DCist Crashes the The Young and the Guest List Party

There were plenty of beautiful people at Washington Life's The Young and the Guest List party Thursday night. (Angela Valdez)

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Breaking news: Obama staffers are fixie-riding vegans. Or at least one of them is. I uncovered this total scoop at last night’s Young and the Guest List party, Washington Life magazine’s 4th annual oh-so-very exclusive affair to honor the most influential Washingtonians under 40. Invitees included Adrian Fenty and Jon Favreau, neither of whom showed up. But event organizers told me 15 Obama staffers had RSVP’d, so my goal for the night was to locate these fabulous new D.C. residents and find out if they were cool.

But the WH staffers were elusive. My first instinct was to search for people wandering around looking confused, the most obvious candidates. But other than the typical fancy party space-fillers (skinny girls in poofy dresses), everyone was wandering around looking confused. The first couple I approached told me they had no idea why they were there. The invitation just showed up in the mail one day, so they came. I asked what they did: residential real estate. I ventured that the magazine was probably trying to get them to buy an ad. Not only did they agree, they told me they probably would buy an ad. “Why not?!” (So, ahem, WashLife, I think I get a commission.)

This year’s list—which is way more accomplishment-based than previous years’—includes several brainy journalists, like the Nation’s Chris Hayes, the Atlantic’s Reihan Salam and Ezra Klein of the American Prospect. I found the three of them clustered together, looking less confused than amused. I would have stayed in the comfort of familiar faces, but I had to find those damned staffers. First, I did a cursory search for Late Night Shots founder Reed Landry, who is on this year’s list despite his history of bad behavior at past parties. Sadly, I couldn’t find the eyebrow-less social media entrepreneur. The LNS-spawned starlet Katherine Kennedy, a previous Young and the Guest Lister, didn’t even make this year’s list, presumably since Lifetime dropped her LNS-spawned reality show, Blonde Charity Mafia. The CW recently agreed to pick the show up for a limited run this summer, but not in time to save Kennedy.

I got distracted again spotting Paul Wharton, who actually is on TV. Also distracting: the somewhat out-of-place DJ Chris Burns, the beautiful, administration-hopping, Harvard Ph.D./comic-connoisseur Christina Sevilla, and Ali Savino, co-founder of the Center for Independent Media—all three of whom had gotten over the whole ridiculousness of the party and seemed to be having actual fun. Around this time, the bar ran out of champagne and someone started serving me scotch instead, which must have been the magic ingredient, because I finally met my Obama staffers. I found Bim Ayandele and Yosi Sergant, both from the office of the White House Public Liaison, chatting up Paige Speyer, owner of Wink in Georgetown. Sergant’s the L.A. marketing type who got Shepard Fairey to make a certain poster. He is now looking for a permanent place to chain up his fixed gear, which he rides to the White House every day.