This story was featured in The Must Read, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a not-to-be-missed story each weekday. Sign up here to get it in your inbox.
Before I start this The story, I must point out, was written for the most part within the mahogany walls of New York’s Casa Cipriani, a 115-year-old ferry terminal turned members’ club where the Staten Island ferry docks in Manhattan. My place was a corner couch in front of a crackling fireplace, not because the club was the subject of this story but because I’m a member and I love watching the buzzing traffic of private helicopters and boats in the harbor. I’ll tell you about the characters I see at the jazz cafe on Thursday nights (often in sunglasses at 10 p.m.), and the ones I hear at the sauna on Tuesday afternoons (the town’s private school nuts are nuts) — I swear, sometimes it’s a total Scorsese fever dream — but I can’t, because writing about club members with baseball hats and photography isn’t allowed.
I’m not alone in warming up to the members-only experience. Since the end of the pandemic, private clubs have proliferated in New York City. It’s not a new phenomenon in major urban areas around the world, but it marks a whole new wave of options in a city that hasn’t seen club memberships as a sign of cool for a long time. Good for a Christmas party or cocktail with your dad’s friend? Sure but not cool. Even as members-only clubs for the nouveau, such as Soho House, flourished in London (where it was founded) and Berlin, and in places like Mexico City and Bangkok, the New York venue shined. And gone, due to an influx of bad startups. Ideas and shoes from Allbirds. Now, though? With three locations in the city, Soho House has a catchy backup. And having a social life day to pay. There are start-up clubs, eating clubs, working clubs, office clubs that become dance clubs, old blue-blood clubs looking for a new lease of life, etc. what happened?
First, of course, the pandemic. Office life is gone, restaurants and bars are closed — I don’t need to explain the pandemic to you. But the effect of the long tail in New York was not the hollowing out of Manhattan, as some predicted, but rather some real memory loss for how to get around formally with friends, co-workers and strangers. A number of new clubs stepped into the breach. As I began to get a taste of these clubs – VC-backed, university-backed, birthright-backed – I began to realize that many of the new young members joined to connect with a common value. Were happening, but only roots Period It was easy to imagine, during Covid, that the very last thing that would ever return to New York City was a club where people would gather to work. And yet here I am, through the chimney of my new money.
Another big reason people get involved, it seems, is that, in 2024, keeping secrets in New York is harder than ever. If there’s an off-menu order that only the regulars know about, some food writers are bound to reveal it to 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 friend’s place without flying Find My Friends Location, think again. Which leaves you with two options: make all your appointments in the back of a yellow cab, or join the photo-free club. In other words, many people seem willing to go to desperate lengths to maintain the privacy rush.
Credit : www.gq.com