Souvenir: Groucho 30 Book

The first private membership club I ever visited was The Groucho Club in London.

At the time, Sacha Baron Cohen and former Objective Productions CEO Andrew Newman had just launched Spelthorne Community Television. They worked out of the first-ever Spaces by Regus on Oxford Circus, where I was working as a Community Associate.

It was my first real job in London, and I was already falling in love with the business of bringing people together.

Sacha was incredibly kind and charismatic. It was from him that I learned what a celebrity rider was. His assistant was also originally from Delmarva, and it was the young writers on his team who invited me to The Groucho.

Because it was my first, and because it was a great night, I could say The Groucho holds a special place in my heart. But more than a decade later, with my career now deeply rooted in the club industry, it’s also the history.

The Groucho inspired Soho House.

Established in 1985 by a group of mostly women publishers, it was conceived as an antidote to the stiff gentlemen’s clubs that dominated London at the time.

Anyone could apply based on merit, and the membership skewed toward arts, literature, and media.

Like celebrities, once clubs reach mythical status, people begin rooting for their downfall. Articles declaring the death of The Groucho have circulated for years, from as recently as last year to as far back as 2010, but its roots still feel punk to me, and for that, I’ll always be a fan.

I love collecting souvenirs from places I’ve been, usually books, especially when they are written by people I’ve met or tied to projects I’ve been part of.

The Groucho 30th Anniversary book is one of many private club anniversary books in my collection, and I’m excited to start sharing more of them here. This one came from eBay and arrived as a surprise two-for-one, with Chris Levine’s Lightness of Being on page 209.

Two years after that night out I interned at Jealous Gallery. I learned how to screen print and spent a day hand-applying 24-karat gold leaf to limited edition Lightness of Being prints. Seeing the print later auctioned off at Christie’s and now selling for double is surreal.