Are we even friends?

Bringing the reciprocity back to reciprocal clubs

The 80 Club in Colombo, Sri Lanka | Photo by Zoshua Colah on Unsplash

The late British writer Anthony Lejeune only contributed a single piece to Manhattan Institute’s City Journal titled, “A Tour of New York Clubland”. It was in the Journal’s Winter 1992 issue within shivering distance of the December ‘92 ‘nor easter and a year before Manhattan Institute’s prominent student, Rudy Giuliani, ascended to the mayor’s office.

Reading Lejeune, however, provides no glimpses into this. Lejeune’s Manhattan, he says, is not that of the Empire State building or plopping a seat aboard the gaudy bright red buses zipping through the tourist-packed streets, but rather inside the familiar comfort of American clubs.

“It’s comforting, however, to have bolt holes in New York where an Englishman can feel more at home,” Lejeune writes. “The gentlemen’s clubs of Manhattan, with which the clubs of Pall Mall and St. James’s Street mostly have reciprocal arrangements, offer just such friendly comfort.”

Domestically, clubs often offer the sort of refuge that one can truly bask in: cocktails with heavy pours, riveting conversations with fascinating locals, athletic facilities with members who inflate their abilities without judgement, perhaps a seasonally curated menu (if the club prioritizes food and beverage), and if you’re lucky, a cigar room. (The fact that there seems to be less than 10 left in United States clubs is for another article.)

That’s the ideal, of course. The reality is that many clubs seem to have forgotten that clubs are meant to offer “friendly comfort” to their reciprocal clubs rather than seeing them as a money-making enterprise.

As has been previously written, my club—like many city clubs across the United States—happens to be closed for the month of August. Our club has been granted a few additional reciprocal clubs in New York to satisfy the urge for a club to call home for the remaining four weeks which has provided me with a glimpse of worrying trends about reciprocity in club life.