Thirty, the Magic Number?

The Times Styles section strikes again: Thirty is the new ugly...wait, the new black! People are celebrating their thirtieth birthdays with a bang , as better life expectancies, readjusted career and life expectations, and a sucky economy not giving people the kinds of freeflowing dot-com boom parties there once were so they are throwing ones for themselves. Even our friend, Greg, aka "G-Money" was asked what his 30th birthday MO was:

Greg Clayman, a founder of Upoc, a mobile technology company in New York, sent out invitations (the cover showed one of his baby pictures ) to 600 people for his 30th. "It was an amazing retrospective, shall we say, of everyone I've known," Mr. Clayman said. "Even my doctor came."

Gothamist isn't sure if we know 600 people to invite (unless the theme was Dante's Inferno and certain people would be in certain rings of hell..say...), but there seem to be a downside to having many friends: Greg must have been so busy writing thank you notes to his invitees since the next time we saw him was six months later when he stopped by Jen's birthday last fall (which was by our calculations, between the "new 22," as Gail Sheehy calls thirty, and the old "sweet 16").

The article also mentions one 30 year-old who treated his guests with a $25,000 party in Chelsea and at his place in the Hamptons, PLUS a 45 minute speech. And ladies, don't worry: It seems it's still au courant to be upset about the societal pressure of being single and 30, even if you're fabulous.

There's also been talk about a book about the age of 30, written by someone famous, someone on the Lower East Side, and someone Gothamist hasn't met yet. The very limited Amazon information says it will come out in October. We're not sure if Barnes & Noble will be carding us when we try to buy it in store, because there might be some rules about reading it only if you've hit thirty, or only when you are thirty (sorry, Greg, we think you're the "new 23" now), but that's what online is for: Underage product purchases.