Platinum and Centurion Card members noshed on dishes curated by chefs Cédric Vongerichten and Michael Solomonov, executive chef–partners of the Centurion Lounges at the Philadelphia International Airport and La Guardia. I guess if you want to celebrity-watch, don’t go to the U.S. Instead, this seemed to be a strictly C-list turnout: I heard actor Jason Biggs (best known as Jim in American Pie) was in the crowd, as well as ER’s Julianna Margulies. The A-list celebrities who had emerged for Coco Gauff’s very tense match against Laura Siegemund - the Obamas, Oprah Winfrey, and Anna Wintour, to name a few - were nowhere to be seen. More than a dozen women appeared to be in on some kind of black-dress-white-sneaker memo, and if you didn’t bring a cardigan to tie around your shoulders, why bring one at all? Eight out of ten Honey Deuces. In the box seats outside of one lounge, men wearing striped polos and tennis hats rubbed Banana Boat onto their faces and thighs. If you didn’t come dressed in Ralph Lauren, don’t worry - there was a store on-site. (I witnessed a child do multiple rounds - “May improve collagen production,” a sign informed.) In a members-only lounge with views of Arthur Ashe Stadium, a bar and buffet kept guests too busy to pay attention to the matches. In one lounge, non-cardholders played glow-in-the-dark tennis on miniature courts, minted their own NFTs, and submitted themselves to cryotherapy, closing their eyes as technicians blowtorched their faces with liquid nitrogen. Unsurprisingly, almost no one seemed to be watching tennis. These secluded golden bubbles allowed them to soak in the day’s matches or, as was more often the case, the luxury perks of their hundreds of thousands’ worth of Amex expenditures and $5,000 in annual dues. While the pungent stench of marijuana was said to be wafting over the stadium, Amex cardholders were sequestered into members-only lounges, some of them watering holes for the elite club of invite-only Amex Black Card holders. On Tuesday afternoon, hundreds of normally black-clad New Yorkers flocked to Queens in their preppiest pastels for the second session of the U.S.
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