washington dc social registry

Posts Tagged ‘washington dc social registry’

Karin thanks the fuzzy green book of snobbery

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

greenbook

Today, the day that felt like we live in a pot of boiling water, was rather slow at the office. So what do you do when you work at a luxury magazine and there isn’t too much to be done? You read the green book.

For those of you who don’t need to know the who’s who of Washington for your j.o.b., the green book might just sound like a book that is green. And a-ha! It is. But it is also fuzzy and green, like snooty astroturf, and contains all sorts of information needed for established families to contact one another, for social climbers who want to do some scrambling up, or for stalkers who would like to track down the wealthy.

It has all the numbers for every senate and congressional office, The White House, the Department of the Navy (good if you’re drowing), the national holiday of every single country (Lesotho, Oct. 4th, FYI), the address of every embassy in Washington (if you need a visa for Micronesia you will want to head to N street), and then of course there is the social list.

The green book has been produced in Washington for 80 years. Back in the 30s, if you weren’t included “you were simply in Social Siberia. Quelle horreur! Death by shrimp fork.” And of course once you were on, you definitely weren’t always on. If you killed your lover, you would be removed (this actually happened).

Do people still care about the green book? Well, probably the people in it and not that many others. But it’s fun to read it aloud in the office in a pinched nasal British voice and chant about how pesky your race horses are being this time of year.