Tax Day Meets Clubland
Two things in life are (usually) unavoidable: taxes and anxiety over your club bill
No matter how hard you try, you can’t avoid taxes, death and the inevitable anxiety about your club bill. The latter is the most flexible. You can always leech off your parent’s membership until you’re twenty-six when you’ll also be booted off their health insurance. Hopefully, you’ve spent those years saving for important things like a down payment or initiation fees.
Nonetheless, at some point, both the Club Comptroller and the Taxman come knocking. Call it sticker shock, but ‘tis the day for it.
It just so happens that Tax Day this year falls on the day when many club bars are pouring their first drinks of the week. It is our hope that by press time you’re taking down a double-strong martini, preferably dirty with a healthy pour of vodka and olives. Hopefully, you’ve also filed your taxes … or at least paid your club bill (only one of them are generous with extensions).
Clubland moves slowly which is why Leonard Robinson conveys handy advice from tax professionals in “The Ultimate Truth about Clubland and Tax Season”. Funny considering that this might have been more useful before Tax Day, but ignore at your own peril— lest you find yourself paying dues at Club Fed. I hear they do have rooms.
In “The Four Children of a Club Passover Seder”, Ben Kahn takes you through the four character types you’re most likely to encounter at your club’s Passover seder.
And yours truly, Clubland USA’s resident curmudgeon, complains in “Your Money Doesn’t Work Here”, about the gaudiness of those who try to enquire about wealth, finances, and monetary standard. There’s only one thing to say to that: no. No-uh-oo.
And a rather short but humorous Dispatches from Clubland, where I bring to you, among other things, a description of a rather clubby night out in Manhattan Clubland.
Please forward this Clubland USA issue, brought to subscribers by Double Dot Squash, with everyone who will love it. You’ll be our favourites (and might even win some merch!) if they subscribe below or by using your unique referral link at the bottom of this email. —IJ
The Four Children of a Club Passover Seder
By: Ben Kahn
If your club (or you) hosted a Seder this year, you undoubtedly became familiar with the Haggadah’s (book containing the order and prayers of the seder service) story of The Four Children: the Wise One, the Wicked One, the Simple One, and the One Who Does Not Know How to Ask. Please lean into your minhag (custom) if the haggadah used at your table involved different names. We’re Jews, or the People of the Book, which means that sometimes things get lost in certain additions.
Nonetheless, Clubland USA has adapted this portion of the Seder (with a helpful bit of advice) to show who could be at your club’s seder table might be asking the 3,000 year old question, “Why is this night different from all other nights?”
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The Ultimate Truth about Clubland and Tax Season
By: Leonard Robinson
Park yourself at any club table during this time of year and you’ll hear more about taxes than you’ve ever imagined.
Some will share that they haven’t even filed them yet or have made it an annual tradition to file late and beg mercilessly for an extension (yours truly). Others will share tax nightmare stories about fatal heart attacks preparing for taxes or about how someone received a surprise six-figure bill.
And there’s always the club jester who swears that they have “written off my entire club bill off on my taxes and have been getting away with it for years.”
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Your Money Doesn’t Work Here
By: Ishaan Jajodia
As you make your way through Clubland, you’ll find that the most frugal members are also the wealthiest: two of the wealthiest men I know don’t have lockers at our club—all to save on the cost of a cocktail a month. When you try to show how much you have, you’re almost always going to be confronted with someone with those all-too-crucial extra zeroes in their net worth who wouldn’t tell you a darn thing about it, and the embarrassment is horrendous.
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Dispatches from Clubland
The Yale Club hosted a party commemorating the centennial of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s iconic Great Gatsby last week. The party, however, laid in stark contrast to the dull and drab description in the book it claimed to celebrate.
Nick Carraway, the narrator of Fitzgerald’s novel, observed that “I took dinner at the Yale Club—for some reason it was the gloomiest event of my day—and then I went upstairs to the library and studied investments and securities for a conscientious hour. There were generally a few rioters around, but they never came into the library, so it was a good place to work.”
While enjoying another round of spirits after the party with our guests at another nearby Manhattan club, Leonard Robinson stumbled upon a Tiffany and Co. box in the men’s restroom. Inside the box, concealed within layers of fine tissue, was a toy of the NSFW variety. A guest swore that it was an oversized wine stopper to which we blamed the Yale Club’s liberality with demi-bouteilles of champagne, with a nifty plastic conduit for quick consumption.
Lest we forget, we must thank our latest Clubland USA subscriber, Frederick Lane, who found out about us in the men’s restroom at the Yale Club, and—as forbearance—is the recipient of a free month.
Ever been curious about what are the (other) special prizes that a Masters champion receives? X (or Twitter, as it used to be known) has a helpful answer (for once).
Thankfully Tax Season marks the end of those dreaded winters, and the start of tennis season. Time to bring those whites out of the closet! —IJ
Thank you for reading Clubland USA. Our next issue will be Tuesday, April 22, at 3pm.