Chainmail Breakdancing at The Met, Macallan Mansion & Performative Nightlife (Cafe Society Dinner Discussion #15)
What & Where Vs. Who & Entertaining vs Entertainment
Cafe Society is Maxwell Social’s weekly magazine on the intersection of community and society — an anthropological look at the underpinnings of what makes the world tick, written by David Litwak (@dlitwak) and the Maxwell team. Maxwell is building a new type of social club.
You can survive a shitty venue and a shitty event, but you can’t survive shitty curation — today we’re diving into performative nightlife, what Macallan and The Met’s Apollo Circle get wrong with their events and the rise and fall of event-based social apps like Yplan & Sosh.
A couple years ago when I was new to NYC a friend brought me to The Met for an Apollo Circle event. The Apollo Circle is a membership program that The Met runs for 20 and 30-somethings interested in the arts. In reality it’s more of a gimmick to shake down young patrons by providing them a monthly “high society” party than it is anything art related. That evening’s party was in the armory room, included an open bar and was mostly filled with people awkwardly drinking with the one friend they brought and not speaking to anyone else. After 30 minutes they gathered us around and told us that we were in for a treat — tonight they had recruited some subway dancers who were going to put on a show, and for the next 45 minutes after that, the breakdancers performed for us in chain mail as we awkwardly sipped drinks…
David (@dlitwak) & The Maxwell Team
