Club Fever
One Year Later
Next week marks our one year anniversary of bringing Clubland USA to our loyal readers.
If you’ve been reading Clubland USA as closely as you’ve been following your club statements, you might know that we’re nearing a special milestone for our humble publication bringing you inside the world of clubs.
We’ve brought to our readers everything from Clubhouse Guide series, which covers the basics like the various types of clubs and club sports (and billiards for those less inclined), the rules of squash, club tables, what to wear, how to dress for summer, club finances, annual general meetings and club elections, (to Ishaan’s particular delight) what to do when joining your first club, reciprocal clubs and where not to whip out your phone.
Apart from the basics, we’ve covered clubs from Binghamton, New York, to Toledo, Ohio to Chicago and mourned the passing of Phoenix, Arizona’s only city club. From the new clubs like Austin, Texas’ Viridian Club to Gold Standard Clubs—those old bastions of legacy—we’ve brought it all to you, reliably, every Tuesday at 3PM.
Our squash coverage has been stellar. Apart from the professional squash tour, we’ve been longtime fans of Spencer Lovejoy and the National Squash League. We profiled NSL’s CEO, Spencer Lovejoy, at length, not long after we saw our first NSL game in a New York City skyscraper, and traced his journey from the squash courts at the New Haven Lawn Club to the professional squash tour. Mostafa Asal, long-time bad-boy of the pro squash tour, has been in our crosshairs for being a bad ol’ sport.
And, last, but not the least, we’ve been keeping abreast of disgraced pedophile “financier” Jeffery Epstein’s jaunts through clubland. We shall always remember that when it came to Gold Standard Clubs, he was always a guest, never a member; and should serve as a lesson to the newer “clubs” willing to have him.
After a year of writing Clubland USA, we have learned that there’s still not yet a cure for Club Fever. Thankfully, it’s only gotten worse.
You’re probably asking, what’s this club fever you speak of?
Our first issue included this gem by our own Leonard Robinson,
What’s Club Fever? It’s a disease that afflicts those special club regulars—who shall affectionately be known as club rats by this publication—when they’re strayed too far from the inside of a private club. It need not be their own. Much like smallpox, modernity seems to believe that such a thing has been eradicated. While the symptoms are relatively harmless, they can be difficult to understand if you’ve never experienced them.
Reports from Architectural Digest to the Wall Street Journal and even the American City Business Journals all detail a growth in interest about the world of clubs.
Real estate developers in Manhattan are learning how to make the drab amenity space in their high-rise buildings feel more like a “private club”. A private club led by a libertarian activist in New Hampshire could even possibly become a must-stop destination for potential presidential candidates next cycle.
The years that followed the COVID pandemic were, like the years that followed the influenza pandemic more than a century before it, were at first austere, then gilded, with every sort of romp and circumstance imaginable. No one liked being forced to hunker down and cover up, hoping that their next day may not be their last. You can see clearly where the embers first lit up.
We look forward to continuing bringing these stories to our loyal readers like you in the future.
Stay tuned next week for a special one-year anniversary issue.