We get off the train in the Lower East Side and walk over to Ludlow Street and find the address, 1xx Ludlow Street, and there are two parts of the building labeled 1xx Ludlow Street: a well-lit hair salon and a residential building, and I pray silently, like, "Please don't let this party I'm DJing, that I invited some friends to for New Year's, be in a well-lit hair salon"—nothing against hair salons obviously but recreational dancers don't dance as much when they can see each other, and I turn to K and I can tell she's thinking the same thing. I call the girl who hired me to DJ the party and ask her for the address, and she says, "It's 1xx Ludlow," and I say, "I'm standing in front of 1xx Ludlow, all I see is this hair salon and there's nobody in it...." and she says, "No, it's in the basement."

We look around for a second and notice a hole in the sidewalk in front of the building, and we walk over and look down into it and climb down a very steep and narrow ladder that we have to crouch on to avoid bumping our heads on the ceiling, and we find ourselves in a huge basement with concrete floors, concrete walls and a low concrete ceiling. It looks like a cave or a bunker, and there are tables of wine and snacks set up, and candles all around, and party planners milling around too.

I figuratively breathe a sigh of relief because this grungy Lower East Side basement-bunker is a much cooler place for one of the richest men in America to throw a New Year's Eve party than that hair salon, and it makes me think of something my Dad said when I visited my parents for Thanksgiving: "When I was like you [23 years old], a rich man was in good suits, in good shoes, American cars; now on TV I see rich men, multi-multi-millionaires, in sneakers, in sweatshirts, like schlumpers [Sort-of Yiddish for slob]. Is this the fashion?"

Anyway, I look at some of the candles set up around the room, and then at the one tiny entrance/exit, and then back at the candles. I look around for a fire extinguisher, but I can't see one, and I realize that one of the richest men in America is putting his life on the line to throw this party in this underground trap that maybe 15% of party attendees could climb up out of if the place caught fire near the ladder/only escape. K and I introduce ourselves to the party planners and walk to the middle of the room and I start setting up my equipment, fifteen minutes before I'm supposed to start playing, as close to the exit as I can be. When it's time to plug into the sound system, I realize I'm missing a tiny audio converter that would connect my laptop to the sound system.

I run over to a pile of audio equipment and I can't find the converter and so I panic again, and I call the girl who hired me and she says she'll send the owner of the space downstairs because he knows about the sound system and he could help. Ten minutes later, I'm pacing and drinking a cup of wine, and the owner of the space, a guy in his late 20s with the sides of his heads shaved, comes downstairs and I tell him about my dilemma and he says he has some audio equipment at one of his other spaces, an art collective on Suffolk Street, and I say, "Can we go there now?"

So me and the owner of the subterranean party space I'm supposed to DJ in run down the sidewalk on Stanton Street, dodging revelers, and I tell him, "Dude, this is like Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist!" and he goes, "Yeah, this is the neighborhood that movie took place in!" and we keep running.

We reach the art collective's building and he opens the gate and we rush inside the space and past some art and then downstairs into the basement, where we rummage through some boxes of audio equipment that looks like it's mostly from the 80s and 90s. We can't find the converter I need so he suggests that we take a whole new sound system, and so we load about 100 lbs. of audio equipment into two plastic containers and come back upstairs, close the gate to the art collective, and carry like 50 lbs of audio equipment (each) down the street back to 1xx Ludlow, which is about eight blocks away.

By the time I make it back to 1xx Ludlow, the room is packed with people, my back hurts from carrying the audio equipment, and I'm schvitzing like I'm waiting on a subway platform in August. I see some friends and say, "This isn't my coolest DJ move," because DJs are supposed to be cool guys, and I take some napkins off a snack table and towel off my face. Then the girl who hired me to DJ comes over to me and hands me the simple audio converter I needed, which someone brought, and I plug that into the old sound system and play "You Make My Dreams" by Hall & Oates, and then "Last Nite" by The Strokes. I'm eager to please.

An hour and a half later it's about 11:45 and the party is in full swing. I've had some cups of wine, one of the richest men in America dances with his girlfriend and greets his guests in the middle of the room, some Gawker writers hang out and drink cups of wine, a kid keeps coming up to me and telling me to play "Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See" by Busta Rhymes ("It will work! I promise! It'll work. I'm a DJ too!"), a venture capitalist who doesn't not look like Raj Rajaratnam dances with some girls, a bottle of champagne in one hand. Some kids I went to school with, whose startup just got funded for a few hundred thousand dollars, dance in the middle of the room, smiling, looking up at the ceiling. There are definitely some people on ecstasy here but it's hard to put my finger on which ones, and someone tries to pour me some champagne but I decline—too sugary. K comes up to me and I tell her that I was reading about how honey buns are used as currency in prison because they are so high in sugar that they remind the brain of alcohol, and she nods and gives me a kiss and goes back to dancing.

A few minutes later someone else tries to pour me champagne and I accept it because there's something really bah humbug about turning down champagne on New Year's Eve, but I put the cup of champagne down behind me.

A few minutes before midnight I'm playing "Islands in the Stream" by Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers and one of the richest men in America comes up to me and politely tells me to play something more high-energy, and then says, "We're not ringing in the New Year to this." I put on "Dancing Queen" and he looks appreciative but I know he'd prefer something more contemporary. I'll work on that. He tells me to play "We Found Love" by Rihanna after the midnight countdown and I nod and thank him for having me DJ his party.

Someone starts the midnight countdown and it takes a while for the whole room to yell in unison, everyone gets matched up around 6, and then midnight passes and I play "We Found Love" and everyone starts dancing again, so I lean up against the wall behind me and finish my wine and follow that song up with "Hypnotize" by The Notorious B.I.G.

At around 1:00 I have to go to the bathroom so I play "This Must Be The Place (Naïve Melody)" by the Talking Heads, the live version off "Stop Making Sense," which is my bathroom song because it's long enough for me to spend a few minutes away from my computer if I have to wait in line. I run over to the bathroom and the line is about 30 people long so I run to the front and as the person in the bathroom opens the door, I yell, "I'm the DJ!" and jump into the bathroom ahead of the next person waiting, and I close the door behind me.

I can hear a debate raging outside the bathroom about a) whether I am really the DJ, b) whether being the DJ entitles me to jump the line, c) if the music is good, and d) if "we should just bust the door down." Being under siege like this in the bathroom makes it hard to go, it's like thirty people are watching me, but I persevere, and I wash my hands and run out of the bathroom and back to my computer, where the venture capitalist with the bottle of champagne requests "Hypnotize" by The Notorious B.I.G. I say I already played it, make a gesture where I go back and forth pointing at both of our heads to indicate that we're on the same wavelength, and play "Southern Hospitality" by Ludacris, which he appreciates, I think, just as much as he would have if I'd played "Hypnotize."

The party starts winding down at around 3:00, and K and I watch some girls dancing languidly to "Teach Me How To Dougie" towards the back of the room. One of the richest men in America is still dancing with his girl, and K and I dance a little bit. Smoke clears out of the room and somewhere above us, the owner of the space lounges in his apartment with his girlfriend. This is a peaceful time.

I put on "Get Money" by Junior M.A.F.I.A. and stand at my computer, trying to form a New Year's resolution, and then an angry-looking cop walks in and glares at me and yells, "TURN THAT OFF!" I comply and watch as like fifteen cops flood the room. One is yelling, "WHO OWNS THIS PLACE?!" and another yells, "WHOSE PARTY IS THIS?!" I am in the middle of a high-powered sting operation.

After another minute, there are more cops than party guests. This seems like an appropriate time for the party to definitively wrap up anyway, and so I throw my laptop and equipment in my bag, zip it up, grab my jacket, and walk towards the exit ladder with K. We climb the ladder and walk out onto the street, where we stand around for a minute with one of the richest men in America, who doesn't seem pleased about this development but is taking it in stride.

We walk over to Delancey Street and try to get a cab but three cab drivers speed away when I tell them I'm going to Brooklyn. I swear to myself that when I get another cab we'll just hop in and say, "Brooklyn, on the double!" and the driver won't be able to boot us because it's illegal to turn someone down if they're asking for a ride anywhere in the five boroughs, but I can't get another one for ten minutes (maybe they sense my devious plan) and it's cold so we defeatedly get on the subway.

Three hours later I wake up to a text from the girl who hired me to DJ: "Guy who helped you w the speakers got arrested! B/c he had a party in his store sans licensing. I almost got arrested. I was sobbing. What a way to start 2012."

I think about texting back this lyric from "Islands in the Stream" by Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers: "And the message is clear / this could be the year for the real thing!" but I'm not really sure of how to put the lyric in context, or if it's applicable, and then, anyway, as I'm lying in bed and trying to figure out how this lyric connects to the arrest situation, or a larger global situation, or nothing and it's just a song I like, I fall back to sleep.

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David "Shapiro" is 23 and lives in New York City and has a Tumblr. Photo of the Lower East Side by Alexis Rondeau.

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Date: December 2, 2011.
Time: 6-9 p.m.
Location: Flaming Saddles, 793 9th Avenue, New York City. (AKA our favorite bar.)
Dress: Any way you like.
Questions? Just ask Jolie right here in the comments.

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HEY. There is a big Planned Parenthood benefit this week. It will have the lady Sandra Bernhard, and Lizz Winstead, and dreamy foul-mouthed newlywed Lisa Lampanelli, and it is at the Gramercy Theater this Thursday! Here is a special secret price for you, beloved Awl reader, of just $30, because we would love you to attend. (There are also VIP tickets and more expensive tickets, if you'd like to give them more money! Why wouldn't you?) Buy some or many of these tickets! LET'S DO THIS THING.

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Anyway so now we are standing on line outside the hotel. I catch a glimpse of myself in the reflection of a closed storefront and put on my cap because my hair is sticking up on the sides more than I'm comfortable with, and then we go inside the Ace Hotel and stand in the lobby.

The Ace Hotel is a luxury lifestyle hotel designed to appeal to creative-class jetsetters. There's an Opening Ceremony and a Stumptown Coffee, very dim light, black walls, a general den-of-sin/debauchery vibe as filtered through a corporate imagination, and also a lot of stylish Nordic people. Sometimes brands like Converse get hotel rooms here and have invite-only, hotel-sanctioned sales on exclusive items inside the rooms. We are the generation who bought more shoes and we're getting great deals on exclusive items at the creative class luxury lifestyle hotel.

So there are a lot of people using their laptops around the communal WiFi table in the middle of the lobby, and as we walk to the bar, I discreetly peep over their shoulders to see what they're working on. One guy is editing a blog post about the Congressional Special Election for the seat that Anthony Weiner vacated, but the text is too small to read anything but the headline and still appear to be not overtly reading over someone's shoulder in public, so I move on. A woman near him is shopping for shoes online with the brightness way down, and a man next to her is reblogging a picture of a model on a runway on his Tumblr.

We go over to the bar and I order a Guinness and then the bartender brings over one of those Guinness cans with the plastic ball inside it that maintains a draught-like consistency in the beer, and he says, "Eleven dollars," which is when I realize that the open bar is in the downstairs room, not this room. How many issues of AdBusters will I have to read to atone for pumping $11 into the creative class luxury lifestyle hotel economy? ¹

Then we walk downstairs, through a hallway filled with elderly women wearing extravagant couture, and into the basement ballroom, which is called Liberty Hall. The walls down here are black too, and the ceiling is very low. There is a woman standing in the corner who looks like Frau Farbissina, including the gelled curl stuck to the face.

Tavi Gevinson is sitting on a couch a few feet from the entrance and talking to a man in his 30s who we think is the style blogger who is co-hosting this party with Tavi. Then someone comes to interview her and she sounds, as you'd expect, more thoughtful and mature and humble than at least everyone on TV and every elected official. What else is there to say about Tavi? Later I will be standing outside with a young adult novelist who will wistfully say that Tavi is an ideal version of his younger self.

Then I come over and say, "Hi, I'm David, we hung out at Pitchfork," because Tavi was my friend Angelica's +1 at the Pitchfork Festival in July and the three of us hung out one afternoon there. I don't know if she'd remember me because she meets thousands of people, and I don't want her to not remember me, but I don't want to introduce myself as if we've never met before because then she might think I am doing that thing where you knowingly introduce yourself to someone you've already met and pretend you don't remember them to show them that they're not important to you and consequently you are cooler than they are. But Tavi was really friendly at Pitchfork, and also, she is 15.

So I stand there for a moment, with a slice of ego on the line, while Tavi scrutinizes my face and then she smiles and says, "Oh, hi! I remember you!" I suspect she is telling the truth but once someone tells you that they've met you, there really is no tactful way to say, "Oh, well I don't remember you." I push that consideration to the back of my mind and then we talk about the party for a minute and eventually I say, "Have you seen Austin Powers?" She nods and looks at me quizzically and I say, "There's a woman here who is a dead ringer for Frau Farbissina," and I show her the headshot on Frau Farbissina's Wikipedia page and she laughs, and then we say bye because she has 500 other people to talk to tonight, and also there's not really very much conversational common ground between me and Tavi Gevinson that I know of, and then I go to the bar where I get a cup of Stoli with ice.

Later someone will ask Tavi about the possibility of a romantic relationship with the blogger she's co-hosting the party with and she will tell them, "It's really weird that you would say that to me." I think she responded appropriately because if she'd sarcastically responded in the affirmative, the sarcasm probably wouldn't show up in print.

So we stand near the bar and admire the people at this fashion party. There are a lot of women in their seventies and eighties, maybe more than half of the crowd, all of them wearing outrageous fashions. A woman who looks like she's 85 and is about 4'7", standing at the bar, has spiky gelled platinum blonde hair. Another woman is sitting on an armchair and playing with her primary fashion accessory, a puppet that looks like it's from 1890, next to a woman who is wearing an asymmetrical cone-shaped black hat that covers one of her eyes. At least one of these women is named Beatrix, and at least a few smell like mothballs. The blogger Jenna Sauers suggests that the ones who smell like mothballs must have recently excavated the finery they're wearing from the closet.

The Frau Farbissina is standing behind a table that has a sign on it offering fashion advice for 5 cents, which I guess hasn't recently been adjusted for inflation. A man walks past us wearing a floor-length leopard-print trenchcoat over a t-shirt that says ACCEPT THE MYSTERY across the chest.

Everyone is taking pictures each of other and complimenting each other on their outfits, but one older women walks past me and I can overhear her as she reveals the dark undercurrent that must be swirling around at a lot of fashion parties. She says to another woman, "She's just BEGGING to get her picture taken." Unrelated, I get another cup of Stoli.

Then Ira Glass walks in, wearing a green Crumpler messenger bag, and orders two glasses of champagne at the bar. He is wearing Levi's 501 jeans, size 34x32. Eventually he finds Tavi and sits down next to her on a couch, and they chat but I can't hear them and am not trying to listen, and then I realize I am drunk enough to be a liability in conversation, so I text my friend that I am ready to leave and to meet me outside when he's ready. I stand outside for a while and Tavi comes out of the hotel, surrounded by a pack of women and girls. Then my friend hails a cab to a party on 44th Street. We get out of the car steps away from The Sofitel, the hotel where Dominique Strauss-Kahn allegedly didn't rape a chamber maid, and stand on the street looking up at it. Is this oddly fitting, somehow related to what the rest of this story is about, a reflection of a larger cosmic conflict, or a meaningless coincidence? I think probably meaningless coincidence. But I've never seen The Sofitel before, even after living in New York for 5 years, and now it's maybe the most internationally known hotel in New York. Here is a picture of it!

Sent from my BlackBerry

¹ ∞

David "Shapiro" is 23 and lives in New York City and has a Tumblr.

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The Wall Street Journal went big in 2007 with an A1 story that explained that the berries are "a slightly tart West African berry with a strange property: For about an hour after you eat it, everything sour tastes sweet." Then NPR couldn't wait to tell all of their listeners about it. The New York Times waited a full year and first wrote their "berry trend piece" in 2008 with a story called "A Tiny Fruit That Tickles The Tongue." This part of the article is pretty smutty:

Nearby, Yuka Yoneda tilted her head back as her boyfriend, Albert Yuen, drizzled Tabasco sauce onto her tongue. She swallowed and considered the flavor: “Doughnut glaze, hot doughnut glaze!”

It's so persuasive! "The new party drug: berries," wrote the Globe and Mail in 2009. "Every Wednesday night Three Sheets offers to mess up people's taste buds but good at a 'flavor tripping party,'" wrote the Atlanta Journal-Constitution"; "Never before had I seen anyone smile with lemon juice dripping down their face," wrote the Montreal Gazette, both in mid-2010. And even a few weeks ago: "Miracle fruit berries sweeten sour world" was a recent piece by a "horticulture instructor at Trident Technical College" in the Charleston Post and Courier.

Worried that this trend was in danger of petering out, I decided to take action to save it. I ordered the berries in pill form from Amazon and they arrived within the same week. My group of friends usually congregate on Wednesdays for our usual mid-week slosh-fest so I figured it would be a good day to try them out.

We huddled around my tiny East Village kitchen and "slowly rolled the berries around" in our mouths, just like the package said. I cut up some of our edibles in the mean time.

"I feel like we all just took acid!" one of my friends said. He was right! There was definitely that sense of group experimentation of the unknown that only drugs can give a group of friends. (This drug comparison crops up in about 30% of "miracle fruit" trend stories.)

The zinc-tasting tablets dissolved in a slow cough-drop-like way (not in a fizzy way). We then picked up some fruits from the cutting board and tried our first bites.

The lemon tasted like the sweetest lemonade in the world! The limes tasted just like a slice of Key Lime Pie from a great southern diner! Raspberries were way sweeter than ever before—tartness completely removed. The assortment of sour gummies? Sweetest candy we'd ever tried! (This assertion appears in about 100% of "miracle fruit" trend stories.)

The standout was by far the spoonfuls of cream cheese we eagerly scooped from the container. It tasted like a perfect bite of cheesecake.

The granddaddy of all trends had come and rocked our world. We worshiped at the throne of The Mighty Trend Piece and came out with near bliss. And we can safely say that this magic trend piece will never die, because there's a need to overshare about it.

A friend had to run quickly to a local bar, No Malice Palice, and immediately texted back: "just had a slice of lime with a Tequila shot. Holy shit!" He tried to explain to his bar friends what was going on but they just thought he was crazy. So thank goodness there are all of these articles out there to convince the non believers.

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The food porn party creates two works of art at once: the edibles, and the documentation of that which is eaten. The dishes are chosen for their potential attractiveness. The food, after it is created, must be styled—and then it must be shot to be glowingly attractive. But unlike actual magazine-level food porn, you can't use hairspray to make your pork look shiny, because you're actually going to eat this. In real-life food porn, you can only fight fair.

We met at my friend Jake's apartment—he's a first rate photographer and a Bushwick resident. He was to be the James Cameron of my food porn Titanic dreams. (Obviously, I was cognizant that shooting the pictures in Bushwick would contribute to the success of my trendsetting.)

The food chosen to star in the pictures, naturally, had to be seasonal. After some debate—"Should we just put bacon on top of a lot of stuff and call it a day?"—the theme of "summer's feast" was chosen for the porn at hand.

A note on bacon: it's is to food porn what "Don't Stop Believin'" is to karaoke: a standby that's sure to get a rise out of even the dullest and drunkest. Even if people don't like the song and/or food that much, it's exciting for everyone! But it's really a tired trick, in both cases, and should be approached with caution.

The menu was fairly easy to pick out once there was the "Summer Feast" theme to play around with. For a main course we had lobster rolls, which were paired with a pickled watermelon salad with heirloom tomatoes, creamed corn and cheddar biscuits (an homage to Red Lobster, naturally). Oh and a huge dish of Magnolia-style banana pudding for dessert, because I'm gross like that. (And pudding? This is a tricky choice, visually speaking! But a gamble well worth it.)

Riding the L train to the Dekalb stop with arms of groceries and a huge dish full of banana pudding is a harrowing experience. People really gawk at you when you're holding something with a clear plastic wrap covering. (The worst is when the man next to you hovers his nose over your dish to catch a whiff.)

After a couple hours of cooking in the Bushwick summer heat, all of the plates were prepared and Jake got to work. He rigged up a light in the kitchen to successfully backlight the food and shot some closeups of my smutty little stars.

Food porn, like real food or real porn, is actually quite difficult labor! It's not so much the cooking that's tough—but there was a lot of styling: wiping plates totally clean, stacking biscuits ever so perfectly. Your perspective on cooking shifts a bit: instead of prodding that thing in the oven to find out if it's done, you're thinking: does this look done? Does it have just a little delightful browning?

The trend legitimacy quotient is pretty high here. There's artistry afoot, as well as Internet sensationalism—and some choice niche travel. It could really take off anywhere from "the eastern end of Long Island," in the trend piece vernacular, as well as "in Greenpoint" or even NoLIta. Really, anywhere that people like to perform their lives by way of Tumblr, Twitter, Flickr or Facebook. A surefire trend! Just remember that bacon themes are already over.

Myles Tanzer might do absolutely anything this weekend. Photographs by Jake Moore.

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