This story was featured in The Must Read, a newsletter in which our editors recommend one can’t-miss story every weekday. Sign up here to get it in your inbox.
Before I begin this story, I must disclose that much of it was written within the lacquered mahogany walls of Casa Cipriani New York, the 115-year-old ferry terminal turned members’ club next to where the Staten Island Ferry comes into Manhattan. My spot was a corner couch in front of the crackling fireplace, not because the club was a subject of this story but because I’m a member there and I like to watch the buzzing traffic of private helicopters and boats in the harbor. I would tell you about the characters I see in the Jazz Café on Thursday nights (often in sunglasses at 10 p.m.), and what I hear in the sauna on Tuesday afternoons (this town’s private schools are nuts)—I swear, sometimes it’s a full-Scorsese fever dream—but I can’t, because writing about the club’s members, along with baseball hats and photography, is not permitted.
I am not alone in warming up to the members-only experience. Since the waning of the pandemic, private clubs have proliferated in New York City. It is not a new phenomenon in major urban areas around the world, but this is the crest of a whole new wave of options in a city that has not regarded club membership as a signifier for cool in quite some time. Good for a Christmas party or a cocktail with your dad’s friend? Sure. But not cool. Even as nouveau members-only clubs, like Soho House, thrived in places like London (where it was founded) and Berlin and Mexico City and Bangkok, the sparkle of New York’s location came and went, due to the influx of bad start-up ideas and Allbirds sneakers. Now, though? Soho House’s cachet is back up, with three locations in the city. And pay-for-play social life is having its day. There are start-up clubs, eating clubs, coworking clubs, office clubs that become dance clubs, old blue blood clubs looking for new life, et cetera, et cetera. What happened?
First, obviously, the pandemic. Office life went away, restaurants and bars closed—I don’t need to explain the pandemic to you. But the long-tail effect in New York was not a hollowing out of Manhattan, as some predicted, but rather some real memory loss for how to hang out organically with friends, coworkers, and strangers. Into the breach stepped a slew of new clubs. As I started to get a taste of these clubs—the VC-backed, the university-backed, the birthright-backed—I started to realize that many new young members weren’t joining to connect over some shared value, but just to connect, period. It was easy, in the throes of COVID, to imagine that the absolute last thing that would ever return to New York City was a club where people would congregate to work. And yet here I am, by my new money fireplace.
Another big reason people are joining, it seems, is that, in 2024, it’s harder than ever to keep a secret in New York. If there’s an off-menu order that only regulars know about, some food writer is bound to divulge it for paid subscribers on Substack. Good luck having an affair without showing up in the background of your girlfriend’s favorite influencer’s Instagram story. And if you think you can go to a party at your buddy’s place without Find My Friends blowing the location, think again. Which leaves you with two options: Take all of your meetings in the back of a yellow cab, or join a photo-free club. In other words, many people seem willing to go to desperate lengths to retain the rush of privacy.
Read the full article here
