LLUSTRATION BY MICHAEL PARKIN

The Sunday Times, May 21 2017, 12:01am

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A few months ago, I moved halfway across the world to report for this paper from New York. This move means less than it once did: people in Brooklyn use the same laptops, drink the same coffee and watch the same TV shows. Yes, dry-rub Southern chicken and a proper roast dinner are still worlds apart, but the food in Brooklyn and Hackney is almost exactly the same.

My parents often ask me what type of cuisine I had when I’ve been out for dinner. I try to explain to them that it’s a pointless question. I had harissa rabbit kohlrabi tacos, Mum, with a brown-bag onion bounty on the side. Does that mean anything to anyone? It sounds like it was created by an automatic hipster-food generator.

I’m mostly OK with the global monoculture, which was really created for idiots just like me. But I draw the line at Soho bloody House. I’ve come to live in the most exciting city on the planet, and all anyone wants to do is take me to somewhere identical to the place they hang out at in London or whichever Uber-infested city they call home. How many of these damn things are there now? New York (x2). London (x6). Miami. Chicago. Toronto. Barcelona. Turkey’s got one and it’s not even a democracy anymore. Imagine going all the way to Istanbul, with its ancient culture and deep sense of mystery, and spending your time sipping pinot noir at Soho House.

The empire keeps growing. In the City of London it now has the Ned, named after the building’s designer, Edwin Lutyens. Ancient heritage, modern makeover. Get it? Then there’s the forthcoming White City outpost — basically a refuge for canny BBC employees that manage to avoid getting shipped up to Manchester. And don’t even get me started on the Soho Farmhouse, that faux-rural Instagram factory outside Chipping Norton, best described by a friend as “Butlins for c****”.

The trouble now is that it’s not just Soho House. Nick Jones’s insanely successful (though strangely unprofitable) empire has become a mothership brand, like one of those hulking spacecraft in Star Wars that has lots of little ships spawning out of it.

The latest one in Manhattan is the Wing, a women-only club founded by a PR impresario, Audrey Gelman, because “magic is created when women gather together”. All the Soho Housey things you’d expect are there: the exposed brickwork, the shelves full of unread books and the long co-working desks filled with dubiously employed young creatives paying $2,000 a year to be there.

Why do I end up in these places so often, if I hate them so much? The truth, is I don’t hate Soho House, I just get depressed by how much everyone else seems to like it. It’s a perfectly nice time. But it’s the same nice time I had on the past 15 occasions. Whatever happened to spontaneity? To nights when you end up massacring Hey Jude in a seedy karaoke bar, or getting hammered on black sambuca shots with a bunch of Spanish students? Those are the nights you remember. Even when they’re crap at the time they’re always fun to laugh about after. But you’ll never get that amid the superbly curated pleasantness of a Soho House, where everything is always seven out of 10.

This matters even if you’ve never been near a Soho House, because the relentless yuppification it promotes touches so many of us. It’s in the smashed avocado on toast at your favourite cafe and the shabby-chic furniture you paid too much for in your living room. It’s all of those forgettable evenings where the ultimate point was just to be among wealthy and beautiful people. And it keeps spreading, smoothing out every edge, suffocating creativity and fun in its octopus-like grip.

I’d suggest running away to New York, but unless you’re very careful, you’ll find it’s exactly the same.

 

 

Stephen Deighton Partner T +44 (0)20 7422 2979 M +44 (0)7770 975 826 E stephen.deighton@archr.com 49 Carnaby Street, London, W1F 9PY United Kingdom ARCHR.COM