In 2025, I went out a lot. I was back in New York after a four-year hiatus in LA, and I was ready to relaunch into society. I remember getting back from an Australian visa run in January and hearing so many things about Chez Margaux, this beautiful new members club where Taylor Swift went for drinks, nestled in the Meatpacking District. Super exclusive and vibey.
New New York
Fast forward to last week, one of the last Saturday nights in December. I ended the night with some girlfriends at Rintintin in Nolita. We initially planned to meet at 7 Spring, a cool new backgammon members club, but it was closed for an event. So we ended up at one of New York’s old haunts instead. A friend who had lived in NYC for ten years and now lives in London was activated by the scene at Rintintin. The laid-back energy. The ’80s music playing. Tables of guy friends and girl friends. The feeling of walking in and not everyone staring at you to see if you’re “somebody.”
We got chatting about what it’s like to go out in New York vs London nowadays. There was a time when New York nightlife was a vortex. You’d start the night at Indochine in the East Village, pick up friends at Sant Ambroeus, head to a house party, wander to karaoke in Koreatown, and end up dancing at Paul’s Baby Grand. You didn’t plan your night; the night took you.
While New Yorkers were too busy bar-hopping to care about exclusivity, London was busy perfecting it. Members clubs were their currency. Annabel’s. George. The Ned. 5 Hertford Street. And more recently, Maison Estelle, The Twenty Two, Roof Gardens. Places you needed not just money, but lineage and status. New York, meanwhile, was the charmingly unkempt younger sibling who preferred grubby dive bars in the East Village.
Old New York Vibes
Today, New York has become a playground of velvet ropes, waitlists, and “Can you send me a guest pass?” texts. Casa Cipriani. Chez Margaux. Zero Bond. Crane Club. The Twenty Two. Aman. Flyfish. ZZ’s. The list keeps growing. Even restaurants now behave like clubs, with six-month waitlists and tiny rooms you can only sit in if you know the maître d’. The Nines. Fouquet’s. The Corner Store. Faena.
Now when you go out, you dress differently: pointy high heels, nice dresses, a blowout. More formal and less an expression of your identity. Now our identities are wrapped up in a class system, which clubs you’re part of, where you hang out, and who you know.
It’s not just the night out that looks different; it’s the overall experience of living in New York. Instead of meeting a messy cross-section of humanity, you talk to the same sixty people you already know.
Don’t get me wrong, I love a good members club. They’re impeccably designed and comfortable. You get world-class DJs like Rufus Du Sol, Black Coffee, and Keinemusik on a random Wednesday night. The food is excellent, and you feel like you’ve stepped back in time to the Roaring ’20s, when the Casa Cipriani waiter drops champagne off in a Great Gatsby glass and cabaret girls are dancing in champagne coupes with bubbles on Halloween.
This formalization mirrors another cultural shift: weddings. Weddings used to be about love and celebrating the couple. Now they’re four-day productions in a destination you’ve never heard of, complete with merchandise, performers, drone footage, and a theme. The pre- and post-wedding social content output works harder than the Duolingo bird’s marketing team.
Members clubs don’t expand. They contract. They organize human beings into assigned seating. But once you’re in, you realize the great secret: the rooms are beautiful, the cucumber martinis are perfect, the people are stunning, but you’re talking to the same kinds of people over and over again. Now Londoners have swung back to their old pub ways, and as my friend put it, “it’s cooler not to be flashy.”
I’m aware that this complaining about sameness is totally my fault. I’m guilty of getting too comfortable and I have agency to step outside my (champagne) bubble. A girlfriend and I have been saying for months that we want to go out in Greenpoint. It keeps getting pushed because someone is hosting drinks in Manhattan, or there’s an event in the city. We have yet to make it to Greenpoint.
New York’s entire mythology, its romance, its promise of the American dream, comes from its collisions. Eight million people living on top of each other. The idea that at any moment, you can meet someone who changes your life.
If New York was once about becoming someone else, then this version asks something different: not who you might meet, but who you already know. And maybe that’s the real shift, not exclusivity, but familiarity posing as culture. In 2026 I vow to make it to Greenpoint, and I hope to meet you there.
This is dedicated to my dear friend who gets me into every member’s club. May he continue to send me guest passes. Love you.
