If the music at a party is really, really bad, is it okay to pull out your iPod and plug it in to remedy the situation? More and more New Yorkers think so. Take for example a recent soirée in the loft at the Max Lang Gallery. “The music was really horrible. Erratic and just crap,” says artist Meredith Danluck. Her friend decided to take matters into his own hands. Suddenly, “the Fall’s ‘New Face in Hell’ came on,” she says. “He just hijacked the music.” It’s not like it was possible, pre-iPod, to lug a crate of records around, but now everybody travels with what he thinks is a superior playlist. Peter Post, great-grandson of Emily, and director of the Emily Post Institute, thinks you should keep it in your pocket. “That to me is the height of rudeness,” he says. “It would be no different than going to someone’s house, seeing that they’re cooking chicken, but you pull out a steak and start to cook that.” Post believes that for a host, handling iPod interlopers is all about approach. He suggests politely letting the guest know that you’d rather hear the music you’ve planned, softened with an amicable “maybe later.”

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• Archive: “Intelligencer”
• Articles by Brian Keith Jackson
• Table of Contents: Jun 12, 2006 issue of New York | Subscribe!