It only takes a quick glance at the UK to know that the social club is alive and well. Membership of private members’ clubs is booming despite a number of controversies, including the temporary suspension of the Groucho Club’s licence following an alleged rape.
These days, members are just as likely to send emails from a private club’s open-plan co-working space as they are sinking Old-Fashioneds at its bar. When the beloved London music venue Koko reopened its doors in 2022 after a devastating fire, it did so as a concert hall slash private club. It seems even legendary cultural institutions need those membership fees.
But then again, when was the last time you socialised without paying for it? Are you able to spend quality time with a BFF without wincing when you reach for your wallet, whether it was to buy an overpriced pint or a full-on, sit-down meal? For most of us, the overwhelming answer is no. It points to an increasingly depressing fact about our lives: these days, socialising is often a paid-for privilege.
The way people split the bill can tell you a lot about how they view friendship
Read MoreSecurity guards and police can tell you to move on if they think you’re being a nuisance, parks are under-maintained or increasingly cordoned off to make way for music festivals, and who can forget the 2000s and 2010s trend for slapping teens with ASBOs for causing trouble in town squares?
According to some experts the UK is only about two to three years off £5 being the average cost of a coffee. Pub chains like Fullers and Wetherspoons have warned that they need to raise the price of beer after an increase in employers’ national insurance rates – one O’Neill’s pub in London has taken the drastic move of introducing surge pricing, making customers fork out up to £9.40 for a pint after 10pm.
Third spaces – a fancy academic word for “a public place to hang that isn’t work, school or home” – are integral to our mental well-being and democracy, according to US sociologists like Ray Oldenburg. They don’t have to be a pub or a watering hole; libraries, youth centres, green spaces, music venues, lidos, outdoor gyms – they all offer somewhere people can meet, mingle and break down social barriers. But many of these places have been decimated by austerity, under threat by developers or simply charge for the cost of entry.
Zing Tsjeng is a journalist, non-fiction author, and podcaster
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