Opening Ceremony’s 72-Hour Bash; Ben Cho Bats a Mean Ping-Pong

In honor of the Olympic Games (by the way, did you see that men’s four-by-100m freestyle relay?…to die), Humberto Leon and Carol Lim of Opening Ceremony kept their Howard Street store open for 72 straight hours , cramming more than fifteen events into the three-day schedule this past weekend. And because the thought of free manicures, free Scott Campbell tattoos, and free psychic readings were the highlight of our weekend (don’t judge, free equals fun), we stopped by (twice! at 10 p.m. and at 4 a.m.) to bring you the scoop. Hey, who needs sleep?

The sales were good.
The store only got 54 pairs of the much-hyped, limited-edition metallic gold and silver Nike sneakers. Each day, they sold only a numbered amount at 11:59 p.m. And by 12:03, they were sold out, Olivia Kim, the director of wholesale, told us. Santogold herself scored the first pairs — she bought one of each color.

The parties were better.
On Friday, the team launched their friends-and-family dance party with Cheer New York cheerleaders outside the shop, flying around, flipping, and building pyramids. “It stopped traffic,” Kim said. “We wanted cheerleaders because it’s a sport not represented in the Olympics.” How equal-opportunity! Then came a performance by Hercules and Love Affair, where Alexander Wang was spotted getting his boogie on. The whole shindig started at 10 p.m., and the last people trickled out at 5:30 a.m., after stuffing themselves with milk and six dozen Insomnia cookies. Adorable.

Scrabble isn’t so fun at 6 a.m.
Scrabble was a bust from 6 to 9 a.m. on Saturday morning. “No one wanted to come play!” Kim said. “We had all this smart-people food like granola, yogurt, and fresh fruit to keep people’s brains going and only seven people were here. And of them, it was four of us, two friends, and one doctor we pulled in from the street after his night shift.” Aw. That doesn’t sound very scrabulous, now does it?

Ping-Pong ruled.
We stopped by the Ping-Pong match hosted by Philip Crangi on Saturday night/Sunday morning at 4 a.m., and found twenty people crowded around four Ping-Pong tables drinking mini-cans of Budweiser on the lower level of the store. Among the competitors we spotted Benjamin Cho, clad in black skinny jeans, a loose heather-gray V-neck tee, and a gray-and-black scarf. He pounded the little white balls at his opponent with his miniature paddle, but without a scoreboard, we couldn’t call a clear winner. We’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, though. He’s on Team USA, after all. —Sharon Clott and Kristi Garced