Photo by Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet.

D id you hear that Mondays are the new Thursdays? At 8:00 p.m., on a Monday in early March, we were packed like sardines inside Bar Oliver, the sceney spot in Chinatown across from Kimlau Square. Earlier in the day, the mayor tweeted a weather warning, which prompted several friends to ask if I would be going to our party. (They should know better.) We cleared out the tables, put our editor-in-chief Dana Brown’s playlist on shuffle, and poured “Caper Martinis,” which I didn’t have because I was sort of working in a half-assed way.

Caper’s Emma Orlow (center), with Jaya Saxena (left) and Nat Belkov. (Photo by Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet.)

Caper’s Max Tcheyan and TikTok’s Nathaniel Brown. (Photo by Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet.)

Caroline Newton and Caper’s Chris Crowley. (Photo by Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet.)

Jacqueline Donahue, Caper’s Annie Armstrong, and Anoop Pillarisetti. (Photo by Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet.)

Caper’s Dan Tsinis and Priya Gandhi. (Photo by Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet.)

Everyone involved in Caper was there, except our senior editor Maggie Wong, who for some reason was eating a cardamom bun at Landrace Bakery in Bath, England. Adam Friedland was the first guest to show up; New York Magazine writer Allison Davis was, I think, the last. Graydon Carter waltzed in around 8:10. I saw Alex Vadukul, of the Styles section, who took a selfie with another friend, Ethan Levenson, after he realized they’re both friends of Old Jewish Men czar Noah Rinsky. There was a guy in a shiny red jacket; another guy in a white fedora (Breaker Media’s Lachlan Cartwright). Several people were discussing rumors that Stissing House had fallen off. I’m heading up next week, will let you know. Leah Herman, an owner of Cervo’s and other restaurants, told me it was her first night out since having her second kid. So I introduced her to my friend Carina Guiterman, an editor at Simon & Schuster, who was out for the first time since having her first kid.

Charlotte Klein, Olive Leatherwood, Max Tani, and the NY Times’ Michael Grynbaum. (Photo by Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet.)

Avery Trufelman (Photo by Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet.)

Caper pens. (Photo by Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet.)

Carolina de Armas, Jensen Davis, and Clara Molot. (Photo by Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet.)

Eli Sussman. (Photo by Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet.)

Around 9 p.m., it occurred to me that we possibly sent out too many invitations, as I attempted to make room for friends by leaning at a 60-degree angle for so long that my left leg started to give out. “It feels like 11:45,” Leah told me around that time. Similar reviews came from New York Times writer Priya Krishna, who said it felt like “one of the Lucky Peach parties of yore”—which she planned, thank you—and the author Laurie Woolever, who told me the party made her “feel like New York isn’t dead.” By 10:00 p.m., Caper’s Emma Orlow confirms, our complimentary cigarette supply was exhausted.

Jason Lee and Emily Sundberg. (Photo by Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet.)

Caper’s Dana Brown and Robert Wolf. (Photo by Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet.)

Graydon Carter. (Photo by Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet.)

If I’m being honest, at some point I stopped taking notes, and I meant to ask more questions, but I could only get around so far. But, people had fun. I met the wife of one of my reply guys. Alex told Emma and Priya Gandhi, our marketing manager, that he tried to leave multiple times, only to get sucked back into the fun “like Gatsby’s green light.” Personally, my only regret is that by the time I asked Dana to add Roxy Music’s “True To Life,” it was too late. Next time. “Epic party,” Brock Colyar messaged me the next day. “I love getting too drunk on a Monday.”

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