On a recent afternoon in Manhattan’s West Village, Dorothy Wiggins, a petite 98-year-old woman wearing a dark coat and a pink scarf, left her home to visit Little Ruby’s Cafe, a chic new restaurant in her neighborhood. Once inside, she approached the hostess.
“I remember this place when it was the other place, the Riviera”said Mrs. Wiggins. “It was so vulgar next to this. You “It really livened up the space.”
“It’s an Australian restaurant,” the hostess said.
“Australian?” Mrs. Wiggins responded.
As he processed this information, the hostess asked him if he had a reservation.
“I just live in the neighborhood and my husband painted this place once,” Mrs. Wiggins said. “He was just curious.”
He said goodbye and returned to his brownstone. She was not alone. Following her was Michael Astor, a freelance journalist who discreetly filmed her exit with a pocket camera.
The scene he had just recorded would soon be published on the Tik Tok and instagram accounts he drives, both named @dorothylovesnewyork, which has made Ms. Wiggins an unlikely celebrity on social media.
Tens of thousands of people follow the stories, which chronicle Ms. Wiggins’ last 90 years as she navigates life in New York and the Hamptons equipped with a wooden cane, antique hats and a dead dry sense of humor.
In a video, becomes frustrated when a bartender at a Midtown jazz club can’t order his drink correctly (a shot of Dewar’s in a tall glass filled with ice, with a glass of water). In other, complains about “horrible Montauk oysters” to the operator of a seafood shack in East Hampton. He most popular clipwith more than nine million views on Instagram, it shows her hitting a serve on a tennis court in Amagansett.
“Chrissie Evert commented on my service,” Mrs. Wiggins said in the living room of her brownstone, where she and Astor, 59, sat by a roaring fire. “She said it looks like her service.”
Part of the accounts’ charm lies in their indifference to social media.
“I find it funny becoming popular, because I despise everything,” he said. “I hate walking down the streets and seeing people clutching their phones like they’re clutching their hearts.”
“TikTok seems stupid to me,” he continued. “You need more than a momentary thing. The other night I saw ‘Casablanca’. That’s the perfect length. for a movie. I just think it’s bad for concentration and will make people more stupid. “My husband knew how to recite AE Housman’s poetry by heart.”
Guy Wigginspainter and former Foreign Service diplomat, died three years ago, at age 100. Mrs. Wiggins, who grew up in the Forest Hills neighborhood of Queens, met him when he was in his early 30s and met married for 61 years.
“When my husband died, I was totally devastated,” Mrs. Wiggins said. “My whole life was him.” Referring to her social media accounts, she added: “My son started this because he thought it would distract me from the pain.”
Mr. Astor, a A family friend and former Associated Press reporter, one of the couple’s children commissioned him in 2019 to make a short documentary about his elderly parents. Once it was completed and Mr. Wiggins died, Mr. Astor continued filming. A year ago, he started posting clips on social media. The account received its first advertisement during the summer, in The East Hampton Star.
“We never expected Dorothy to become Insta-famous,” Astor said. “What people see on TikTok and Instagram are collages that I will eventually understand in a proper film.”
Mr. Astor documents Ms. Wiggins several times a week and edits images in the library studio on the second floor of the house. He keeps her informed about the most viewed clips and commentator reactions. (Ms. Wiggins has an iPhone but she does not use TikTok or Instagram.)
“We always disagree,” Astor said. “Everything that happened after the 60s is a disappointment for her. “I think TikTok is a medium that has allowed me to bring people closer to something deeper about their lives.”
“It’s also about someone dealing with aging,” he added. “Especially an older woman, a person who often disappears in our society.”
Mrs. Wiggins got up from her seat and went to find a self-published book, “Wiggins in Love,” which is filled with photographs of her and her husband, along with scans of birthday and Valentine’s Day letters he had sent her. written over the years. . Flipping through the pages, she came across a sketch of him that showed them sitting on a couch with drinks.
“Our late-night cocktail hour was sacred,” Mrs. Wiggins said. “No matter what, we never missed cocktail hour.”
One Friday afternoon, Mr. Astor was filming Ms. Wiggins when she entered the Salmagundi Club in Greenwich Village, where she and her husband were regulars. She walked down the creaky stairs to Wiggins Bar, which was named after her husband’s family; Her father was the cityscape painter Guy Carleton Wiggins and her grandfather was the landscape painter. John Carleton Wiggins. One wall is decorated with paint-stained palettes and photographs of the Wiggins men.
“The usual, Mrs. Wiggins?” the waiter asked.
He sat with his Dewar while Mr. Astor scrolled through his phone, scrolling through the comments on his latest post. He called out updates: comedian Ellen Cleghorne had just followed them and someone wanted to send her some oysters from Maine. He also mentioned that they needed to start planning an event where some of her fans could join her for drinks at Wiggins Bar.
“Dorothy and alcohol do very well,” Astor said. “Her fans like the idea of someone being 98 years old and still drinking.”
But Mrs. Wiggins seemed more interested in staring at a hanging oyster still life painted by her husband than in talking about social media engagement.
“Like I said, I ignore fame,” he said. “I love my fans, but I don’t give it much importance and I think this whole thing is a bit silly.”
Then she became reflective.
“Well, there was one comment that touched me,” Mrs. Wiggins said. “Someone once commented that she felt like her life was over. That they were depressed. But after watching my videos, they were inspired to keep going.”
“Now that I can understand it,” he continued. “If I can show someone that they shouldn’t give up on life, then that matters to me.”
