NIGHTLIFE
Originally published on Friday, 06 June 2008
'Member Me?
There was a time when a members’ club was an institution of purest exclusivity. Gender, heritage, occupation, hobbies: the criteria for inclusion may have shifted plenty over the last couple of centuries, but there was always a sense of cohesive superiority. It usually takes a few years for a decade to die. 1992 may as well have been called '1989 part 3', for all its originality. But come now: it's 2008 already.
These days, there are so many of the blighters around that it’s hard not to keep bumping into the things. Many of the old school private clubs are still knocking about, of course – the intellectuals’ Athenæum on Pall Mall, for example, and its neighbouring Reform Club – but the new ‘egalitarian elitism’ of the modern membership phenomenon (everyone’s welcome, so long as you credit rating’s good) has opened a whole new can of worms.
With an excess in the over-40s group when Shoreditch House first opened they slashed their membership fees and prioritised selection for the under-28s. Battling an influx of male city-types, the East Room recently did the same thing for women. And with Upper Street’s forthcoming Jacaranda Tree apparently offering its ‘founding members’ a whopping 5 years for £500, with a bunch of benefits included, I’m beginning to wonder if perhaps we might have just hit saturation level.
Athenæum Club - 107 Pall Mall, London, SW1Y 5ER.
Reform Club - 104 Pall Mall, SW1Y 5EW
The East Room - 2a Tabernacle Street, EC2A 4LU
Shoreditch House - Ebor Street, Shoreditch, E1 6AW
Jacaranda Tree - 144 Upper Street, Islington N1 1Qy