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In December, Vanity Fair published an
obituary for the Washington social
scene. The capital city ain’t what it was,
the magazine lamented. Power-hungry
lobbyists have replaced Georgetown
hostesses, and instead of writers and artists
they invite policy wonks and vapid blondes to
their exclusive, and dull, soirées. It’s a shame,
although the article makes you wonder if
there’s anyone left to shed a tear.
Naysayers aside, one tradition has endured
through this period of decline. Party-crashing
is still a Washington obsession.
Consider, for example, the cadre of young men
who make a yearly assault on a certain
male-dominated gala at the Washington
Hilton. They’ve shown up nine years
in a row—and get caught every time.
The guys arrive in casual attire, khakis
and button-downs, and carry albums of
photographs documenting past brushes
with fame. At first, they tried to pass themselves
off as reporters. Now they’ve moved on to less
confrontational means, forcing their hands into
discarded wrist bands and inching through service
exits. Sometimes, they coordinate distractions in
the hopes of getting at least one of the gang into
the smoke-filled ballroom. Their yearly busts
and dull attire suggest the young men care more
about the thrill of the caper than getting in.
The boys are not alone. This annual event
also attracts door-busters with more earnest
aims. One year, security officers interrupted a
young woman making the rounds with a stack
of baseball-style business cards with her photo
on the front and a phone number on the back.
The lady claimed “modeling” as her business.
Her colleagues have long favored the event
for its choice clientele: wealthy men drinking
whiskey without their wives.
Veteran party-chronicler Kevin Chaffee, the
social editor of The Washington Times, says the
professional crashers know how to pick their
targets. Embassy shindigs are the easiest to breach,
he says. One look at the State Department’s
Diplomatic List will net a calendar of National
Days for each foreign mission. Crashers dress
approporiately and show up late.
Of course, not all nations are as welcoming
as, say, the French. Don’t even think of crashing
the parties thrown by Russia, Britain, Israel
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or Kuwait. The Saudis, Chaffee says, “don’t
entertain much.” And when they do, there’s no
booze. “Dry receptions are less interesting,” he
says, adding, “for the crasher.”
Our own government is the stingiest at
the door. No one gets past the name-checkers
at White House parties if they’re not on the
list. Not even the chairman of the Holocaust
Museum, who arrived, uninvited, at the überelite
White House Hanukah Party one recent
year. He stood outside in the cold and made
his case, and he was sent back home like a
common crasher, according to a source who
regularly attends the event. (The next year, he
“A FEW DEVILISH
boyfriends have even urged their own dates to
take one for the team…in the broom closet.”
and several colleagues were on the list).
Some of the most crash-worthy events are
private affairs that don’t get coverage in glossy
magazines. The young Republican hostess
Juleanna Glover throws the kinds of parties that
suggest Vanity Fair got it wrong. For raucous
gatherings at her Kalorama home, she invites
guests from a spectrum of political viewpoints,
most of them reporters, Hill staffers and
consultants. The best chemistry, she says, happens
when some feisty media type loosens up and
lets rip a controversial remark. (One of the most
reliable performers in Washington: Christopher
Hitchens, after a few sips). Glover says crashing
isn’t much of an issue at her parties, since the
only people who know about them are those
who get her personal welcome. As it turns out,
invitees tend to pass along the welcome, which
accounted for the close quarters at one recent
party for Washington Post writer Dana Milbank.
Glover doesn’t seem to mind the crashers. “I like
meeting new people,” she says.
Like more refined methods of social
climbing, party-crashing doesn’t necessarily
condemn the culprit to a life of shame. If
you’re good-looking or rich or charming
enough, you might just get away with it.
“It’s one thing if you’re an attractive college
student and you’re just having some fun”
Chaffee says. But since so many of the city’s big
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shindigs are charity fundraisers, crashing isn’t
cute for long. “When you start getting into your
30s, you’re basically defrauding a charity.”
Some party-goers are satisfied with achieving
something for nothing. They want to graze on
free canapés and guzzle drinks from the open bar.
Others are willing to exchange cash for social
capital — a sign that, in Washington, power still
trumps money. One local security expert says
tuxedoed wannabes have shoved hundreds of
dollars his way for the chance to get in on the
last 20 minutes of a black-tie event at the Ritz or
the Hilton. Offers of sexual favors aren’t unusual
either, he says. A few devilish boyfriends have
urged their own dates to take one for
the team, in the broom closet.
For those who value quality over
quantity, a handful of big events top
the list: The White House holiday
parties, major media anniversaries,
and of course, Fight Night. Perhaps
the most sought-after invitation in Washington
is the Bloomberg party after the White House
Correspondent’s dinner. Ever since a 2004 New
York Times story on the shenanigans of uninvited
guests, the party’s hosts have started asking for
ID at the door. That didn’t stop one journalist
from finagling past the threshold with her date.
Without ID, they announced themselves as Mr.
and Mrs. Thomas Friedman.
Washington has a long history of notorious
crashers. They call event planners to accept
invitations they never received, or RSVP on
behalf of someone they aren’t. According to
one partygoer, everyone (except this reporter,
apparently) knows about the young woman
who refers to herself as an Middle Eastern
princess, and parlays her bogus royal title into
regular invitations. (No one believes her for a
second, but they generally don’t care.) Then
there’s the well-placed couple, with Near
Eastern connections, who promised a major
contribution to get into a Washington National
Opera gala, and never paid a cent.
Whatever their methods and motivations,
the crashers haven’t stopped trying to get past
the guest list. Maybe the glory days are gone,
or more likely, were never as glamorous as we
imagine. But so long as the parties are still
worth crashing, the epitaph on the Washington
social scene will have to wait.
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