Summer 2009: Afterwork Party at D’Or

Posted by Black Oak On May - 23 - 2009

This past Thursday I decided to check out the VelvetList New York City afterwork party being held at D’Or at the Dream Hotel (204 West 55th Street, New York, NY). Any of you familiar with D’Or knows that it is a very trendy place with a lot of unusually shaped rooms that combine to offer party-goers both the crowded club experience as well as privacy. And anyone familiar with the VelvetList afterwork parties knows that they typically do them better than anyone else in New York City.

However, this wasn’t exactly my greatest experience with a VelvetList afterwork party. Before I start talking about D’Or, let me take you back to 2007, when VelvetList was responsible for the famed Myst afterwork party.

The Myst afterwork party literally started right after work, at 5p.m., and they had tremendous drink specials for the first 2 hours of the party. It took everyone a while to get off work, get on the subway, and walk the hike from the C-train stop to Myst’s location between 10th and 11th avenue, but by 6:30, the place would be filled to capacity. Everyone took advantage of the drink specials, so by 7 p.m. it was a completely club-worthy place. I’m swear to you, by 7:30, there is no way you could decipher between being in a club at 1:00 am in the morning, or the reality of the fact that you were partying at a time of the week when you’re typically watching Jeopardy.

Fast-forward to the afterwork party at D’Or this past Thursday, and needless to say, it wasn’t quite the same experience. First, unlike Myst, it wasn’t free. Granted, it was only $5, but on principal, if I’m coming out on a Thursday evening, there are a plethora of happy hours I can go to for free, so my $5 better go a long way.

And I thought my $5 would go a long way. Afterall, they 100% advertised an open-bar from 5pm-6pm. Of course, there was no such open bar. They did give me one drink ticket, which apparently could only be used on their “dinner buffet”. Speaking of the dinner buffet, it really wasn’t anything that great. It was a nice little latin spread, full of rice, rice and beans, and a very meager chicken-dish. It wasn’t bad, and I certainly won’t complain since it was technically only $5 by way of the cover charge, however, let’s just say I won’t be in the meal line should I return to D’Or—which won’t be anytime soon.

Now, let’s get to the actual party.

Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a bad party, but it certainly wasn’t Myst circa Summer of 2007. In fact, it was very different from it. People did not really trickle in, so much as come in all at once, which I can only imagine was the result of them holding people up outside, which in my opinion is a cardinal sin when throwing an “afterwork” party. Sure, you may get away with that in May, but by late July, no one is trying to stand out in the sun to pay money for a fancy happy hour. It’s just not going to happen.

Once the place was more or less alive with people, which happened by about 7 o’clock or so, it was more or less your average party. There was a very diverse crowd; many latinos, more than a handful of Caucasians, and I would say that about 1 out of every 6 people in D’Or was a young black professional. You won’t get any complaints from me on the racial demographics of the party, but the gender demographics were way out of whack. To put it simply, by 8 o’clock, it was Sausage Fest 2009 up in that piece.

A lot of females claim to like it when the ratio of women to men is in their favor. Because that often means that if a young lady is interested in meeting or dancing with a lot of guys, then said young lady will have the opportunity to do so, and she is likely to have her pick of the litter as well. However, when you are in a racially diverse afterwork function like this, what often tends to happen is one of two things.

One, many people tend to come in groups—you know, from their jobs. But those “groups” often tend to be quite evened out in terms of their male to female ratio. That effectively makes everyone else in the club, not involved in said groups, subject to an even greater Sausage Fest than they appear to be in, because many of the young ladies in the club only intend to talk, sing, laugh or dance with their co-workers or other people they came with.

On the other hand, what can also end up happening is one racial group can end up become significantly more prominent than the other. That can ultimately result in a group of latinos, whites or blacks huddling up in one or two areas with an equal male to female ratios, and when you’re amongst your own, the natural tendency may become to dance with your own. It’s nothing racial or racist, but let’s be real, it happens.. When one big sect of the party is grouped together like that, the rest of the club is left to socialize among themselves, and once again, you may end up with a bigger Sausage Fest than the numbers would suggest.

Well at D’Or, you can bet on both of these sausage fest theorems to come to fruition, and you’ll find yourself looking for the nearest exit sooner than you had anticipated.

Overall though, the VelvetList’s afterwork party at D’Or wasn’t all bad, it was just poorly planned. However, it is only in its second week of operation, so perhaps it needs some more time to grow. That being said, it has a lot of room for growth, and I won’t be back until a sufficient amount of time has passed, so that I at least know they have had to time rectify their party planning problems.