Party Down, Over and Over
Blog-chives, Vol. 6: Are we having fun yet?
Are we?! This weekly blogletter is Down the Pipes and I’m your blogger James Del. Weekender Editions are usually throwaways because it means life got in the way of my writing this week, so you’re usually getting something glib from the archives. If you’re new here, consider starting with the free stuff before going all in. Or just subscribe and see what ya get!
DTP is filing this week from Quintana Roo, Cancun, a notably capitalized and colonized slice of the southern Gulf of Mexico that could best be described as Florida’s Hawaii. As long as nothing catastrophic happens between now and next Friday, I’ll tell you more about my Mexican cousins next week.
This week I’m quickly reminiscing Party Down, the Starz show that perfectly captures the tortuous existence of event catering workers; specifically the ones who aspire to bigger and better things (which is just about all of them).
The show premiered in March of 2009, right around when I was first starting to throw my own parties for Gawker on our new, fancy roof deck. I was no stranger to organizing parties at that point—residents of NYU’s Rubin Hall in 2005 and Broome Street in 2006 can attest to my early work.
Parties are wild things when you look at them objectively. A scheduled time for people to gather to celebrate something, sure. Or an excuse to behave utterly hedonistically amongst a group of similarly minded agents of chaos who are united in their cause for an excuse to behave erratically. It is at the finest parties at the latest hours that the finest people can have their finest moments; dark secrets shared amongst revelers young and old, friends old and new.
So in 2009 when Starz RFPed Gawker Media for a new show called Party Down about a group of shoddy caterers who hop from Hollywood party to Hollywood party, hooking up and bartending hungover, I felt a twinge I now know well: I wanted to throw that party.
This promised to be a show that would show the nihilistic, sexy underbelly of what it’s like to be the party people responsible for your best memories.
I needed to bring the show to life. I wanted to play host to those sordid secrets that catering staffs all share at every event you’ve ever been to.
Yes, that’s right. It’s safe to say that if you’ve been to a party—any party—I can almost guarantee that someone on the staff working that party is probably drunk and/or high. If the crew is young and even remotely attractive, there’s a good chance some of them have hooked up or are actively hooking up (possibly even during lulls in service at your own party!).
Catering is not a glamorous job. It is a kind of purgatory work, ebbing and flowing with the demand of the public’s desire to rage. It can be consistent, sure, but those jobs pay just enough to keep you in them…no savings, no time for networking or practicing your “actual” career, and the regular indignity of being viewed as “the help” by people who are shwasted and acting all sorts of untoward is deeply demoralizing.
Carrying trays of food and drinks around while other people get hammered is backbreaking, oftentimes demeaning, and occasionally disgusting work. This new show Party Down was coming out to celebrate those people and show the world from their perspective.
So for a change, I wanted to throw a party where the catering staff would get to have all the fun. Let them drink and smoke, tell them to ignore guests and generally be kind of unhelpful.
Well, if you can believe it, the marketing team at Starz thought it was a fabulous idea. We were gonna have our first big branded party on our new roof: Gawker Parties Down.
I hired model bartenders, a thing you can do in just about any city in the world, and put them in the signature Party Down uniform. I instructed them to take sincere interest in one another’s personal lives, as if they’ve all been longtime friends and colleagues and are more excited to catch up than really help anyone. If they wanted to jointly come up with some interpersonal backstories or made up feuds with one another (or with me, as their “boss”), they could. Be absolutely brusque with the guests, like they are the least exciting thing happening in the room.
The whole thing cost maybe $10k? BizBash’s coverage was my first taste of event press that would unknowingly trigger a long stretch of wild and weird nights hosting, crashing, and crushing parties. Tales for another trip, but the Party Down party pretty much launched it all. Psyched the show is back, worth getting a subscription to Starz long enough to get through 6 episodes, at least.
The archived party recap with additional photos—as it always was in those days—is after the jump.
Until next week, party down!
