Sebastian Van Alder
Sebastian Van Alder in a tweed jacket, seated in a green velvet armchair in a dark library

The journal of Sebastian Van Alder

Old New York.Old habits.

The city’s old buildings, its old rooms, and the people still in them.

Explore the journal About Sebastian

Upper East Side · Est. 18(redacted) · Holdings undisclosed

“People confuse manners with kindness.”
Sebastian Van Alder

New money · $(not yet announced)

The guest list

The list has not opened.

There is a coin now. I did not ask for it. I am told the people who buy it are new money, and that they are queuing at the door. I have asked the doorman to keep a list.

0% of the list is full

Price rises as the list fills
Market cap
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Price
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In the curve
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Buys / sells, 1h
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The coin was created by the person who runs this site. Sebastian Van Alder is a fictional character, and his fortune backs nothing. Memecoins can go to zero, and nothing here promises value or returns.

Sebastian standing in a wood-panelled study, hands in his pockets

About

Sebastian Van Alder

I was born on the Upper East Side, like my father and his father. Private tutors and boarding schools taught me piano, art history, riding, fencing and formal etiquette.

My family came to New York in the nineteenth century and has kept nearly everything it bought, including its opinions. I write some of them down here.

Old money does not shout. It remembers.

The films

Plates I to III

All films on TikTok
Plate IA rooftop at sunset. The acquaintances insisted.
Plate IIAlone in the drawing room, after the guests had gone.
Plate IIIAn empty concert hall. He prefers the audience this size.

Objects of note

Three things that do not change.

Read the canon
Close-up of a dark, combed-back hairline with a streak of silver at the temple
Fig. 1 · The temples Silver at both temples. Inherited.
The engraved silver handle of a walking cane
Fig. 2 · The cane Engraved silver. He does not need it.
A pale hand on a cream trouser knee, a gold signet ring on one finger
Fig. 3 · The ring Made for a man he never met. It fits.

From the journal

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Sebastian in a dark overcoat and burgundy scarf, walking with his cane on Madison Avenue

Lifestyle

A Walk Through the Upper East Side

I take the same route every morning, at the same pace. The doormen nod before I reach them.

Tortoiseshell glasses, a gold watch and a signet ring on an open book

Culture

The Things That Last

Nothing I own was bought this century, and most of it was not bought by me.

A pre-war apartment building behind autumn trees

Architecture

New York, Properly Seen

My family has been disappointed in modern architecture since 1958. Nobody will tell me why.

Sebastian alone at a restaurant table, looking at the bill

Society

Good Company

The waiter brought the bill. I looked at it for some time.

An old New York guidebook and a street map on a desk, with tortoiseshell glasses and a fountain pen

The Van Alder Guide

Where one goes in New York, and where one does not.

Nine places the family still approves of, and five it would rather not discuss.

Read the guide
I find urgency rather vulgar.
Sebastian Van Alder

Lifestyle

A Walk Through the Upper East Side

I take the same route every morning: up Madison, across to Fifth, and into the park at Seventy-Second Street. I walk slowly. I have never seen a reason to do otherwise.

The doormen nod before I reach them. Some of them are too young to have known my grandfather, and they nod anyway. I stopped asking why a long time ago.

Last spring a woman asked me for directions to the Met. I gave them to her, along with the name of the architect, the year the wing was added, and the family that paid for it. She thanked me and walked the other way.

S. V. A.

Culture

The Things That Last

Nothing I own was bought this century, and most of it was not bought by me.

I don’t collect watches. I inherit them. This one was my grandfather’s. It loses four seconds a day, and nobody in the family has ever had it corrected.

The ring was made for a man I never met, and it fits. The cane I do not need. My father carried one, and people step aside for a man with a cane without knowing why.

I am sometimes asked where I shop. I have a tailor on Madison Avenue who has been altering the same three jackets for eleven years.

S. V. A.

Architecture

New York, Properly Seen

My family has been disappointed in modern architecture since 1958. Nobody has told me what happened that year, and I have learned not to ask at dinner.

I prefer pre-war buildings: limestone, marble lobbies, an elevator with a brass gate and a man whose only job is to run it. Those buildings were made for people who expected to stay.

Glass towers are honest, at least. They show you everything, and there is nothing to see.

If you want to see the city properly, stand on Park Avenue at four in the afternoon and look up when the light reaches the cornices.

S. V. A.

Society

Good Company

There is a restaurant on the Upper East Side that has not changed its menu since my grandmother’s time. I had lunch there alone on Thursday. When the waiter brought the bill, I looked at it for some time.

“My grandfather bought this building in 1964,” I told him. “I suppose, technically, I should be paying myself.”

He has worked there for thirty years, and he waited, as he always does. I folded the bill, paid it, and left him the usual amount.

He has never asked whether I was joking. That is why I go back.

S. V. A.