Ask a New Yorker: I Googled Kate McDermott. You’re not to be confused with the pie whisperer?
Kate: There is a pie woman that is also a very big social media authority so it makes it a little bit difficult to differentiate myself from her. You’re right, if you Google my name, you think I’m the pie lady because the pie lady is everywhere.
Ask a New Yorker: Enough with the pie lady! Do you bake?
Kate: I do not. I can cook. I’m half Irish, half Italian. So my family always jokes that I can drink and I can cook. But I don’t bake. I should probably get some tips from the other Kate McDermott.
Ask a New Yorker: Again, in one of your bios you have a second name. Are you a double agent?
Kate: I am not. That’s my first and middle name. I’m a Kathryn. I have two sisters. My mom gave us all names that we could have three choices, Kathryn, Kate or Katie. At this point I’m going by Kate. I’ve gone through all three throughout my life. Mallory is my middle name. Like I said, the pie women had taken my twitter handle so I ended up being Kathryn Mallory.
Ask a New Yorker: Gotcha. As a former Dove deodorant “correspondent”, do you wear Dove deodorant?
Kate: I do. I won a national contest from Hearst magazine in May for a girl from Marie Claire, a girl from Seventeen and a girl from Cosmopolitan. We got to share our fresh perspective on life and beauty. We came to New York City for week. It was great. None of us had lived here before. All three of us live here now. So within six months we all moved to New York and started our own adventures. The program was successful and it was incredible. It was a crash course into New York City. I got to work with Hearst, which is an iconic publishing company. I got to experience New York and get my first taste of big city life.
Ask a New Yorker: I was a Gerber baby myself.
Kate: Very nice. Very exciting, you’re not the one that is on the label?
Ask a New Yorker: That’s me. Wink. So what do you do?
Kate: I am the publicist-Social Media-coordinator for Time Out New York. So I do all the publicity for our weekly magazine, our monthly kid magazine and our online content, and I’m the voice on Time Out Facebook and twitter as well. So I am the liaison for Time Out and New York City. So we are all about New York City. What I do is make sure that other New York publications and other people in the city know exactly where we are and what we’re doing and what we have going on in the best city in the world every day.
Ask a New Yorker: Charlie Sheen.
Kate: I am obsessed right now. I can’t get enough of it, being a social media authority. I love celebrity gossip. I love to see the way they react to things and how people respond to them in the digital space. I can say that Charlie Sheen has taken up far too much of my time in the last couple of weeks. The Charlie Sheenisms I’m starting to use in my everyday speak! I’m calling people ‘Trolls’ as a joke lately. It’s been hilarious. I don’t think he’s crazy. I think that he’s doing something that’s really incredible. He was in a stagnant place and now he is building a new platform for himself. Go Charlie Sheen.
Ask a New Yorker: Yes, I’m a winner.
Kate: I’ll tell you what, you’ve got to take things were you can get them. Charlie Sheen is going for it, for the jugular, obviously succeeding. He’s everywhere right now. You say Charlie Sheen and a whole myriad of things pop into your head now. He’s doing the right thing.
Ask a New Yorker: I read that you consider yourself a word nerd.
Kate: I can’t believe you found that. I thought that the word nerd was buried a bit. Yes, I’ve always been. I love words. I have a communication education and I’ve been filling notebooks full of stories and ideas since I was a small child. I talk constantly. I love words. I love communicating with people.
Ask a New Yorker: What books are you reading?
Kate: Actually I have a stack of Vogues and Harpers Bizarre from September that I’ve been looking at and trying to get through. I’m in-between books but I’m sort of trying to catch up on the last couple of months of fashion and to see were everything is right now.
Ask a New Yorker: What does agronomy mean, or an agronomer?
Kate: I wish I knew, maybe you could tell me.
Ask a New Yorker: Great SAT word. It fancy way of saying farming or farmer. You have the word HOPE tattooed on your wrist.
Kate: I have two tattoos right now. I have them strategically timed and placed. I grew up Catholic. Faith, Hope and Love were always extra important to me. I got my Faith tattoo when I was halfway through college. I got my Hope tattoo when I graduated from college. Then I’ll get my Love one when I get married. That’s all I want. Three will be plenty. It’s more than enough for my parents. So it will be good. They’ll be happy when I’m done with them.
Ask a New Yorker: Be still when you have nothing to say. When genuine passion moves you, say what you got to say and say it hot. D. H. Lawrence.
Kate: I think that is an incredible way to go through life. I truly feel that you really should say things in a very passionate way. You should only say the things you believe and you really have to take time to say things so that your words are meaningful so that people take you seriously. So every time I sort of fly off the cuff that I may regret later or may have to think about more thoroughly, I think of D.H Lawrence. These words from D.H. put me back in my place and make me think before I talk.
Ask a New Yorker: Do you have any problems, issues or concerns that you would like to discuss or just share?
Kate: I really hate my commute. This is the worst thing in the world to me. I live Harlem. I live in an incredible neighborhood & working in midtown is great. But living on the Upper East Side I have to take a 6 train and an E train every day. I hate my hour commute to work and back. Growing up in central Pennsylvania and going to Penn State I literally grew up in a valley, went to school in a valley. So I was always kind of segrated from everything. I was protected in my valley. So coming to NYC and seeing life on the other side has been incredible. I’ve run into so many crazies lately on the subway. My family doesn’t believe me. I actually started taking pictures discretely. But some of these stories… they absolutely don’t believe me unless I have proof.
Ask a New Yorker: What’s the strangest, craziest story from the subway?
Kate: This guy was incredible. He looked like the lead singer from Journey. He had a buzz cut on the top of his head and a really long mullet in a red, white and blue get up. He had a manila folder that he had taped a mirror to and was walking through the car holding the mirror over his head saying he was looking for all the beautiful women and that God wanted him meet them, and he was so serious about this. And he seemed so lucid about it all, too. You couldn’t really tell if it was a joke or if he was serious. It was a little disturbing. There was an old man on the train that got tired of listening to the mullet and started screaming, ”You know nothing about God!” Then they literally chased each other up and down the car screaming at each other. Then the mullet mirror guy just ditched outside and ran away.
Ask a New Yorker: Wow, that’s a good one. Now mine, I can top that one…but I’ll save it for another time. Thank you Kate. Peace.
