David 
There are very few reasons why you should skip class. One of the rare class-cuttable occasions is attending Andrew Yang’s OFFLINE Party in the storied city of Chicago. For those not in the know, Andrew Yang is a former presidential contender (2020) and ran for mayor of New York City in 2021. He currently boasts his political strength in the shape of a new political party he’s formed, The Forward Party. The forward-thinking Andrew Yang got his start as an entrepreneur and has risen to the illustrious rank of CNN commentator. He’s a socialite who loves technology while recognizing that it has a few flaws. His beliefs manifested themselves in the form of one of Mr. Yang’s new ventures: throwing parties where participants are prohibited from using their phones. His latest soirée took place at Chicago’s Joy District this past Wednesday. After catching wind of his function, I, along with Tony, a frequent collaborator and fellow journalist, decided to make an appearance at his phone-free bash.
Tony and I arrived at Joy District a little before 11pm. We were supposed to arrive much earlier, but our Amtrak was delayed. Our train “broke down” about 15 minutes away from Union Station and we were stuck on the train while the conductor slithered around the train cars. I’m not convinced that the train was ever really broken. Consider this: is it possible that public servants from both the left and the right formed a temporary truce, halting the forward motion of the train? I don’t think that’s inconceivable. Eventually the crew came to the realization that the train was still intact, and we arrived at Union Station. While trapped in one of the passenger cars, I bided my time by memorizing directions to Joy District like my life depended on it. I didn’t want to miss a single second of Andrew Yang.
After a run from Union Station that turned into an exhilarating jog for me and a near death experience for Tony, we arrived at Joy District and headed up the stairs to the event. Reaching the top of the steps, we encountered an agent of Andrew Yang who instructed us to put our phones in a Ziploc bag. We sealed our phones away obediently and entered a phone free zone.
A wave of boredom washed over me around the time I lost access to my phone. Tony immediately had to use the bathroom, something he’d been complaining about since I forced him to run all the way to Joy District. Having no one to talk to, I stood around and evaluated the crowd, a mix of millennials and regular people, no one had their phones out and the whole scene felt aimless and boring. This is a time where I would have really liked to have my phone so that I could play on it, but that sort of behavior just doesn’t fly at a no-phone party. I tried to gather myself by looking in a mirror I found. Vainly, I spent a few minutes deciding whether I should wear my blue light glasses or not. Despite the lack of phones, I decided to wear them just to be safe.
I reflected in the mirror for what felt like a few hours (likely less than 20 minutes) until Tony eventually returned, where he found me in a horrible trance. I kept taking my glasses off and putting them back on again while muttering about how little I wanted to be at the party. Feeling reassurance from Tony’s familiarity, I opted to make the most of the event. Tony’s sudden appearance set the night into motion as I turned around and found myself face to face with Andrew Yang.
I felt the need to introduce myself to him (although I don’t think Andrew ever got my name) and I went over to shake his hand.
“Andrew Yang!”, I said, greeting the man of the hour.
“Is that Andrew Yang from the internet?”, Tony quipped.
Andrew seemed moderately interested in saying hello to us so I thought that I might prove my phoneless dedication to him. Taking off my glasses, I asked Andrew, “Hey, do you know what these are?”
“Glasses?” replied the highly esteemed political heavyweight. I then embarked on a long-winded response about how these were actually blue light glasses which Mr. Yang did not seem particularly amused by or interested in. I wish that Andrew Yang, who spent his years-long career advocating for the everyman, could have expressed a little more concern, given that blue light is a serious issue that affects dozens of Americans each year. I suffer from headaches, eye strain, selfishness, and a sense of irritability daily. A few of these qualities can be completely ascribed to blue light.
The rush of meeting Andrew Yang got Tony and I to fully immerse ourselves in the spirit of the party. We partook in a few of the activities Mr. Yang had set out for the partygoers. My favorite of the activities were the icebreakers Mr. Yang’s team had written on little playing cards. The goal of the game was simple: to make a friend. This is a game that Tony loves to play all the time, even without cards, so before I knew it, he had us surrounded by three students from Northwestern.
The Northwestern students wore inquisitive expressions; it’s very likely that they had never seen students from UIUC up close before—we may as well have been aliens to them. I wound up trapped in a conversation with a woman whom I assumed to be the ringleader of the group. Through talking with her, I gleaned that her inquisitive nature stemmed from her work as a journalist at the failing Daily Northwestern, our sister paper. She interrogated me on why I was here, at the Andrew Yang party, rather than being in Champaign. I simply explained that I wanted to see what all the fuss was about and that I rarely get any work done at school anyways, so it was fine for me to take a day off. She kept asking me if I knew anything about politics; I insisted that I knew nothing of politics, history, pop culture, or anything else she might have found interesting. After she subjected me to a sickening rant regarding Pete Buttigieg, I excused myself to get a drink from the bar.
The bar was awful; however, the names of the specialty drinks brought the quality of the bar up a few notches for me and likely down a few notches for anyone who has a real job. I ordered the Scroll Stopper, a fever inducing drink that I’m unable to recall the taste or contents of. The Scroll Stopper was a yellowy greenish drink that was roughly the size of a thimble. At home I’m accustomed to Ryan’s famous vodka water, a mixture of Natural Light Lemonade Vodka, water, and a handful of ice. The Scroll Stopper is slightly higher brow than Ryan’s concoction, so it’s plausible my tastebuds couldn’t detect the nuances of the layered flavor profile. Fortunately, the Scroll Stopper set me back a mere $20, (chump change) but I found the price to be a scathing indictment of Mr. Yang’s dedication to affordability. Also on the menu was the Touch Grass drink, which I have no desire to try or even think about further.
I finished my drink in roughly 30 seconds and then proceeded to ask Tony what time it was. Since I didn’t have my phone, I became completely reliant on Tony for any temporal direction. For some reason, I was exceedingly restless. Tony, sensing my restlessness, marched me to a table where I watched him crudely draw a stick figure caricature of himself with Andrew Yang. He then asked Andrew Yang to sign it. Andrew Yang laughed really hard when he saw Tony’s art. This marked the only time we would see Andrew laughing or looking happy all night.
While we had captured the attention of the guest of honor, I invited Andrew to take a photo with the both of us (Andrew had informed me earlier that there was a forcefield around him where people could use their phones). Having finished his photo-op, Andrew quickly disposed of us as he then took the stage to announce the winners of his raffle.
I had entered the raffle about ten minutes earlier and judging by the lower-than-expected attendance at his party I felt that Tony or I had a good shot at winning. The raffle’s crown jewel was an iPhone 16 which if you think about it, is a pretty shitty gift for a phone-free party. Also at stake was an iPad. I would like an iPad so that I can pretend that it’s my phone and that I have abnormally small hands. As Andrew drew the tickets, he told the crowd a story about how he once knew of a young man who tried to claim a raffle ticket that wasn’t his while at a night club in Hong Kong. He didn’t specify who this person was but did imply that they would one day go on to become president. I have no idea who he was talking about.
After the raffle the night turned into a blur, Tony kept talking to random people, engrossed in conversations I was only vaguely aware of. For roughly half the party we walked in circles. Much of this phase of the night has been lost to memory; the only detail I recall fondly is the DJ playing Disco Line’s No Broke Boys. This was the only time during the blur that I felt the titular joy of Joy District. After walking in circles for an ungodly amount of time I looked through the haze to find a stoic figure at the bar, Andrew Yang sitting alone. Walking through the haze, we worked up the courage to bother him for a final time.
The following recollection is all real. Some of the quotes may be slightly altered due to my poor memory but everything happened more or less exactly as told.
I approached Andrew Yang looking for guidance. As the leader of the Forward Party, I thought he might be able to point me in the right direction. I started rambling to him about the current state of the federal government, repeatedly referring to Trump as “the other guy” and telling Andrew that I’d much prefer if he was in office. We then got to talk about the state of the Democratic Party. Andrew asked me what I believed was the main issue that the Democrats were facing. Because I was talking to the Author of The War on Normal People I felt like I knew what he was getting at.
“Is it the slow adoption of Universal Basic Income?”, I asked. My answer was incorrect; Andrew was more worried about the lack of interest from voters. His response allowed me to parlay my way into a conversation about the recent New York election. I wanted to pick his brains on the incoming mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani. I asked Andrew who he voted for in New York’s election, he didn’t give me a straight answer which I’ve interpreted to mean that he unfortunately voted for disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo. I then asked Andrew what his thoughts were on Zohran Mamdani, the incoming mayor. Andrew praised Zohran’s campaign yet expressed some fears that many of Zohran’s policies wouldn’t come to fruition. He then directed me to look at his blog sometime where he’d written a piece on Zohran. I went where few others have and read Andrew Yang’s blog. In his piece on Zohran, Yang presents a general message of support as well as a few gripes with Zohran’s policy. There are also a few strange thought experiments that Mr. Yang creates for the reader. In one thought experiment Zohran gets arrested for standing up to Trump, it’s all very abstract. Andrew Yang’s thoughts about Zohran feel very much like something I would write if I’d lost the 2021 mayoral race.
At some point while I was bothering Mr. Yang about the election Tony interrupted us. He was trying to talk to Mr. Yang about something related to urban planning. I shut Tony down immediately. There’s no telling where he was going with this rude interruption but I’m usually always right in trusting my judgement. After Tony tried to ensnare Mr. Yang in some sort of trick question or tangential argument in favor of New Urbanism the three of us found that we were without much to say. We sat in a third place of sorts where conversation was seldom and silence was overwhelming.
In an attempt to break the newly formed ice with us and possibly appear to our demographic Andrew gazed across the bar and remarked, “She’s pretty”.
“What?” I replied.
“The bartender, she’s pretty”
“Andrew Yang, you dog!”, I exclaimed.
Andrew mumbled something about how he was happily married and shifted his gaze to Tony’s watch. “What time do you think we should start wrapping this thing up?”, he asked. We took this as our cue to leave and after a few more back and forths we finally left the OFFLINE party.
Reflecting on what I learned at the OFFLINE party is rather difficult for me because I learned so little. What I learned is that you can have fun without your phone as long as there are other people to entertain you while you wait for something interesting to happen. Sometimes this entertainment comes in the form of your friend Tony. Other times it comes in the form of an off-color comment from Andrew Yang. Take a moment this weekend to reflect without the use of your phone. It just might do you some good.
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