The World’s Greatest Party Crasher Strikes Again!

For those who suffer from FOMO, the fear of missing out, this can be a mean season in Manhattan, with red-carpet events sucking all the air out of the social calendar. But Fred Karger, a seventy-four-year-old former political consultant, finds high season to be an enjoyable challenge. The other night, Karger, who has made party crashing his retirement avocation, stood at a stanchion surveying guests checking into the celebrity-clogged Time 100 Gala, at 10 Columbus Circle.

“I think there’s a way in on the fourth floor, just through a side door and curtain,” he whispered. As part of his battle plan, he had scoped the place out the day before, sneaking into a pre-gala meeting after stealing an access badge from a media war room, and photographing a production schedule to get the lay of the land. He then Googled the guest list to see if anyone resembled him enough for him to impersonate them at check-in. Kamala Harris was expected. “Which means added security, with the Secret Service,” he said—along with the possibility of going to jail.

It was only six-thirty, and Karger, in a crisp black Theory suit, looked undaunted as guests streamed by. Onlookers cheered when Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively walked the nearby red carpet. “I used her to get into another party,” Karger said. That was Donatella Versace’s 2018 Met Gala after-party, at the Mark Hotel. “I’d been turned away, so I grabbed the train to Blake’s gown and got in.”

By then, he’d already crashed the 2017 Met Gala and Vanity Fair’s 2006 Academy Awards party. For that one, he’d toted a fake Oscar, giving the check-in people the name of a visual-effects award winner whom he resembled. When he dropped his statuette on the floor while taking a selfie with Catherine Keener, the Los Angeles Times included the incident in its coverage. Jake Gyllenhaal was suspicious. “That’s not real, is it?” he asked. Karger had had an easier time when he crashed the Oscars as a college student, in the early seventies. To secure an invitation in 1972, he had typed a letter on pilfered NBC stationery saying that he and a buddy were the nephews of the president of RCA. They ended up on the stage at the end of the night with a group of stars applauding Charlie Chaplin, who’d won a lifetime-achievement award. The next year, Karger appeared onstage again, with a crowd of winners that included Liza Minnelli.

“I guess you could say I was filling in for Marlon Brando, who had won best actor for The Godfather that year,” Karger wrote in a memoir that he recently self-published, called “World’s Greatest Crasher.”

Karger, who splits his time between Manhattan and Laguna Beach, California, was also the first openly gay candidate for President. (He ran in 2012 as a Republican but has since switched parties.) Although he is from a prominent Chicago family, he doesn’t let his dignity get in the way of his hobby. As a teen-ager, he crashed a gala by pretending to be a busboy, shocking his parents, who were guests. Years later, a concerned friend noticed him tending bar at a fund-raiser for the Elton John AIDS Foundation and asked if he was doing all right. “I just told him I was volunteering,” Karger said. He has crashing rules, including the “three ‘hey’ rule”—ignore yelling guards for as long as possible after sneaking in. Another door tip: wait for celebrities to arrive, because they distract gatekeepers and travel with an entourage. Karger once gained entry by pushing a stranger’s wheelchair.

When the Time 100 Gala’s cocktail hour was going at full tilt, Karger was still in the cold, and running out of options. He had bought tickets to a concert at Jazz at Lincoln Center, which, he knew, used the same elevator bank as the Time party. But a guard was blocking access for everyone but waiters, in head-to-toe black, coming from a catering kitchen. Karger took an escalator down to H&M, purchased a black shirt ($29.95), and put it on over his white shirt. He then strode into the kitchen, grabbed a tray, and walked past security into the party. As guests (including Dev Patel, Uma Thurman, Billy Porter, and Maya Rudolph) finished their cocktails, Karger ditched the tray.

He was initially turned away at the door to the dinner and the awards ceremony, but he prevailed moments later by blending into a crowd around Kelly Ripa. Inside, like a freestyling skateboarder, he flew up some stairs, to the top tier of the atrium, past Jenny Holzer, Patrick Mahomes, and E. Jean Carroll. He found an empty seat at a corner table, then sat down to a meal of Bibb lettuce and grilled arctic char. On a big screen, the evening’s host, Taraji P. Henson, told the assembled partyers, “We are the most influential people in the world.” ♦