today, the choicest nightspots have
no sign or name on the door to identify them. A mob of wannabes waiting for entrée that may never be granted by the doorman is the only advertisement a truly cool establishment needs. Though the velvet rope is gone, the doorman still reigns supreme, and note: The doorman, even if she is a woman, is invariably aimed with a three-hundred-pound bouncer at his side, who looks like he shared a cell with 50 Cent, on guard to make sure the un-Chosen take no for an answer and make way for the Chosen People of the night.

The challenge for the scenester social climber is to become one of the Chosen People.