Lifestyle
Beyond Erewhon: Inside the L.A. grocery store where all the cool vegans are flocking
On a rainy Saturday afternoon in late March, a block of East Hollywood is unusually quiet but for the corner of Fountain Avenue and North Edgemont Street. There, a line snakes halfway around the perimeter of a little vegan grocery store that’s sparking with activity.
Inside, grime music blasts as a pop-up vendor doles out vegan banh mi to shoppers who clutch bamboo toilet paper and vegan lox. Even a Siberian husky named Chaka gets in on the action, scarfing up a vegan dog treat — every canine who comes through the door gets one.
“Welcome!” yells Matt Fontana, the store’s tattoo-sleeved co-founder.
The Besties store after its run club event, which always ends with free soft serve for all.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Besties sells a wide array of vegan jerky.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
“Hey Paul, hi!” Fontana bellows in his New York accent, while filling a cup with the store’s vegan soft serve ice cream for another customer. Then, waving his free arm: “Everyone, you guys — come on in!”
It’s a typical day at Besties Vegan Paradise. Since opening in 2019, the grocery store has become a hub for a particular type of cool vegan in Los Angeles. The clientele is culturally diverse, spanning age, gender and style. But it coalesces around especially trendy aesthetics and a staunch desire to live responsibly.
Environmentally conscious, animal-loving DJs, chefs, writers, filmmakers, graphic designers and other creatives mingle there over free natural wine and vegan Brie during a “meet the maker” session, showcasing how the store’s cheese is made. “Open forum” talks there address topics such as environmental sustainability and the food chain. As you grab a beverage out of the cooler, hand-painted lettering above proclaims you’re “So Cool You Hot.”
There are other vegan markets in L.A. — X Market in Venice and Glowing Plant Based Eatery & Market in Echo Park, among them. But Besties is the only one that sources 100% of its products from all-vegan manufacturers so that customers don’t have to scrutinize labels. And while the store’s purpose is utilitarian, Besties is as much about the vibes — the shopping experience and connections made while there — as it is about picking up a fresh bottle of plant milk for your morning cereal. Customers trade tips about vegan tattoo ink during Wu-Tang Wednesdays, which Besties observes with religious fervor. (Every Wednesday, Wu-Tang Clan’s hip-hop plays loudly and on repeat in the store from opening until closing.) Over the last five years, the establishment has grown beyond the parameters of a retail store and into a cultural center for vegans in L.A. focused on food, fashion, art and athleticism.
Fontana, who sports a shaved head and a gold tooth, and co-owner Asia Rain, a vegan tattoo artist whose studio is above the store, host these in-person events at Besties to give like-minded customers a space to socialize and vegan-curious newcomers a place to learn about the diet. Pop-ups supporting local vegan brands, such as Tiffany Luong’s Long Beach-based Vegan Bánh Mì Thảo, are a regular occurrence. Besties makes its own chocolate, candies and cheese — “celebratory foods people are emotionally attached to,” Fontana said. Rain also designs a line of street-inspired branded hoodies, T-shirts and socks that come in handy at the store’s popular weekly, vegan 5K run club that ends at Besties with free soft serve for all.
“Veganism isn’t a diet, it’s a lifestyle and a mind-set,” Fontana said. “It’s an act of love.”
Veganism has come a long way from the days of limp soy hot dogs. In 1971, author Frances Moore Lappé published “Diet for a Small Planet,” a seminal guide that argued Americans’ insatiable appetite for meat was damaging Earth — and our bodies. Soon after, meatless diets gained popularity among a small percentage of Americans. But it wasn’t until the early 1980s that soy became a more common replacement for animal-based proteins such as meat and dairy, standing in for burgers, ice cream and other American comfort foods. Restaurants and grocery stores now offer shockingly sophisticated and culturally diverse items. But veganism still suffers from something of a branding issue: It’s often seen as an exclusive, hippie-ish club of well-meaning but judgy disciples, with restrictive diets, who can afford $42 artisanal vegan salami. “People ask me if I miss meat or dairy,” Julio Torres says while discussing his veganism in a 2017 Comedy Central stand-up show. “I mean, I miss being liked.”
Part of Besties’ mission is rebranding veganism as something that’s diverse, inclusive and, yes, even hip.
A patron shows off a “Besties” thigh tattoo from Asia Rain. (Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Cesar Asebedo enjoys a vegan ice cream cone. (Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
The Vegan Run Club in action.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
“It’s for everyone: goths, punk rockers, hippies, bike messengers, basics,” Fontana said. “Hip-hop heads and normcore hikers and campers. Veganism is small, but it crosses all identities. It’s for anyone who truly champions equality, who realizes they have a chance to make a difference in real time.”
The charge Fontana is leading has been shared by a handful of other vegan outposts in the U.S., according to Alicia Kennedy, author of 2023’s “No Meat Required: The Cultural History and Culinary Future of Plant-Based Eating.” She notes food destinations with similar “hip, young, vegan identities,” such as Williamsburg’s Foodswings (which closed in 2014), the Chicago Diner and Philadelphia’s Grindcore House.
Collectively, these spaces are valuable, she says, because vegans, historically, have always been far more diverse than the dominant cultural stereotype: “This white, crunchy, kind of angry activist vibe,” Kennedy said. “Has it changed? Not really. So anything that pushes back against that is going to help change the mainstream perspective.”
On a recent Friday night, Besties hosted a lively vegan Mexican street food event, featuring Jessie Gil’s Sylmar-based pop-up El Compa Vegano, that drew more than 150 people over four hours. Straight-edge 20-somethings, with nose rings and decorative tooth gems, mingled with middle-aged “basics” in jeans and unisex button-down shirts outside the store. Carne asada, with impeccably seasoned lion’s mane mushrooms standing in for steak, sizzled on the grill as plumes of smoke filled the air. Some customers sat on a custom skateboard obstacle that doubles as a Brooklyn-style “stoop” outside Besties’ front door. (The shop lends it to local skater kids.) Hand-painted signs designed by Rain hung in the window, advertising “Classic Hot Dog $6.96” and “Oat Based Soft Serve” in the style of a 1950s soda fountain. It was a mashup of crowds from the Venice Beach Skatepark, the KITH streetwear store in Beverly Hills and the Smorgasburg food market.
Vegan carne asada, carnitas, al pastor and pollo tacos from El Compa Vegano.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
“The reason this place feels so authentic is because they’re making healthy choices for themselves — they’re walking the walk — but they’re cool kids too, and that makes it realistic. You can do it too,” said Besties customer D’Andrée Galipeau, a DJ who lives nearby and “leans vegan.”
Fontana, 48, grew up in a Sicilian-American family in Brooklyn in the 1970s and ’80s immersed in the hip-hop culture of the time. “Anything anti-establishment,” he says. He collected basketball sneakers and tattoos, and carried his skateboard everywhere. His mother was a vegetarian and he, an animal lover, followed suit at 14. He turned vegan at 20 when — while studying eastern philosophy and religion at San Francisco State University — he met his now ex-wife and she taught him about the diet.
“I hadn’t seen behind the veil,” he said. “I didn’t know about the industrialized animal agriculture industry, the enslavement of millions of female animals across the world,” the latter referring to the dairy industry. “Once all of that got explained to me, it was an obvious choice as somebody who rejects violence, rejects oppression and is a champion of reproductive freedom.”
Fontana went on to become an influential streetwear, sneaker and hip-hop fashion entrepreneur in the early to mid-2000s on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
The cultural influences of his past are apparent at Besties. The store creates “limited-edition” soft serve flavors to match its calendar of food pop-ups. The Besties hot dogs pay homage to the Coney Island of Fontana’s youth, the soft serve to the Carvel ice cream he grew up with.
Asia Rain serves up vegan ice cream. Matt Fontana holds their Maltese mix, MacKenzie, in the background.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
“It’s got to be lighthearted,” Fontana said of making veganism appealing. “We’re elevating veganism to be something that’s culturally aspirational as opposed to something that’s frowned upon by society.”
If Fontana is the mouthpiece of Besties, Rain, 34, is the artistic eye. She was born Asia Rain Phoenix (her last name is one her parents invented for their kids, and she goes by her first and middle name now). She spent her early years in Victoria, British Columbia, with parents who battled addictions, she says, and took odd jobs.
When Rain was 10, her parents moved her and her two younger siblings to Atlanta. They were undocumented immigrants, so when the kids got older, they couldn’t open a bank account, get a driver’s license or apply for financial scholarships.
Rain left home at 17 and spent a year traveling around the U.S. as a carnival barker (“Step right up!” she demonstrated) and airbrushing T-shirts at fairs and in malls. That led to work in an Indiana tattoo shop. She received her citizenship at 24, at which point she’d built a thriving clientele in the Midwest.
For the first time, she had a steady income. She bought a house with her partner, grew her own food, kept bees. But she felt stagnant and depressed. She gave it all up in 2016 and traveled to Peru, where she spent six months hiking and studying the culture, Spanish and the natural environment, including how to make tattoo ink from fruit.
When she returned to the U.S. in 2017, she met Fontana through a fine art tattooer. Through their conversations, Rain quickly decided to go vegan.
“Everywhere I looked it was … government manipulation and disrespect of natural resources,” she said. “And I felt powerless. Veganism is an act of choice to abstain from committing cruelty to anything. And that’s what I wanted to do.”
Ash Williams, left, Addison Blue and Nicolette Brannan enjoy free vegan soft serve after their weekly run.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
While dating over the next year or so — he living in L.A. and she in Vancouver — Fontana shared multiple business plans with Rain, including one for a vegan 7-Eleven-type store. He invited her to be his partner. Then things progressed rapidly.
Fontana sold almost everything he owned, put the rest in storage and lived out of his car — a black Jaguar — for several months in late 2018. Rain sold her beloved, baby blue VW Westfalia and moved to L.A. They lived in an Airbnb while they remodeled a former mini-mart. In January 2019, they opened Besties, where she now tattoos many of the customers.
Rain came up with the name: “If we all treated each other like besties, the world wouldn’t be in the state that it’s in,” she said.
For both Rain and Fontana, cool cachet and social-environmental responsibility are not mutually exclusive. Besties might dress up the vegan lifestyle in trendy clothing and designer sneakers, but it still demands from them rigorous research, unwavering commitment, attention to detail and relentless principle.
“There’s Besties Vegan Paradise, the cultural center — and it says ‘All are welcome’ on the door,” Fontana said. “But personally, I’m a vegan activist. This place is my activism.”
Helping plant-based brands connect with customers is central to Besties’ mission. Most businesses charge pop-up vendors for space or take a percentage of their sales from events, Fontana said. Besties does neither.
Jessie Gil, founder of El Compa Vegano, holds vegan nachos, fully loaded. (Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
Julie Reyes shops for groceries at Besties Vegan Paradise. (Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
“They do a great job of marketing me in their newsletters and on social media,” Luong said of Besties during her bánh mì event (she’s done 10 there now). “I feel supported, I feel seen.”
What does Besties get out of giving away space and time for free?
“Traffic,” Fontana said. “These pop-ups have followings that they bring to us. But it’s also part of how we’re breaking down the stereotypes of veganism, that ‘not for you’ club. These vendors showcase what’s usually the food from their culture and they bring with them a totally different community than maybe we’re able to reach directly.”
Fontana said one family even comes in every Saturday from Aliso Viejo for the soft serve.
The secret recipe took about three years to perfect, as Fontana and Rain experimented with coconut milk and soy milk for its base. (It’s now made with oat milk.) Ultimately, it was Rain’s mechanical expertise that made the difference. She took apart Besties’ large Taylor soft serve machine and adjusted it to dispense nondairy milk. “Changing the viscosity changes how you experience the flavor,” she said.
Vegan runners at Besties after their 5K run.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
The store gives away soft serve to customers and vendors so readily that some question the business model.
“A friend of mine was like, ‘What’s the perk of them giving away all this stuff for free?’” said Sara Schunck, a member of Besties’ run club. “But the best people come out and you’re looking forward to the ice cream at the end. I’ve met a lot of really cool people.”
Fontana, now sitting on the skateboard-stoop outside the store, pops a vegan sour gummy into his mouth, contemplating the question.
“It’s about spreading the vegan love, paying it forward,” he said.
One vegan ice cream scoop at a time.
The art industry is increasingly shaped by artists’ and art businesses’ shared realization that they are locked in a fierce struggle for sustained attention — against each other, and against the rest of the overstimulated, always-online world. A major New York art fair aims to win this competition next month by knocking down the increasingly shaky walls between contemporary art and fashion.
When visitors enter the Independent art fair on May 14, they will almost immediately encounter its open-plan centerpiece: an installation of recent couture looks from Comme des Garçons. It will be the first New York solo presentation of works by Rei Kawakubo, the brand’s founder and mastermind, since a lauded 2017 survey exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.
Art fairs have often been front and center in the industry’s 21st-century quest to capture mindshare. But too many displays have pierced the zeitgeist with six-figure spectacles, like Maurizio Cattelan’s duct-taped banana and Beeple’s robot dogs. Curating Independent around Comme des Garçons comes from the conviction that a different kind of iconoclasm can rise to the top of New York’s spring art scrum.
Elizabeth Dee, the founder and creative director of Independent, said that making Kawakubo’s work the “nerve center” of this year’s edition was a “statement of purpose” for the fair’s evolution. After several years at the compact Spring Studios in TriBeCa, Independent will more than double its square footage by moving to Pier 36 at South Street, on the East River. Dee has narrowed the fair’s exhibitor list, to 76, from 83 dealers in 2025, and reduced booth fees to encourage a focus on single artists making bold propositions.
“Rei’s work has been pivotal to thinking about how my work as a curator, gallerist and art fair can push boundaries, especially during this extraordinary move toward corporatization and monoculture in the art world in the last 20 years,” Dee said.
Kawakubo’s designs have been challenging norms since her brand’s first Paris runway show in 1981, but her work over the last 13 years on what she calls “objects for the body” has blurred borders between high fashion and wearable sculpture.
The Comme des Garçons presentation at Independent will feature 20 looks from autumn-winter 2020 to spring-summer 2025. Forgoing the runway, Kawakubo is installing her non-clothing inside structures made from rebar and colored plastic joinery.
Adrian Joffe, the president of both Comme des Garçons International and the curated retailer Dover Street Market International (and who is also Kawakubo’s husband), said in an interview that Kawakubo’s intention was to create a sculptural installation divorced from chronology and fashion — “a thing made new again.”
Every look at Independent was made in an edition of three or fewer, but only one of each will be for sale on-site. Prices will be about $9,000 to $30,000. Comme des Garçons will retain 100 percent of the sales.
Asked why she was interested in exhibiting at Independent, the famously elusive Kawakubo said via email, “The body of work has never been shown together, and this is the first presentation in New York in almost 10 years.” Joffe added a broader philosophical motivation. “We’ve never done it before; it was new,” he said. Also essential was the fair’s willingness to embrace Kawakubo’s vision for the installation rather than a standard fair booth.
Kawakubo began consistently engaging with fine art decades before such crossovers became commonplace. Since 1989, she has invited a steady stream of contemporary artists to create installations in Comme des Garçons’s Tokyo flagship store. The ’90s brought collaborations with the artist Cindy Sherman and performance pioneer Merce Cunningham, among others.
More cross-disciplinary projects followed, including limited-release direct mailers for Comme des Garçons. Kawakubo designs each from documentation of works provided by an artist or art collective.
The display at Independent reopens the debate about Kawakubo’s proper place on the continuum between artist and designer. But the issue is already settled for celebrated artists who have collaborated with her.
“I totally think of Rei as an artist in the truest sense,” Sherman said by email. “Her work questions what everyone else takes for granted as being flattering to a body, questions what female bodies are expected to look like and who they’re catering to.”
Ai Weiwei, the subject of a 2010 Comme des Garçons direct mailer, agreed that Kawakubo “is, in essence, an artist.” Unlike designers who “pursue a sense of form,” he added, “her design and creation are oriented toward attitude” — specifically, an attitude of “rebellion.”
Also taking this position is “Costume Art,” the spring exhibition at the Costume Institute. Opening May 10, the show pairs individual works from multiple designers — including Comme des Garçons — with artworks from the Met’s holdings to advance the argument made by the dress code for this year’s Met gala: “Fashion is art.”
True to form, Kawakubo sometimes opts for a third way.
“Rei has often said she’s not a designer, she’s not an artist,” Joffe said. “She is a storyteller.”
Now to find out whether an art fair sparks the drama, dialogue and attention its authors want.
Lifestyle
They set out to elevate karaoke in L.A. — and opened a glamorous lounge that pulls out all the stops
Brothers Leo and Oliver Kremer visited karaoke spots around the globe and almost always had the same impression.
“The drinks weren’t always great, the aesthetics weren’t always so glamorous, the sound wasn’t always awesome and the lights were often generic,” says Leo, a former bassist of the band Third Eye Blind.
As devout karaoke fans, they wanted to level up the experience. So they dreamed up Mic Drop, an upscale karaoke lounge in West Hollywood that opens Thursday. It’s located inside the original Larrabee Studios, a historic 1920s building formerly owned by Carole King and her ex-husband, Gerry Goffin — and the spot where King recorded some of her biggest hits. Third Eye Blind band members Stephan Jenkins and Brad Hargreaves are investors of the new venue.
Inside the two-story, 6,300-square-foot venue with 13 private karaoke rooms and an electrifying main stage, you can feel like a rock star in front of a cheering audience. Want to check it out? Here are six things to know.
The Kremer brothers hired sculptor Shawn HibmaCronan to create an 8-foot-tall disco-themed microphone for their karaoke lounge.
1. Take your pick between a private karaoke experience or the main stage
A unique element of Mic Drop is that it offers both private karaoke rooms and a main stage experience for those who wish to sing in front of a crowd. The 13 private rooms range from six- to 45-person capacity. Each of the karaoke rooms are named after a famous recording studio such as Electric Lady, Abbey Road, Shangri La and of course, Larrabee Studios. There is a two-hour minimum on all rentals and hourly rates depend on the room size and day of the week.
But if you’re ready to take the center stage, it’s free to sing — at least technically. All you have to do is pay a $10 fee at the door, which is essentially a token that goes toward your first drink. Then you can put your name on the list with the KJ (karaoke jockey) who keeps the crowd energized throughout the night and even hits the stage at times.
Harrison Baum, left, of Santa Monica, and Amanda Stagner, 27, of Los Angeles, sing in one of the 13 private karaoke rooms.
2. Thumping, high sound quality was a top priority
As someone who toured the world playing bass for Third Eye Blind, top-tier sound was a nonnegotiable for Leo. “Typically with karaoke, the sound is kind of teeny, there’s not a lot of bass and the vocal is super hot and sitting on top too much,” he says. To combat this, he and his brother teamed up with Pineapple Audio, an audio visual company based in Chicago, to design their crisp sound system. They also installed concert-grade speakers and custom subwoofers from a European audio equipment manufacturer called Celto, and bought gold-plated Sennheiser wireless microphones, which they loved so much that they had an 8-foot-tall replica made for their main room. Designed by artist Shawn HibmaCronan, the “macrophone,” as they call it, has roughly 30,000 mirror tiles. “It spins and throws incredible disco light everywhere,” says Leo.
Karaoke jockeys Sophie St. John, 27, second from left, and Cameron Armstrong, 30, right, get the crowd involved with their song picks at Mic Drop.
3. A concert-level performance isn’t complete without good stage lighting and a haze machine
Each karaoke room features a disco ball and dynamic lighting that syncs up with whatever song you’re singing, which makes you feel like you are a professional performer. There’s also a haze machine hidden under the leather seats. Meanwhile, the main stage is concert-ready with additional dancing lasers and spotlights.
Brett Adams, left, of Sherman Oaks, and Patrick Riley of Studio City sing karaoke together inside a private lounge at Mic Drop.
4. The song selection is vast, offering classics and new hits
One of the worst things that can happen when you go to karaoke is not being able to find the song you want to sing. At Mic Drop, the odds of this happening are slim to none. The venue uses a popular karaoke service called KaraFun, which has a catalog of more than 600,000 songs (and adds 400 new tracks every month), according to its website. Take your pick from country, R&B, jazz, rap, pop, love duets and more. (Two newish selections I spotted were Raye’s “Where Is my Husband” and Olivia Dean’s “Man I Need,” which both released late last year.) In the private karaoke rooms, there’s also a fun feature on Karafun called “battle mode,” which allows you and your crew of up to 20 people to compete in real time. KaraFun also has an entertaining music trivia game, which I tested out with the founders and came in second place.
The design inspiration for Mic Drop was 1920s music lounges and 1970s disco culture, says designer Amy Morris.
5. The interiors are inspired by 1920s music lounges mixed with ‘70s disco vibes
A disco ball hangs from the ceiling.
If you took the sophisticated aesthetic of 1920s music lounges and mixed it with the vibrant and playful era of 1970s disco culture, you’d find Mic Drop.
When you walk into the lounge, the first thing you’ll see is a bright red check-in desk that resembles a performer’s dressing room with vanity lights, several mirrors and a range of wigs. “So much of karaoke is about getting into character and letting go of the day, so we had the idea to sell the wigs,” says Oliver. As you continue into the lounge, the focal point is the stage, which is adorned with zebra-printed carpet and dramatic, red velvet curtains. For seating, slide into the red velvet banquettes or plop onto a gold tiger velvet stool. Upstairs, you’ll find the intimate karaoke studios, which are decorated with red velvet walls and brass, curved doorways that echo the building’s deco arches, says Mic Drop’s interior designer, Amy Morris of the Morris Project.
Sarah Rothman, center, of Oakland, and friend Rachel Bernstein, left, of Los Angeles, wait at the bar.
6. You can order nontraditional karaoke bites as you wait for your turn to sing
While Mic Drop offers some of the food you’d typically find at a karaoke lounge such as tater tots, truffle popcorn and pizza, the venue has some surprising options as well. For example, a 57 gram caviar service (served with chips, crème fraîche and chives) and shrimp cocktail from Santa Monica Seafood. For their pizza program, the Kremer brothers teamed up with Avalou’s Italian Pizza Company, which is run by Louis Lombardi who starred in “The Sopranos.” He’s the brainchild behind my favorite dish, the Fuhgeddaboudit pizza, which is made with pastrami, pickles and mustard. It might sound repulsive, but trust me.
As for the cheeky cocktails, they are all named after famous musicians and songs such as the Pink Pony Club (a tart cherry pomegranate drink with vodka named after Chappell Roan), Green Eyes (a sake sour with kiwi and melon named after Green Day) and Megroni Thee Stallion (an elevated negroni named after Megan Thee Stallion).
When John Lantigua, a retired journalist in Miami Beach, checked his email one recent morning, he was glad to see an invitation.
“It was like, ‘Come and share an evening with me. Click here for details,’” Mr. Lantigua said.
It appeared to be a Paperless Post invitation from someone he once worked with at The Palm Beach Post, a man who had left Florida for Mississippi and liked to arrange dinners when he was back in town.
Mr. Lantigua, 78, clicked the link. It didn’t open.
He clicked a second time. Still nothing.
He didn’t realize what was going on until a mutual friend who had received the same email told him it wasn’t an invitation at all. It was a scam.
Phishing scams have long tried to frighten people into clicking on links with emails claiming that their bank accounts have been hacked, or that they owe thousands of dollars in fines, or that their pornography viewing habits have been tracked.
The invitation scam is a little more subtle: It preys on the all-too-human desire to be included in social gatherings.
The phishy invitations mimic emails from Paperless Post, Evite and Punchbowl. What appears to be a friendly overture from someone you know is really a digital Trojan horse that gives scammers access to your personal information.
“I thought it was diabolical that they would choose somebody who has sent me a legitimate invitation before,” Mr. Lantigua said. “He’s a friend of mine. If he’s coming to town, I want to see him.”
Rachel Tobac, the chief executive of SocialProof Security, a cybersecurity firm, said she noticed the scam last holiday season.
“Phishing emails are not a new thing,” Ms. Tobac said, “but every six months, we get a new lure that hijacks our amygdala in new ways. There’s such a desire for folks to get together that this lure is interesting to people. They want to go to a party.”
Phishing scams involve “two distinct paths,” Ms. Tobac added. In one, the recipient is served a link that turns out to be dead, or so it seems. A click activates malware that runs silently as it gleans passwords and other bits of personal information. In all likelihood, this is what happened when Mr. Lantigua clicked on the ersatz invitation link.
Another scam offers a working link. Potential victims who click on it are asked to provide a password. Those who take that next step are a boon to hackers.
“They have complete control of your email and, in turn, your entire digital life,” Ms. Tobac said. “They can reset your password for your dog’s Instagram account. They can take over your bank account. Change your health insurance.”
Digital invitation platforms are trying to combat the scam by publishing guides on how to spot fake invitations. Paperless Post has also set up an email account — phishing@paperlesspost.com — for users to submit messages for verification. The company sends suspicious links to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, a nonprofit that maintains a database monitored by cybersecurity firms. Flagged links are rendered ineffective.
The scammers’ new strategy of exploiting the desire for connection is infuriating, said Alexa Hirschfeld, a founder of Paperless Post. “Life can be isolating,” Ms. Hirschfeld said. “When it looks like you’re getting an invitation from someone you know, your first instinct is excitement, not skepticism.”
Olivia Pollock, the vice president of brand for Evite, said that fake invitations tended to be generic, promising a birthday party or a celebration of life. Most invitations these days tend to have a specific focus — mahjong gatherings or book club talks, for instance. “The devil is in the details,” Ms. Pollock said.
Because scammers don’t know how close you are with the people in your contact list, fake invitations may also seem random. “They could be from your business school roommate you haven’t spoken to in 10 years,” Ms. Hirschfeld said.
Alyssa Williamson, who works in public relations in New York, was leaving a yoga class recently when she checked her phone and saw an invitation from a college classmate.
“I assumed it was an alumni event,” Ms. Williamson, 30, said. “I clicked on it, and it was like, ‘Enter your email.’ I didn’t even think about it.”
Later that day, she received texts from friends asking her about the party invitation she had just sent out. Her response: What party?
“The thing is, I host a lot of events,” she said. “Some knew it was fake. Others were like, ‘What’s this? I can’t open it.’”
Andrew Smith, a graduate student in finance who lives in Manhattan, received what looked like a Punchbowl invitation to “a memory making celebration.” It appeared to have come from a woman he had dated in college. He received it when he was having drinks at a bar on a Friday night — “a pretty insidious piece of timing,” he said.
“The choice of sender was super clever,” Mr. Smith, 29, noted. “This was somebody that would probably get a reaction from me.”
Mr. Smith seized on the phrase “memory making celebration” and filled in the blanks. He imagined that someone in his ex-girlfriend’s immediate family had died. Perhaps she wanted to restart contact at this difficult moment.
Something saved him when he clicked a link and tried to tap out his personal information — his inability to remember the password to his email account. The next day, he reached out to his ex, who confirmed that the invitation was fake.
“It didn’t trigger any alarm bells,” Mr. Smith said. “I went right for the click. I went completely animal brain.”
The new scam comes with an unfortunate side effect, a suspicion of invitations altogether. It’s enough to make a person antisocial.
“Don’t invite me to anything,” Mr. Lantigua, the retired journalist, said, only half-joking. “I’m not coming.”
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