Every new site has its own challenges. In Istanbul, finding employees who were both fluent in English and confident enough to treat guests with on-brand fraternity was difficult. Familiarizing midwesterners with the brand and convincing them of its affordability and lack of pretense was the big hurdle in Chicago. Regardless, go to any one of these Soho Houses and you'll feel more or less the same.

That's because “it's not about the age,” Jones says, “it's about their soul. Our favorite member is still the struggling screenwriter. That's what gives the place interest.” Though I'm deeply disinclined to believe that—why would any business owner prefer a poor client to a rich one?—it's undeniable that those are the people you see inside.

The ambient cosmopolitanism is like the physical equivalent of that accent children of diplomats have: placeless, kinda fake-seeming, but totally appealing.

The brand predates the recession by almost fifteen years and performed fabulously for the first decade-plus of its existence, but it took the collapse of the global economy to make the place's true mission clear. In March 2010, the club “purged” close to a thousand New York members, most of them in finance. “We are trying to get the club back to its creative roots,” Jones told the New York Post at the time. Concurrent with the mass i-banker expulsion was an effort to crack down on party-time bathroom sharing. Brushed-steel signs were mounted that read, “Anyone found in pairs in the toilet will be asked to leave the club immediately and their membership will be suspended.” And as the harder-partying and financially predatory members were on their way out, the precariously employed were on their way in.

“I saw it happening before my eyes,” says Pierre Dourneau, the director of North American operations. “Many people lost their jobs but kept their memberships. Rather than go crazy at home, they came here and sat in the drawing room. A lot of them were on Facebook doing nothing.”

These people, they'd all come here to ride out the storm and, in so doing, had found one another. In the three months I spent hanging around Soho House, not a single member or employee I spoke to failed to use the phrase “like-minded people” within five minutes of conversation. At first I glossed over it, in the same way I do when I hear about things like “thinking outside the box” or read the proper nouns in Harry Potter books. But after a while, the words assumed the gravity of a private joke. What was “like-minded” a euphemism for? I wondered. “Class” seemed too generic. “Scientology” too creepy to even joke about. Like-minded? What were their minds like?

Though it’s private and (at least semi-) exclusive, Soho House shares many qualities with cool hotels.

If you are under 27 and want to join your local Soho House, they'll cut you a half-off rate—$1,000 annually. Which, depending on where you live, is about the price of the YMCA or two months of desk rent in a co-working space in Manhattan.

Eli Velez, who has been a member since he was 25, is a good representative of the sort of young person Soho House is courting with this deal. He worked until recently as an assistant to Kanye West's creative director, lives in Harlem, and takes the subway to Soho House, where he spends the entire day, at least five times per week. “I work here, I sleep here, I take showers here,” he says, laughing. Velez now hosts regular parties for Soho House with the express aim of getting young people like himself to join.

“The preconceived notion people have about this place is that it's super stuck-up,” Velez says. That's what he thought, too, three years ago, when he first came as the guest of a friend. But he was overcome by everyone's graciousness and now proselytizes to his friends, who are, like he was, wary at first. “It's like a personal oasis—I know that sounds really corny,” he says. “We have a joke: Every summer, it's like, ‘Let's see how many new friends we can make.’ Because once people realize you have a membership and access to a private pool, it's like, ‘Oh, my God!’ Everybody wants to be your friend.”