• Who: Rach and Julie, Alan and Andy (until they left us home alone), Emily, Nic, Blake, Blake’s Emily, Myles, Elizabeth, Cousin Robin, Cousin Susan, Lyn, Yeju, Brina, ATS, Jenna, Kim, Dano, Edith the Dog
• Where: Brooklyn Heights…yes we are STILL in Brooklyn
• What: Bagels (both NYC and Montreal) and cream cheese, smoked meats, whitefish salad, chocolate babka, poop cupcakes

Julie and Rachel are having a baby. A girl baby. A baby that will grow up loving kimchi and fonts and butterless desserts and blueberry stuff and Burgerville and China (the country not the dishware) and Jettas and tall people and the Blazers and public transportation and older brothers who happen to be cats. This baby will be awesome, just like her hip, progressive mamas. But for now, that baby is just a little pork bun steaming in Julie’s oven, and a great excuse to get together in New York to enjoy an unsupervised brunch in Alan and Andy’s big shot lawyer apartment overlooking Atlantic Ave. 

True to form, it only makes sense that two totally hip, progressive parents would have a totally hip, progressive baby shower—a baby shower full of all genders, ages, races, sexual orientations, religions and zip codes (see left). The true Sesame Street/Equal Employment Opportunity Act of baby showers. For a number of the men in attendance, however, this was clearly their first (or nearly first) event of this kind. It’s not every day that you see a mustache cooing over a make-your-own onesie table. This is why the male hosts, in a flash of genius and co-ededness, ensured that any feminine component of Sunday’s activities were canceled out by a giant, overarching offset: giant platters of smoked meats.

Yes, it was clear within .12 seconds of entry into the apartment that the menu at this baby shower had been chosen by a boy. With no fruits or vegetables in site (minus the raw red onion and kosher dill pickles, which I’m not entirely sure count as a vegetables), this spread, while delicious, was the opposite of any baby shower feast I had ever laid eyes on. Totally absent were the melon slices, the pesto pasta salads, the crustless spinach quiches, or the crudites platters from baby showers of yore. There were no pink fruity drinks, and certainly no delicate petit fours. This was a mustard dipping, rye bread sandwich making, prepare-yourself-for-the-Superbowl kind of baby shower. This is a Slut College kind of baby shower. So move over, Martha Stewart—this is the 90’s, and the rules of gender equality have taken on a whole new meaning.