Editorial: What Epstein Taught Us About Gold Standard Clubs
Call them stuffy, exclusive and maybe snoozy — but sometimes, they're just right
Today’s issue of Clubland USA is an editorial written as follow-up to recent reporting by Clubland USA and the Wall Street Journal about Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement in the world of private clubs. Our next issue will be on Tuesday, March 3.
If there’s anything that we’ve learned about the various reporting of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s presence in elite social networks, one thing is clear: when it comes to Manhattan’s Gold Standard clubs, Epstein was always a guest, but never a member.
Any knowledgeable Club Cat should have noticed the silence from the crowd that believes that members of the Bohemian Club – who host famed summer retreats at Bohemian Grove – as there’s no evidence that Epstein visited. He notably had friends who did.
The only Club that seems to be a documented haunt is the CORE Club, which the Wall Street Journal reported had Epstein as a “founding member” who invested substantially in the club with multiple e-mails show Epstein inviting “girls” and business and social “connections” alike to visit him at CORE Club, long after he officially left its rosters.
Yes, you read that correctly: Epstein was that guy who still abused his club’s membership long after he left the rosters.
Nonetheless, a June 2015 e-mail indicates that CORE Club charged him a $7,600 annual membership fee, a steep discount on its usual fees which reach up to $18,000 annually. Emails show that he was a frequent presence known for lavishing up to thousands of dollars in one sitting.
One detail, however, remains obscured. The CORE Club was initially located on “East 55th St, between Park and Madison”, as the refrain goes in Epstein’s e-mail correspondence. Less than a mile away from Epstein’s 71st St townhouse, a stone’s throw away from Central Park, CORE was perhaps the only club on Manhattan’s Upper East Side — or anywhere in the city, for that matter — who would have him as more than a guest.
Epstein sought entry into the hallowed halls of other clubs, and oftentimes dodged the question of whether he belonged to The Explorers Club, right around the corner from his house. It turned out he could not and did not.
The only other club that Epstein claimed to be entangled with was the SoHo House in Miami, for which, like CORE, he was a “founding member”, according to an e-mail. No confirmation, however, could be found, although his correspondence includes multitudes from Guy Mitchell, Chief Development Office of SoHo House, and from those seeking entry to it. He even paid for Ghislaine Maxwell’s SoHo House bills, among others, writing to Celina Dubin that “you have a credit card to pay as much as you like for this year. do not be responsible. have fun”.
Here at Clubland USA, we see this as another vindication for the Gold Standard Club model: a club that is owned by the members, of the members, for the members; a club that shares in the life of other Gold Standard Clubs through reciprocity; and, finally, a club with a dress code.
None of the clubs that Epstein belonged to were Gold Standard Clubs; in fact, they were the very opposite, for-profit business entities that masqueraded as spaces to socialize with other, like-minded, newly-minted professionals, some of dubious provenance, others of dubious conduct, like Epstein.
At Gold Standard Clubs, Epstein would have struggled to become a member because of his unwillingness to have even the most basic details of his life explained to his peers. Plus, it’s safe to say that there’s enough WASPY Susans and skeptical Sams to never allow the results of that Google search to be ignored by the membership committee.
One can only imagine an application sent by a Jeffery E. Epstein to a Gold Standard Club, and a membership committee’s sitting curmudgeon takes it upon themselves to do even the most rudimentary research into the past of Jeffery E. Epstein, convicted pedophile. From 2009 that should have been enough to keep him away—and away they did. There is no profit motive, but the institutional motive of keeping a place alive, flourishing, and safe from the dangers of pedophilic frauds, the likes of which include Jeffery Epstein.
The only reason he belonged to CORE was because they were keen for investment, and despite his time at CORE significantly overlapping with his very public investigation and conviction over child sex crimes, no record exists of him being admonished or asked to resign by a club so singlehandedly obsessed with profit motives that its founders continued to not only entertain him and his “girls”, evidenced by a large tranche of e-mails, long after his child sex crimes conviction, but also sought advice on financial issues long after he left the club.
Gold Standard Clubs, by virtue of the nonexistence of the profit motive beyond general maintenance, by virtue of their longevity and enmeshment in networks older and deeper than themselves, by virtue of their standards and the high bar with which they hold themselves, cannot and would not surrender to the likes of pedophiles like Epstein.
This proves to be a tremendous risk for non-Gold Standard Clubs like CORE, who countless examples have shown fail this test time and time again.