What’s more New York than celebrating a massive luxury-real-estate project, built on the street that used to be the city’s actual Music Row, with appearances by drunk celebrities and the mayor? UnhappyFem visited the new Hard Rock Hotel in Times Square
Rock out with your AmEx out. Photo: Brock Colyar One of the goals when we started the are u coming? newsletter was to explore the sheer variety of nightlife in the city from the megaclub to the sex club, the frat house to the rave, from Bushwick to Seaport and back to Ridgewood.
7:51 p.m. | The party reminds me of the opening of Hudson Yards just before the pandemic. All of this big spending meant to show off the property’s new shiny finishings and fill the guests with enough booze and caviar so they feel just as shiny and it only looks shinier. I walk through an amber-lit lobby past two nude women being painted for entertainment and a photo op with an electric guitar.
8:18 p.m. | There’s an ample supply of clearly wealthy, well-perfumed older women at this party who more than likely do live like celebrities, so I decide to talk to one dressed in a trim black suit with a massive golden brooch. She tells me she’s one of the hotel’s owners. Her friend is a San Francisco hotelier with very fake eyebrows who says she’s worked in hospitality for 40 years. Why hotels? “This is a sexy business. If you’re going to be in business, it’s a sexy one to be in.
9:00 p.m. | Everyone begins heading downstairs to the hotel’s music venue, called the Venue, for John Legend’s show. The emcee for the evening, SNL’s Kenan Thompson, is already here, looking a bit tipsy himself and hiding behind a pair of aviators. While I wait for everything to start, I hit the bar, where an overfriendly older man named Greg, who looks like every other older man here, asks me, “Have you seen any celebrities?” before touching my ass.
9:35 p.m. | Apparently the price to pay for John Legend Live are a number of speeches about the Hard Rock and its “mottos” . I’m learning a lot, like the fact that the brand is owned by the Seminole tribe in Florida, so up next one of their matriarchs blesses the building. The crowd is in no mood and chatters loudly over her prayers.
10:59 p.m. | If the “well-placed source” is correct, $1 million will buy you about one hour of John Legend’s sad, sexy crooning. After he says good night, most of the guests head upstairs, collecting gift bags of CBD products on the way out. A platinum blond boy draped in Gucci tells me, “I liked John Lennon’s concert!”
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