Clubland, This One’s on You
Bring a damn guest — preferably one who’s younger than the Internet
Imagine that you’re a young person in 1980. You’ve just graduated from university, found an affordable apartment somewhere along Fifth Avenue and are searching for your footing in Manhattan Clubland.
Depending on your circumstances, the options are endless. If you would have been a religious minority (especially Jewish), Black, anything besides heterosexual or a woman, at these times, this would have certainly been slightly different for you and we’re glad that many clubs have grown up.
If you’re an Ivy Leaguer, there’s clubs for Harvard, Yale, Penn and even Princeton. The latter would close in 2021. If you’re a Dartmouth alum in 1980, you’ve still got a strong grudge over the financial woes from the last decade that has forced you into sharing a building with the Yale Club.
For the New York City nerds out there, the Dartmouth Club’s last solo stint involved occupying a suite of rooms at the Commodore Hotel. The Commodore Hotel was purchased in 1976 by a young real estate developer, Donald Trump, and became the site of the Grand Hyatt Hotel.
Nonetheless, even if you weren’t a part of the Ivy League crowd, clubs were flourishing. You had your choices of Union, Union League, Knickerbocker, Colony, Society of Illustrators, Explorers, and others depending on your background.
Manhattan, where love for the theatrical flowed like three-martini lunches, boasted three different clubs for entertainers.
“If you’re an actor trying to be a gentleman, you go to the Lambs.” playwright George S. Kaufman once remarked. “If you’re a gentleman trying to be an actor, you go to The Players. And if you’re neither trying to be both, you go to The Friars.” The Friars, unfortunately, closed its doors in 2023 after years of financial woes and The Players is the only of the remaining three in its original location.
What made Clubland so different then compared to now?
Following our thought experiment, your first visit to Manhattan Clubland — or anywhere in America, for that matter, would have been at the helm of a resident. Perhaps, it was your supervisor, your then-summer fling’s father visiting a reciprocal club from Minnesota or that eccentric bon vivant who lived above you in that affordable Fifth Avenue building referenced earlier.
Today, we have become complacent ambassadors for our clubs. The culture of a fine club should be so encouraging that members want to bring an intern, colleague or manager, and even that university classmate who visits twice per year for a visit.
While the 1980s is truly before my time, one arrives at the impression that before the 2000s, it wasn’t odd to see a club bar filled with members under the age of 40. Today, for many clubs, members under 40 are a spectacle; under 35, they’re a rarity; and under 30, they’re just downright lost.
These visits and interactions are essential for Clubland’s survival. And it should be taken as a big sign if your members don’t feel comfortable bringing a guest to the club. It doesn’t take a six-figure marketing budget to determine that something’s extremely off if more than half of the club’s membership has never proposed someone for membership.
Members continuously shirking their duties as club ambassadors will only lead to more obituary dispatches from Clubland USA. So, on this fine Tuesday as you’re reading this right before heading off to your club, do your part and bring a damn guest—preferably one who doesn’t remember a time before the internet.