The Commencement Issue
Congratulations to America's graduates from Clubland USA
Finding a hotel room (or club accommodations, depending on where you’re traveling) will be more difficult and expensive this week. Across the United States, young men and women will be embarking on the next chapter of their lives in albeit exciting, yet strange times.
Anyone reading this owes it to their special loved one to have some valuable feedback on finding a good club. This should come seconds after they complete their walk across the stage to the first march of pomp and circumstance. And shortly after, an envelope with a check (ideally to be used for the initiation and first year’s dues!)
In this week’s issue, Ishaan Jajodia explores joining your first club.
And, as a bonus graduation gift, Clubland USA writers share the best advice for recent graduates on club life. And as always, yours truly delivers with Dispatches from Clubland.
Please be sure to forward this Clubland USA issue, brought to subscribers by Double Dot Squash, with everyone who will love it. You’ll be our favorites if they subscribe here, or by using your unique referral link below.—LR
Clubland USA gives graduation advice
By: Ishaan Jajodia, Ben Kahn, and Leonard Robinson
There’s one thing that all of us here at Clubland USA have in common besides our love for club life: none of us attended our commencement ceremonies. Our academic journeys overlapped with a pandemic that sent us away from classrooms, fraternity houses and the like back to our childhood bedrooms. For Ben and Ishaan, a commencement ceremony simply was not made available to them. For myself, I had completed my courses and already moved to New York and had lost interest in the idea of returning to my alma mater in Baltimore to walk across the stage.
Years ago, a wise mentor shared with me that the best gift that someone could give you was advice. Good advice, he said, will spare you from the experiences that others had to discover via more difficult means.
In that spirit, Clubland USA writers provide some friendly advice for aspiring club rats on Graduation Day.
To continue reading, please click here.
Joining Your First Club
By: Ishaan Jajodia
Within weeks, someone dear to you will be marching across the stage to Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance. This will come after the inevitable commencement speaker who wants to impart wisdom on these young minds whose sole interest is in reliving their love-hate relationship with their new alma mater.
At Clubland USA, we’re a tad more practical. Commencement marks the beginning of your adult life, perhaps even in a different city or apart from the club you grew up at.
Thus you are confronted with a real challenge: where, now, from here?
This is Clubland USA’s comprehensive guide to life after commencement, from what clubs to join to how to conduct yourself to what to wear. We’ve got it all covered.
To continue reading, please click here.
Dispatches from Clubland
Banished to Kimpton Theta. On a recent stay at the Kimpton Theta Hotel in Times Square for Mother’s Day weekend, a gentleman speaking loudly on his phone at the gym said he was reprimanded for bringing a poorly-dressed female visitor through the front doors of the New York Athletic Club. Embarrassed, he booked a room at the Kimpton Theta but was upset to still not have secured a phone number from his special visitor.
Open season at the Yale Club. Per sources and reporting, graduation from Yale is no longer a requirement for admission to the Yale Club of New York City. One must simply have a proposer, seconder and for good measure, two letters of recommendation for admission. Manhattan’s “club craze”. Even the New York Post has caught on to the “club craze” that’s been the talk of social media. Yes, yes, we’ve recieved your messages. These “clubs” however aren’t simply for our kind of club rats: the food is outrageously expensive, they’re owned by everyone but the members, they lack any form of reciprocity beyond their sister locations which always seem to be in Miami or Los Angeles and the dress code, if they have one, is more about ensuring designer labels are visible rather than decorum. We’ll pass.
Did you say Sunny D? National Press Club, home to the Beltway journalist types, has declined conservative pundit Natalie Winters for membership. While some in Washington Clubland might say this is old news, it’s the perfect time to bring up a tip that we heard about the Club. It’s cheap eats and cheaper drinks, but you get what you pay for. When asked for a tequila-based cocktail, the bartender simply replied, “So do you want a margarita?” And here’s the worst part: their tequila sunrises might be made with Sunny D.
Thank you for reading Clubland USA. Our next issue will be Tuesday, May 20, at 3PM.