The Baby-Sitters Club: Where Are They Now?

by Emily Weiss

Today, the original founding members (none of this Abby bullshit) of The Baby-sitters Club would be 37.

Let’s see what everyone’s up to.

Kristy Thomas
Well obviously Kristy is a lesbian. She and her partner, Tori, started up a gay softball league when they moved to Baltimore in 1999, which Kristy coaches. Reminds her of her old days with The Krushers! I guess now we know how she really felt about Bart.

Tori and Kristy met while doing Teach for America. Kristy is active in the Baltimore public school system where she works in administrative policy.

Kristy reconnected briefly with her estranged father, Michael, who owns a small bar and grill just outside Boston. She stopped communication with him after learning that he had borrowed money from Kristy’s brother Sam, which he said he needed for an operation. He then squandered the money and never paid Sam back.

Tori works at Archiver’s and is forever trying to get Kristy more involved in her scrapbooking.

Claudia Kishi
Once the member known for her collection of “distant” fedoras and head scarves, Claudia is now a graphic designer at a small web development company. She also makes intricate wire jewelry which she sells at traveling craft fairs. She often barters her web design services for pottery and furniture made by fellow local artists.

She owns the entire collection of Sex and the City on DVD.

Her live-in boyfriend, Arthur, plays the upright bass in an experimental jazz combo and has kooky glasses. He credits himself with breaking Claudia’s sugar addiction and introducing her to sprouted foods.

Claudia has been working on a mixed media piece called Almond-Shaped Eyes, a tribute to her late grandmother, Mimi, since the mid-nineties.

Bet you are all wondering if Claudia ever got over that whole living in Janine’s shadow thing? The answer is: no. Janine studied aerospace engineering at the University of Michigan and now works for the U.S. Department of Defense. (Claudia’s learning disability caused her great anxiety when taking the entrance exams at Pratt and thus, she ended up at Stoneybrook Technical Institute.) However, Janine’s superior intellect and demanding career left little room in her life for anything else. She has many, many parakeets as a result.

Mary Anne Carlsbad (nee Spier)
So she didn’t marry Logan. In fact, they broke up right before middle school graduation and Logan dropped his position as an associate member of the BSC. Hitting rock bottom, he took up with a new crowd: T-Jam and the notorious SMS gang. Mary Anne and Logan never saw each other again, but we’ll hear more about Logan Bruno later…

While still a student in the nursing program at Sacred Heart in Fairfield, Mary Anne was assigned to attend to Gil Carlsbad, who was rushed to the hospital with acute chest pain. It turned out to just be indigestion, (Gil says it was just his heart beating for Mary Anne) but the two fell in love during his brief stay and were married six months later.

Mild-mannered and fair-haired, Gil is heir to the Carlsbad brewing fortune and is close with many of his Danish relatives. He and Mary Anne make a yearly trip to visit them with their two girls, Annika and Lane.

Mary Anne joined Curves in an effort to lose some of the baby weight she put on with Lane and has recently become interested in buying into the franchise.

After the fire in her childhood home robbed her of all memories, Mary Anne has become obsessed with documenting every moment of her daughters’ lives and stores all photos, journals, and videotapes in fire safe boxes.

Mary Anne does not know how to use the Internet.

Stacey McGill-Johansen
After participating in the Carleton College Math for Women summer program, Stacey ultimately decided that school was not for her and moved to L.A. to pursue a career in acting and modeling.

Failing time and time again to book jobs, Stacey instead started frequenting the party scene and claimed to be with River Phoenix outside The Viper Room when he died.

Mark Johansen, father of Stacey’s most favored charge Charlotte Johansen, bought an L.A. nightclub as an entrepreneurial venture in 2001 and sought struggling Stacey out to be his lead event planner. With her well-connected social group and lack of anything better to do, she was a perfect fit. It should be mentioned here that Stacey is an excellent driver.

In October 2001, on a business trip to L.A. Mark and Stacey began their affair. Charlotte, devastated by the news and having always wanted to be just like Stacey, promptly developed an eating disorder.

Deterred by being called a “home-wrecker,” Stacey severed all ties with the BSC crowd, including best friend Claudia Kishi.

In addition to the event planning, Stacey is now part owner of Mark’s club and is launching her own line of handbags this spring.

Dawn Schafer
You may remember that towards the end of the series Dawn moves back to Palo City. Now she lives on Catalina Island in the sparsely populated town of Two Harbors where she owns and operates a self-sustaining llama farm and she’s…kind of gone off the deep end. Lots of bucket hats. And she makes her own yarn.

Dawn’s apparent misanthropy can mostly be traced back to the winter of 1999, when her brother Jeff was killed in a mysterious accident. Dawn has since become obsessed with contacting and communing with his ghost in order to sort out the details surrounding his death. Mary Anne is the only BSC member Dawn talks to regularly. She allows no visitors on her llama farm in order to create a safe environment for Jeff’s spirit. She also generally prefers the company of animals.

Prior to Jeff’s accident, Dawn had been doing PR work for Raw on the Roll, Debbie Merrill’s rollerblading/raw foods movement.

Mallory Hobart (nee Pike)
After graduating Riverbend with honors, Mallory attended Regis College and majored in English and women’s studies. She participated in Regis’ semester in Ireland at University of Cork where she reunited with Ben Hobart, her old Australian boyfriend. The two remained in Ireland for a year doing odd jobs until Mallory discovered she was pregnant. She dropped out of school and the pair moved back to Stoneybrook to live with the Pike family during their engagement/pregnancy.

After the birth of their son, Henry (after Mal’s favorite author Marguerite Henry) Mallory was offered a job with Karen Brewer’s very successful NPO, Third World Vision, which takes old donated eyeglasses and gets them to patients in impoverished countries.

Mallory is surprisingly good at Mario Kart for Wii having played many a game with Clare and Margo while on bed rest toward the end of her pregnancy.

Jessi Ramsey
After three great years with the Dance New York Programme, Jessi suffered a knee injury and was forced out of the company. During her recuperation, Jessi went to live with her sick but sassy Aunt Cecilia in Stoneybrook and reconnected with best friend, Mallory Hobart.

Jessi is Henry’s godmother.

When the company invited her back, Jessi declined and opted instead to enroll in physical therapy school. She is funding her education with the money Aunt Cecilia left her, supplemented by a part time job at Perfumania.

Jessi and Mallory tried (and failed) to write and illustrate a children’s book about two friends. One was purple and one was polka-dotted. The publisher they met with informed them that this was pretty well-worn territory, but they were really proud of it anyway.

Shannon Louisa Kilbourne-Hubinger
Shannon continued to be an obnoxious over-achiever throughout high school and college. She was valedictorian and student body president of her graduating class at Stoneybrook Day School, Latin club VP, and founder and editor of the SDS literary magazine. She also won best smile in the yearbook polls.

Shannon was waitlisted at her dream school, Vassar, and decided instead to attend Rutgers and major in Art History. Upon graduating, Shannon was offered a position at Christie’s auction house where she met Board of Regents member, William Hubinger. The two were married at his parent’s estate on Martha’s Vineyard.

Soon after they moved to the country, Shannon left Christie’s and entered the world of competitive dog breeding and dog shows. Her breed of choice is the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. Thus far she has only raised one champion dog, Puttencove Promise.

William and Shannon are looking into adoption.

Logan, Logan, Logan Bruno
It was mentioned earlier that Logan had sort of a hard time in middle school. He got caught up in the scandalous world of the notorious SMS gang, The Badd Boyz, serving as T-Jam’s right hand man. Because of his slow, Kentucky-fried wit he earned the nickname “Drawl” and was known school-wide for his eerily calm demeanor and penchant for pastels.

By eighth grade, Logan dropped out of student council and started eating pizza with his cronies in the parking lot. He even gave Mary Anne chain link jewelry AFTER she dumped him just to prove he had changed. He had stuffed his heart with steel wool and Mary Anne would never be allowed back in.

He even stopped baby-sitting.

By high school even the Badd Boyz had ditched him. Logan proclaimed himself a lone wolf and surprised no one when he signed up for regular science classes and started really identifying with Tupac.

Following his arrest for stealing car radios, Logan’s dad made good on his promise and sent him to military school. In a pretty typical series of events, he was first reluctant, then rebellious, then he befriended a wise black guy, then he realized his life was worth more than what he was doing with it, then the wise black guy died, and then Logan tried really hard in physical training and became a pilot.

He is now a Major in the United States Civil Air Patrol and organizes inland searches for various missions. He has an Australian shepherd named Brewskie and has recently become interested in curling.

Logan’s favorite movie is Dan in Real Life.

Emily Weiss can be found baking and stroking egos in Minneapolis.