Which of the top 10 social membership clubs is right for you?

Your new social life is only a credit card tap away.

Being around people who are detectably different from you is uncomfortable, and finding things to talk about with people who do not share your interests–such as psychedelics, summer in Europe, or pulling the strings of the global economy–is challenging. Social membership clubs provide an easy antidote to cultural, ethnic, and economic diversity as well as a venue for people to silently judge people who are just like them. No matter what city you live in, unless you don’t live in NYC, there is a social membership club that’s right for you and the budget you have allotted to insulate yourself from randoms. You can tell a great deal about someone by the questions they ask, especially when they are trying to figure out if you belong. I’ve compiled the application questions for the most exclusive social membership clubs so that you can choose the club that will best affirm your identity. 

The Aman

Thank you for your interest in The Aman, a membership club created just to see if people would actually pay a sum we initially conceived as a joke. The first thing you will notice when entering the Aman is our host team, who have memorized the name and number on your credit card, your favorite grower champagne and vintage, and which of your companions is your spouse, your fiancé and your lover. Our founding values are discretion, excess, and quiet luxury. You will find that our luxury is so quiet that you can hear beluga caviar eggs burst in a member’s mouth across the room. As a welcome gift to our members, we offer complimentary private jet interior design services so that as you traverse between Aspen, Miami, and Moscow you can enjoy the same preserved pterodactyl wing wallpaper, matte titanium fixtures, and Russian sable carpeting featured in our clubhouse.  

Please complete this short application:

How many letters does it take before Google’s autocomplete search prediction finishes your full name and adds “net worth” behind it? Check one:  

[   ] 0 - 3 

[   ]  4 - 7 

[   ] 8 - 10 

[   ] greater than 10

Please rank the level of sheen on your clothing, where 1 is quiet luxury and 5 is Century 21:

Have you ever paid someone to peel a pound of grapes, just because you can?

[   ] yes 

[   ] not yet, but thank you for providing a new tedious way to assert my wealth

Casa Cipriani

Thank you for your interest in Casa Cipriani, the most exclusive members club in New York City for people whose professions are maybe not entirely legit. Casa Cipriani (aka “Casa”) caters to slightly wealthy, hirsute older men who enjoy intimate moments with Eastern European women in the back of Cadillac Escalades. Our membership also includes much younger women who look much older, who typically hail from Eastern Europe, Staten Island, or the southern middle region of Long Island. Our members have passports from many countries that don’t quite match their accent. We pride ourselves on our 360 views of the NYC harbor through bulletproof glass, our proximity to several forms of covert, rapid transportation, and the volume of alcohol and illicit substances that Mayor Eric Adams is gifted by members during business hours in our beautifully appointed clubhouse, which is inspired by Louis XIV, a burlesque club, and a 1970s mob pizzeria. 

Please complete this short application:

What is the name on the passport that you use most frequently?

What is your occupation? Check one:

[   ] import / export

[   ] export / import 

[   ] don’t axe me about my business

Have you ever not been acquitted of a crime? 

Which hip-hop artists are you friends with who might accompany you to Casa Cipriani?

Tell us a story about growing up middle class on Long Island or in Minsk:

Soho House

Thank you for your interest in Soho House, the original exclusive membership club that exported the social class system from England and taught Americans an entirely new way to assert their status, purchase friendships, and network with other people who sort of work two hours a day in creative industries. Our founding members in the United States, who joined between 1997 and 2003, consisted of British expat advertising creative directors, who moved to New York City to monetize their accent and date out of their league, and film school graduates with significant trust funds endowed by exactly the kind of finance people we once refused as members who are now literally keeping our sconces lit. Today we are proud to welcome just about anyone with a credit card number and a pulse that beats in a body under 50ish, but we are particularly focused on being a creative community for 20somethings, who have many years of needing to pay for external validation before they let their memberships lapse after aging out of having a social life. Thanks to our IPO, which provided a significant tax write-off opportunity for anyone who bought our stock, we have been able to bring our brand of whimsical elitism to every city favored by global nomads, making it possible for people to visit a foreign country and have exactly the same cultural, culinary, and visual experience in each destination. 

Please complete this short application: 

Please type your credit card number here: _______________________ 

The Metropolitan Club

Thank you for your interest in The Metropolitan Club, the most exclusive members club founded by bankers for bankers (#BB4B). Originally founded by ‘new money’ that has aged like a cabernet sauvignon, we cater to white Anglo-Saxon Protestants who have never bathed without heated, monogrammed towels. Our members come from a diverse array of fourth-generation Upper East Side families who attended a wide variety of Ivy League Universities except for Yale, Brown, Cornell, and certainly not the University of Pennsylvania. Our culinary program features butter, roast beef and cucumber white bread sandwiches for lunch, and our dinner menu includes roast duck, roast chicken and roast beef. Complimentary breakfast service begins at 5am and concludes at 6am and includes the Financial Times, oatmeal with raisins, and black coffee. Our bar is open from 5am to 11pm and serves the finest London dry gin, Kentucky whiskey, and Irish scotch. We host festivities for all cultural and religious holidays, which includes Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and Indigenous Peoples Day Columbus Day.  

Please complete this short application:

What is the original source of your family wealth? 

What year did the paternal branch of your family arrive in the United States?

What year did the maternal branch of your family arrive in the United States?

Which boarding school did you attend?

Which university did you attend? Check one: 

[   ] Harvard 

[   ] Dartmouth

[   ] Columbia 

Where is your summer cottage? Check one: 

[   ] Newport 

[   ] Edgartown

[   ] Bar Harbor

[   ] East Hampton (south of highway)

[   ] East Hampton (north of highway)

With which president are you posed on a golf course in a pewter-framed photograph that’s perched on your mahogany desk in the study of your Upper East Side pre-war apartment?

You’re not gay or one of those pronoun people, are you?

Please specify what form of payment you will use for membership dues, which are charged centenially. Check one: 

[   ] Gold bullion 

[   ] Cattle 

[   ] Oil futures 

[   ] Acreage 

[   ] T bills

The Yale Club

Thank you for your interest in The Yale Club, the most repentant members club in New York City. We are a welcoming, inclusive space for people of all genders who attended Yale or seem like it. The Yale Club, aka YC (note: our use of “YC” predates Yellowstone Club and Y-Combinator by like a hundred years) is for people who resent the patriarchy and enjoy discussing their resentment of the patriarchy with other people who resent the patriarchy but have definitely gotten rich as a direct result of being the patriarchy. Highlights from our club activities include screenings of obscure European films, inspirational presentations by exiled political leaders of turbulent countries, and public vilifications of cis gender white males.

Please complete this short application:

What are your pronouns?

Was womens studies your major or minor?

Which is your preferred Communist ideology?

How do you identify ethnically?

If you answered “white,” how have you repented for your privilege? 

If you answered “white,” do you have at least two friends who are persons of color who will visit the club with you at least 2 days per month? 

Tell us about a time that you felt bad about being a cis gender white person: 

CORE: Club

Thank you for your interest in CORE: Club, the most exclusive members club in Midtown Manhattan for almost divorced 30- and 40something men in finance who are drawn to the use of the capital letters in our name because it reminds them of TAO. Our members enjoy short, heated conversations about small cap private equity deals and long games of beer pong, only with cocaine instead of beer. We screen The Wolf of Wall Street and Caddy Shack daily after the markets close, and we offer complimentary valet parking for any member who is dating a Victoria’s Secret model, even though Victoria’s Secret isn’t really a thing any longer. 

Please complete this short application: 

Who is your favorite American Express Black Card concierge?

What is your ranking in Craine’s New York?

How much of your net worth do you anticipate losing in your forthcoming divorce?

Are there still photographs in existence of you with Jeffrey Epstein?

What is your favorite bar in Southampton?

How young is “too young?”

Please use this space to thinly veil a stock tip in such a way that we get the tip but the SEC wouldn’t be able to create an insider trading case:

Zero Bond

Thank you for your interest in Zero Bond, the most exclusive members club for middle-aged entrepreneurs and trust fund kids who probably should have moved to Miami during the height of the pandemic. We cater to attractive people who are just about to tumble off of the age cliff and lost a good bit of their hearing from standing too close to the speakers at Double 7, Bungalow 8, and 1 Oak in 2008. Our members use our dimly lit but expansive space to recount the heyday of New York City nightlife, to talk about where they’re summering or wintering, and to stare at Adrien Grenier. A highlight of our weekly entertainment program includes watching venture capital executives give Mayor Adams advice on how to run NYC.  

Please complete this short application: 

How many weeks a year do you spend in Miami?

In 1,500 words or less, please explain why Torissi is better than Carbone, or vice versa:

How old were you when you realized you were too old for Soho House and needed a more exclusive-seeming venue to which to invite much younger women who will definitely not sleep with you? 

At which of the following clubs did you consistently spend more than $1,500 per month during the heyday of both NYC nightlife and your youth? Check one: 

[   ] Double 7 

[   ] Bungalow 8 

[   ] 1 Oak  

Recount a time when you successfully picked up another guy’s girlfriend by sending a bottle of Veuve to their table at Cloud Nine Aspen:

By signing this agreement you agree to be chill if you see a B-level celebrity whom you briefly met in the elevator at Soho House in 2013. 

The Links 

Thank you for your interest in The Links, the membership club where the entire world order is architected and shaped over a friendly game of backgammon. We provide a discreet haven for the handful of men who quietly control the trajectory of political regimes and drive the global economy like 13-year-olds wielding Nintendo joysticks. Our membership’s hobbies include creating, inheriting, and destroying industries and sometimes countries. Our concierge team is thoroughly trained in sending encrypted messages to heads of state, executing political coups, and making inconvenient truths and the people who speak them disappear. The Links’ culinary program features steak, potatoes, and people who voted for Bernie Sanders. 

Please complete this short application:

How does your name appear on buildings?

What nickname did GWB give you?

Which president were you most instrumental in installing into office?  

What’s the hardest part about creating a recession?

Tell us about a time that you resolved a geopolitical conflict that you also began in order to further your business interests:

Please list the names of US senators, current or former secretaries of defense, and living presidents (except Jimmy Carter) who are willing to serve as character references: 

Secret Social Club

Thank you for your interest in Secret Social Club, a new membership club conceived to monetize and industrialize the k floor party. After a summer of exhilarating profit margins in an almost condemned warehouse space in Soho that we covered in ethnic rugs, lined with bed sheets, and filled with entertainers hired from Craigslist for free kombucha, we are now semi-permanently housed in the carcass of another ill-fated, short-lived membership club called Norwood, which was affectionately called Snorewood by people who joined and immediately regretted it. Among our many cost-avoidance measures disguised as vibe enhancements include the almost total absence of furniture and absolutely no structural or aesthetic changes from the previous tenant other than the inexplicable presence of a slight, bearded naked man apparently hired to silently lean against a non-working fireplace and stare into space. Recruited from a handful of WhatsApp chat groups, our diverse members camp in three closely-related Burning Man camps who have all mildly dated one another after meeting at a play party. Our clubhouse is conveniently located 53 steps from the 14th Street L train entrance. 

Please complete this short application:

Are you in a muted WhatsApp group with one of the 29 founders? Check one:

[   ] yes  

By signing below you agree to keep Secret Social Club a total secret other than tagging us in cryptic, artsy selfies of you and other attractive people dressed in costly rags taken in our clubhouse and to tell no one about Secret Social Club except for everyone you know who wishes Burning Man were a year-round indoors experience and has a significant amount of disposable income. 

Delta Sky Lounge JFK

Thank you for your interest in the Delta Lounge at JFK, a club that anyone with the right credit card can access that now, at all times of the day, has a longer line than Berghain on a Friday night. Once inside after a 30 to 140 minute wait, you will find the same slightly perfumed air, industrial coffee machines that produce brown liquid hot enough to exfoliate your soul, chunky flavorless hummus, and chicken in a viscous brown sauce that are in every single Delta Lounge around the world. The Delta Lounge at JFK differentiates itself on the unique amount of cortisol produced by wealthy New Yorkers who don’t understand why they have to wait in a line filled with randoms just to get free coffee and stale baked goods, but still cannot resist anything free and anything that involves status. 

Please complete our membership application here.

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