Come a little closer and make sure to hit The Mark! From the photo call at the Met to the mini red carpet outside of the hotel housing the night’s biggest stars, the Met Gala has its own cottage industry of content. So what’s it really like to stake out The Mark, that Upper East Side joint known for providing some of the night’s most viral photography? (It is where Doechii feuded with a box, after all.) This is one writer’s intrepid reportage.
3:35 p.m.: I arrive and am given a lanyard. This is big for me—a lanyard, a sign of importance, purpose, moving up in the world. It’s torrentially raining.
4:00 p.m.: I am directed between Elle and People magazines, and stationed behind a large shrubbery.
4:31 p.m.: A man with a vacuum comes out to refresh the carpet. This is futile because the entire floor is a puddle. I wish he would come to my apartment next.
4:40 p.m.: I start to fight with the girl next to me because her umbrella is somehow angled so that her umbrella juice tips right onto my face and also neck. This is more infuriating than just being rained on.
4:41 p.m.: Anna Wintour comes out. It could’ve also not been her—I’m staring at a bush. I touch it. It’s real.
4:43 p.m.: Who’s that? I don’t know. I take a photo of him. “Good job, Nicolaia,” I think cheerily, “Well done.”
4:50 p.m.: All the paparazzi are friends with each other. There’s a nice sense of camaraderie with my brothers-in-arms. It feels a little like summer camp: cliques, lanyards, and also a general sense of discomfort.
4:54 p.m.: Who’s that?? Everybody else is taking a photo of him so I take a photo of him too because I don’t want to be left out. When will FOMO stop dominating my life! There’s a raindrop on my camera so he’s just a smudge. I pretend like I got a really good photo to impress my new camp friends.
5:00 p.m.: Someone tells me that at NYU Journalism school they were taught, in adverse weather conditions like these, to put their camera in a plastic bag and cut a hole in it for the lens. This seems to me an intuitive piece of information but also I didn’t go to journalism school.
5:07 p.m.: Pharrell comes out! Media screams, “Umbrellas down!!!” Mayhem. Everybody whacking each other with umbrellas. I resolve to get better rain gear—if anybody has the Arc’teryx hookup.
5:19 p.m.: Steff sends me a photo of myself. She’s watching on the livestream. I am just a little face with a hat. It’s sort of a Where’s Waldo type situation. Thom tells me I look like that Homer Simpson meme.
5:35 p.m.: A guy with a serious camera behind me tries to convince me to let him take my place behind the bush. I’m kind of like, seriously? You want the shrub spot? You can’t see anything behind the bush. But my natural sense of competition rises and suddenly I’m unwilling to move. What does he know that I don’t know about the bush? Probably a lot.
5:51 p.m.: My friend Ava Van Osdol is shooting BTS video for Kerry Washington. She look fab and so dry. I try to flag her down but resolve to just text her. She might’ve even been alarmed to hear my voice from the ficus, kind of like God speaking from the burning bush.
6:00 p.m.: The Met stairs are now open. People are coming out faster and faster.
6:16 p.m.: There is a major kerfuffle and Doechii (I‘m told) is wheeled out in a tent with umbrellas. You can’t see anything but her shoes—clunky Dr. Martens-esque Mary Janes. A media person nearby informs me it’s Doechii and not Nicki Minaj because Nicki would never wear those shoes.
6:23 p.m.: My phone is so waterlogged that the portable charger I brought won’t even work. I try to wipe it on my shirt but it gets wetter. I start saying my goodbyes. “I’m not going to make it.” I tell Steff and Robby, “Go on without me. I love you both. I’ll see you in the next life.” I send them a sweet farewell photo: Sam Smith smizing.
6:31 p.m.: My phone dies. Goodbye cruel world, goodbye Mark Hotel, goodbye tree.
6:40 p.m.: I realize that the two girls behind me aren’t media, and are actually college students who snuck in to take photos. I’m struck by this and their excitement! I give them my number and ask if they’ll take a couple videos and send them to me, which they do marvelously. It’s a reminder that everything can be a dream to somebody else and to have a sense of purpose is always a delight.
7:10 p.m.: I take the longest shower of my life.