Only because I know somebody who knows somebody who is fabulously wealthy and fabulously generous, I recently got to enjoy a wonderful trip with some friends at a beautiful place in the Rocky Mountains that is known for attracting ridiculously rich people who are looking to wind down. I will not name this specific place, but as a hint, it is, “Someplace warm. A place where the beer flows like wine. Where beautiful women instinctively flock like the salmon of Capistrano.”
When we met up with the caretaker of the bajillion-dollar house where we got to stay (seriously, I can’t tell you how lucky and grateful I was to be in this place, where the regular nightly rent is twice my monthly mortgage payment), she told us many of the richest people in the United States had just gotten into town to spend time in their summer homes. I’ve met some rich people in my day, I guess, but not like old-money, East coast, hedge fund rich. These types are completely foreign to my Midwest sensibilities, so I viewed them with both a very curious and anthropological eye. These are my observations on how the 1 percent lives, or at least how they summer/vacation:
Yoga clothes. Everywhere. All the time.
The house caretaker told us most of the rich summer folk “have more money than God to spend on trainers and stuff and all the time in the world to get into crazy good shape.” And they apparently liked to show that off. All over town, the women wore snug little spandex capri pants and tank tops. When it was cold, they wore the tightest knit jackets they could. I packed a dress because I assumed the restaurants would be really fancy. Even at the one we went to with the sommelier, white table cloths and the menu I could barely read/pronounce, we were surrounded by women who looked like they just left yoga class (except with no signs of physical exertion). As I planned to get most of my workouts on the vacation by means of hiking and not downward dog, I did not pack spandex capri pants. But apparently that’s also acceptable hiking attire for the 8-digit annual income set. I imagine that was pretty chilly on the parts of the mountain that still had snow.
No split checks
At nearly every restaurant at which we ate dinner, when my friends and I asked the server if we could split the check, the server gave us a funny look. Like this had never been asked of them before. They were like, “Well, we could take four credit cards and split it four ways. (subtext - ‘Poor people are weird!’)” But in the 99-percent world, the person who gets a salad and water shouldn’t have to pay as much as the person who gets the steak and wine. Based on my observations, that is a moot point in crazy-rich-people world. Probably one guy just always picks up the entire check because he makes $10,000 a second, so who had the ravioli and who had the swordfish is totally irrelevant to him.
Sugar daddies
I didn’t notice it at first, but a day or two into the vacation my friend said, “There are a lot of older guys here with a lot of of younger, prettier women.” We all looked at each other knowingly then and said, “Sugar daddies.” After she said that, I couldn’t look anywhere without seeing some paunchy gray-haired guy in his 60s with a lovely late-20s/early-30s woman (who was wearing yoga clothes, of course). Many of them had children. There were guys my dad’s age carting around (and looking like they wanted to get away from) toddlers. They had “Second Family” written all over them. To be fair, some of the older men looked like they were with women their own age, but those women had done everything they could to reverse the hands of time. Which brings me to my next point:
Surgical enhancements
Even with all the training and private chefs to make one look good in yoga clothes, there are still things diet and exercise cannot make better. Things like sagging skin, droopy boobs and thin lips. When you have lots of money, it appears those things are just an inconvenience until you can get to your next plastic surgery appointment. I saw plenty of duck lips, unnaturally perky breasts pulled across rib cages in such a way as to make them look concave and immovably Botoxed foreheads.
No concern about crime
The houses in this town have millions of dollars’ worth of art and antiques inside them. Many families have profiles written about their collections in society magazines. And then they go out to dinner in their yoga clothes and leave their houses UNLOCKED. The house caretaker where we stayed said no one locks their doors. As an employee of a police department, this is unfathomable to me. In certain parts of the city where I live, a crackhead will break open your car window to steal a quarter out of your cup-holder. In Rich Peopleville, it is well-publicized that these houses contain museums’ worth of valuables, and then the occupants just leave and go skiing all day with nary a deadbolt in place. My Lord, what a crackhead would do for that kind of opportunity.
Intimidating stores
The adorable historical buildings that populate this vacation destination’s downtown area now are full of super high-end stores: Prada, Gucci, Burberry, Nina McLemore, etc. My friends and I predicted it would be like “Pretty Woman” when we walked in. Then we would laugh at the ridiculous prices and leave. Except I could never get the courage to go into one. I was just too scared. I was terrified snooty salespeople would be able to smell my middle classness from afar and tell me to leave, and I couldn’t take this imagined retail rejection. The good news, however, is that this led to excellent second-hand shopping. The thrift store was amazing. My friend got a pair of barely-worn Jimmy Choos for $38. I got four name-brand (I’m talking like Banana Republic and Gap), like-new shirts for me, pants for my husband and a shirt for my kid, all for $15. My pals and I decided if we got treated like pre-makeover Pretty Woman in one of the luxury stores, we’d come back in later with our heaping thrift store bags, hold them up and say, “You work on commission, right? Big mistake! Huge!”
“But,” you say, “You don’t even know these rich people. They could be amazing human beings. You’re just judging books by their covers.” And you are absolutely right. That’s exactly what I’m doing. And everyone else can do it, too! Maybe, just maybe, a rich lady at her summer house in the mountains is writing a blog right now about weird Midwestern people who come to town wearing jeans instead of spandex capri pants, ask for split checks and spend three hours at the thrift store.
