The OG of members’ clubs is going private.
If you lived in Manhattan during the aughts (I did), Soho House New York was this fantastical, mythical, sybartitic, Zelda-like hideaway that did really exist but seemed verboten to normies (like me)—and even Carrie Bradshaw.
I once went on a date—with a woman. It was not a very good date, filled with insipid conversation over average Mexican fare. But at one point during the night, she revealed to be a member of Soho House, which triggered two things in my head 1: You buried the lede 2: Jules’ exchange with Marcellus Wallace in “Pulp Fiction”: “Sh%t, (another word), that’s all you had to say.”
I somehow convined her to take me, and as we made our way to the Meatpacking District, a wave of butterflies and anxiety conspired in my stomach (it wasn’t the tacos). We arrived. I remember a card being brandished, a dark corridor and alighting off the elevator onto the pool deck and a sea of beautiful people sipping cosmos and talking about something called Facebook (it was 2004). Was it as awesome as I thought it’d be? Yes, to young me, for sure. I felt part of a club that would never have me as a member and recall using Cowshed products in the bathroom—to this day I use their shampoo and conditioner, Soho House may or may not have had anything to do with.
The effulgence of Soho House has dimmed some, more a function of a different time and copycat clubs that have joined the ranks. But, man, did Soho House have something back in the day. It will be interesting to see where it goes now under the auspices of MCR Hotels and its iconoclastic leader Tyler Morse.
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