Are private-equity bros really having a moment? I went bar-hopping in Fidi in search of blue-eyed, six-foot-five men with trust funds to ask them.
At the end of April, a TikToker named Megan Boni sang, “I’m looking for a man in finance, trust fund, six-five, blue eyes.” In under a month, the parody song achieved what all meme parents hope and fear most for their creations: It had become a full-fledged cultural moment, remixed by David Guetta and getting The Wall Street Journal to declare this “The Summer of the Finance Bro.”
But what of the humble finance bro who, for the record, didn’t ask for any of this? All he ever wanted was to work through the best years of his life juiced up on a steady cocktail of Adderall and whey protein until he had earned enough money to mistreat hotel staff. No one was thinking about how all this commotion affected him: Was he dating more? Less? Did he like being the center of attention? Was he absolutely drowning in you-know-what? Luckily, I love being stared at with a mixture of confusion and disgust. So I decided to find out.
There are hundreds of perfectly horrible “finance” bars dotting midtown and lower Manhattan, but I settle on the Spaniard, described to me as an “analyst bar” in the West Village. “It’s a terrible place to go,” reads a text I got. “You will find them.”
At 5:45, the bar is populated only with men who can’t possibly be bankers. Instead, their wardrobe and grooming suggest they work in a creative-adjacent industry like advertising or military contracting. To buy some time, I flag down a bartender to order a Pinot Grigio and am immediately told, with unfettered contempt, that they “don’t have that.” I scan the crowd for the finance community’s identifying features: blue button-downs, Tumi backpacks, and eyes that stay dark when they scan across my face and body. I am wearing belted trousers with a T-shirt, tattoos exposed; the 90-degree heat in Manhattan has caused my hair to take on a breathtaking Semitic volume. I might as well have been wearing a sandwich board reading, “UNSERIOUS BISEXUAL.”
And then I find him: Andy, a man who fits the bill so precisely I can’t tell if I’ve momentarily become invisible. I vomit a pickup line: “I’m so sorry — what industry are you in?”
“Uh … finance?” He addresses me with a stupefied indifference, as if a pigeon has grown lips and asked him directions to the N train.
It turns out that Andy, 27, works on a trading floor but has come to the Spaniard to celebrate his friend Jake’s 28th birthday. Jake, whom I meet moments later, works in software sales and, I’m fairly certain, would not blink if I dropped dead at his feet.
The passion with which Andy and Jake want me to stop talking to them is palpable, but unfortunately for them, I don’t have any other options. So I pepper them with questions: “What is the trading floor like?” “Are there mostly older men or younger men?” “Are your friends dating?” “Should I crack this glass on the bar and bleed out?” They tell me that of course they know about the meme, though they do it with the kind of patience a college student would use if their aunt asked if they’d ever heard of something called a “brat summer.” Andy hadn’t been aware of how culturally significant the song had gotten because he “didn’t really read that stuff,” by which I assume he broadly means “websites.” And, most importantly, none of this has had any effect on his or Jake’s life because they are both in relationships.
To his credit, Andy keeps apologizing for having such boring answers to my questions and wishes he had a “juicier scoop” for my article. He suggests I try one of the intern bars, like Down the Hatch across the street. “They’ll probably have better stuff for you,” he says.
I know Down the Hatch, a bar where the wood is always sticky and the food was cooked and frozen in 1999, and I’m desperate not to go. So instead, I walk to the opposite end of the bar, where a man is attempting to flag down the bartender who hates me. I overlook his gray T-shirt and ask what he does.
“Finance,” he says, and my heart leaps into my mouth.
Thanks to Dennis and his friends Henry, a corporate attorney, and Alex, in “real-estate finance,” the evening cracks open. The men are all in their mid- to late 30s, married, and couldn’t be more eager to talk to me.
The first thing to know, the guys say, is that “finance” isn’t even what most people think it is anymore. “Everyone thinks, Oh, finance, but that’s just something they learn is prestigious in school,” Dennis says. Because of the earnings cap at a level like, say, managing director, he continues, “You could make way more by owning five bodegas.” They all agree that owning five bodegas is a great way of making money, though it is also a different sort of job.
As for the meme, of course they know about it. “I’m a manager; I gotta keep up with what the people I’m managing are talking about,” Dennis says before showing me a tweet from @litcapital that reads, “When you crushed 10 espresso martinis at The Spaniard last night and hungover staring at the screen all morning.”
When you crushed 10 espresso martinis at The Spaniard last night and hungover staring at the screen all morning pic.twitter.com/G9XOniSitM
— litquidity (@litcapital) June 28, 2024
They agree that I’ve come to the right place: “It’s like a meat market here,” one says. “But you gotta come late.” But that’s not unique to this summer, because the lure of the lifestyle has persisted even when the bloggers have turned a blind eye. “I think American Psycho’s always been in. Every summer, interns converge on the city and it’s a whole scene at Phebe’s,” says Henry, my favorite, referring to another intern bar. “People are just paying attention this year.”
The HBO show Industry and Megan Boni and The Wall Street Journal would all probably suggest that men in finance are disproportionately successful when it comes to frequency and quality of fucking — and maybe some of them are. But, of course, the scene at the Spaniard doesn’t feel like the mythically horny ’90s. Because, again, it’s not. It’s just another summer.
“Bill Maher had something interesting to say about this,” Dennis tells me. “Conservatives used to be conservative, but now liberals are conservative and boring and conservatives are the fun ones.”
And he’s right. On the one hand, Wall Street is deeply passé. On the other, it’s so passé it’s horseshoed around back to chic. And it’s undeniable that we’re in the midst of a Patrick Batemanaissance, not only aesthetically (the gold Piaget Polo, Waldorf salads, contrast collars) but also from a vibes perspective. And not to make this a whole thing, but as cities rapidly become unlivable both economically and environmentally, and the ostensible “liberal” party has the same thrilling platform and candidates it did 30 years ago, it’s genuinely hard to continue to have the energy to fight to survive outside the system and not say, “Fuck all of this, I’m getting a superyacht.”
When we finish our drinks, Alex buys us another round and somehow starts a conversation with two men, Ethan and Phil, both in their early 30s, about what they do: real-estate finance. Not finance-finance, I’m told, but kind of finance, because there are assets and brokers and equity involved.
I ask about their dating lives before and after the meme’s popularity, a line of questioning that clearly makes both of them uncomfortable. While Ethan, the alpha, says he’s in a “situationship,” Phil doesn’t seem to be in much of anything. In self-conscious bursts, he confesses that he lives in Dallas, not New York, and whatever effect the song has had in Manhattan hasn’t extended to his city.
“Oh, yeah, I’m dating way more,” he says, suggesting very strongly that he isn’t dating at all. He motions to his own petite stature and sings his own version of the song: “Looking for a man in finance, five-five, brown eyes.” If this moment has helped anyone’s prospects, he implies, it hasn’t been his.
“You wanna talk to finance bros?” Ethan cuts in, unnecessarily grabbing and holding many parts of my body. “Ask them, ‘What percentage is your promote?’”
“Ask ‘What is your carry?’!” they continue to chirp. “Or ‘How much money do you put out per year?’”
It is 8 p.m., the bar has become dark, and I have become blessedly drunk. I look up and can’t help but gasp: a sea of button-down shirts and high asses and backpacks. Of dead eyes and blazers and Dockers. They are everywhere.
I practically float into the back room, filled with the warmth of not–Pinot Grigio. I meet Danny, who is celebrating his 40th birthday and used to be in biotech but switched to investment banking when he realized the world “runs on capitalism.” Fred*, a slight man from Bergen County, New Jersey, works in consulting and asks if my “husband is okay with me being out.” Fred feels that if you say you’re looking for a man in finance, it just means you’re looking for someone rich. I have to agree.
One man in his 20s in real-estate finance asks if I’m writing an article about “his girlfriend,” referring to Boni. I ask because I genuinely can’t tell if he’s kidding: Is she really his girlfriend? No, he says, but he knows her, and she doesn’t give a shit about any of this. “It’s a joke,” he says, dripping with something I strongly suspect is derision.
He and his friends ultimately escape me, and I am left alone, standing beside two men who’ve just bought tequila shots for two women who they don’t know. One of the women says, “I love tequila.” Her new friend responds, “I love mezcal.” Fearing I might vomit if I don’t eat, I leave. I walk down West 4th Street and see it: Down the Hatch. I walk down the stairs and peer in the window. Three people sit at the bar, but otherwise it’s empty. Rihanna’s “Where Have You Been” plays so loudly I feel the wall pulse, but nobody dances.
