New York’s Pickiest Doorman Gets a Piece of the Action

Frankie Carattini, who mans the velvet rope at the new Greenwich Village club People’s, has been a night-club doorman since 2018. He left his previous gig, at the piano bar the Nines, because he thought he had more to offer than saying yes or no. His duties at People’s are fancier. “I guess I am creative director, director of guest services, chief vibe officer,” he said.

Before the new place opened, he took its owners, Emmet McDermott and Margot Hauer-King, on a research tour of the city’s hot spots, scoping out the door action. Their first rendezvous was Zero Bond. McDermott, a film producer, said that he and Hauer-King (the daughter of the restaurateur who created London’s Wolseley group) had recruited Carattini because he had “this kind of X factor.” He added, “I mean, why is Jimi Hendrix so good?”

Hauer-King had a deeper historical take on what makes a club’s mix right. “The philosophical Enlightenment happened in places like Vienna,” she said, where disparate sorts of people were mingling at venues “and having conversations that weren’t expected. And that’s what we are aiming for.” She wore black-and-white leather pants and an oversized white top.

In 2023, the partners brought their idea for an evening club to Carattini. (McDermott’s mantra: “Hospitality is the purest form of storytelling.”) They offered him equity, something that no other club had ever done. When his relationship with the Nines fizzled—“I got a bonus, but it was a joke,” Carattini said—he eagerly signed on.

At Zero Bond, Carattini, who is thirty-five, was wearing a black beret, a Saint Laurent lace-up leather top, Celine trousers, and leather boots. After becoming a club kid at fifteen, he held various jobs in fashion until he took a gig working the coat check at Acme, and later the Nines, when it opened. “I saw it as a way to go out while making money,” he said. Eventually, he moved from coats to the door. In 2023, he served as gatekeeper for two Met Gala after-parties, racing around the corner from a bash that Stella McCartney and Baz Luhrmann threw at Zero Bond to one that Jeremy Strong and Anne Hathaway hosted at the Nines.

“He is an encyclopedia of faces,” McDermott, who had on a gray shirt jacket, said.

Whom has Carattini turned away at a door? Cuba Gooding, Jr. Whom did he almost turn away by accident? Kate Moss’s daughter. (“She waited very patiently.”) Whom did he let in purely on the basis of “energy”? A minor Kennedy. Whom did he sneak out the back to avoid paparazzi? Margot Robbie. Who would have got in on physical stature alone? Alexander Skarsgård. (“He’s so freakishly tall and handsome.”) What will not help at the door? TikTok stardom. (“If people are, like, ‘Do you know who I am?,’ my response, typically, is ‘I don’t.’ ”)

If a person passes Carattini’s vibe check, they’re in. “It’s in the eye of the beholder,” McDermott said. “It’s like that Supreme Court definition of porn. You know it when you see it.” Since People’s opened, Carattini has let in Robert Pattinson, Suki Waterhouse, and Jon Hamm.

Carattini has a formula. “I like being in spaces where a mechanic can dance with a movie star and a princess can get a drink with a plumber,” he said. “Everyone has a role to fill. We need the finance guys to buy drinks and to keep the lights on. We need the cool kids to add decoration. We need the celebrities to continue to draw people. And then we need the gays because they’re fun and fabulous.”

If Carattini doesn’t see a role for someone in line, he will mouth the words “Not tonight.”

“You know how in Japanese one word said in seven different intonations has seven different meanings?” Hauer-King said. “ ‘Not tonight’ is a whole language.” They had moved on to Raf’s, a bustling restaurant on Elizabeth Street, and she scanned the room, taking notes: the lighting (“actual ambient”), the uniforms (“they’re like Prada but make it practical”). A camera flashed and she frowned. “That will not be happening at People’s,” she said. (The club has a no-phone policy.)

The group’s next stop was to be Socialista, an Old Havana-themed bar above Cipriani Downtown. “One of the tightest doors in New York,” McDermott said. But—a snag—the place wouldn’t open until ten. To kill time, they hit the Crosby Bar, where Hauer-King and McDermott had held investor meetings. They walked into a crowded, colorful room decked out in kitsch: rotary phones nailed to the wallpaper, a giant dragonfly, orange walls.

Carattini looked around, unimpressed. “I’d almost prefer just the décor and an empty room,” he said glumly. “I would describe the crowd as from a flyover state.” He was about to head for the door, but a woman stopped to admire his zebra coat. Stella McCartney’s office had loaned it to him, he said. “I was, like, ‘I want to keep it.’ And she was, like, ‘Well, if you don’t fuck up my Met Gala party, you can keep it.’ ” The coat was his. ♦