The Future of Party Planning Is Trespassing

- Caroline Winter

One Wednesday afternoon last fall, I found myself alone on a decaying wooden shipwreck, surrounded by fetid waters in Kill Van Kull channel, nearly half a mile from New York City’s shoreline. This wasn’t an accident, but I can’t say I knew the rest of the plan, because I didn’t. 

Earlier I’d awoken to a text message from an unfamiliar number: “Be at Snug Harbor, Staten Island, by 2:30. Wear waterproof shoes.” The message was signed “Ida,” as in Ida Benedetto, a professional “experience designer” I’d met roughly two months prior, at a dinner party. A co-founder of Sextantworks, which orchestrates events in unusual, often illegal locations, she and her partner, N.D. Austin, met me outside a tent that afternoon, where the annual Future of Storytelling conference was in full swing. They walked me down an overgrown path, through some bushes, and across a road to a rickety dock, where a 17-foot motorboat was waiting. “We’re gonna throw a little sunset cocktail party on an old barge out there,” Austin said. “If you don’t mind, we’ll drop you off with some suitcases while we go pick up the guests.” Fifteen minutes after they’d left me alone, my phone went off again. “Hey, turns out we won’t be back for probably an hour and half—are you cool?” Austin asked. “There’s whiskey in the big suitcase. Maybe you could cut up some limes?”