Los Angeles
A neighborhood club for Echo Park
Hills, stairways and a lake, wrapped around Sunset Boulevard just northwest of downtown. $49 a month, and everything inside at a 10% mark-up.
Echo Park is steep. The flats near the lake are walkable, the streets above them are not, and Baxter Street is famous for being a hill people film. Sunset Boulevard carries the nightlife. A neighborhood club here would sit between the two, close enough to walk down to and far enough to feel separate.
What going out in Echo Park costs
Sunset is the strip, and it has gotten expensive in the way that strips do. Eighteen to twenty dollars is normal for a cocktail now, and a two-person dinner before tip starts around fifty-five. Parking on the hill streets is competitive enough that people drive down and pay for a lot anyway. Going out twice on a weekend plus a weekday coffee habit comes to roughly three hundred and fifty a month. IRL charges forty-nine a month and sells drinks at cost plus ten percent.
| Per week | In Los Angeles | At IRL | Saved / month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weekday coffee (5 a week) | $7 | $3 | $87 |
| Lunch out (2 a week) | $20 | $6 | $121 |
| Drinks (4 a week) | $18 | $4 | $242 |
| Dinner out (1 a week) | $30 | $8 | $95 |
| Monthly total | $766 | $270* | $497 |
*Includes the $49 monthly membership. Menu prices only, before tax and tip in the Los Angeles column, which is where the real gap gets wider. Annual difference: $5,959.
Nothing on that list is extravagant. Five coffees, two lunches, four drinks and one dinner is a quiet week. At Los Angeles prices it still comes to $766 a month, which is $5,959 a year more than the same week costs at cost plus ten percent.
Join the waitlist
Get a club in Echo Park
Join the waitlist. We open a neighborhood once enough people nearby are on the list, and memberships open in pairs or groups, so bring someone.
One quick thing —
You are on the list.
Memberships open in pairs (or more). People referred together join together, and bigger groups move up the list.
$49/month when we open. No card now. Leaving the waitlist is one click.
Making friends in Echo Park
Echo Park has a high turnover of renters in their twenties and a long-standing set of residents who have been here for decades, and the two groups rarely overlap. The lake fills up on Sundays with people who do not talk to each other. Meeting anyone usually means showing up to the same bar until a bartender knows you, which is an expensive way to make a friend. Membership makes the showing up cheap, and the room is the same room every week.
The mechanism matters more than the intention. A club has opening hours, a membership list, and a monthly volunteer shift, which means you end up in the same room as the same people on purpose and without scheduling anything. More on that in how to make friends in Los Angeles.
Where a Echo Park club would sit
We draw a walking radius, not a city boundary. A club only works if getting there is a short enough walk that you go without deciding to go. The first Los Angeles club is planned for Atwater Village. Echo Park opens when enough people here are on the list, which is the only thing that decides the order.
Landmarks inside or bordering the radius: Echo Park Lake, Angelus Temple, Sunset Boulevard, Elysian Park, Baxter Street.
The short version
- $49 a month. That is the whole membership. No initiation, no minimum spend.
- Everything at a 10% mark-up. $2 drip coffee, $3 latte, $4 cocktails, $6 lunch, $8 dinner.
- A 3-hour shift a month, if you want to. Plus one park day. Not mandatory, and it is the fastest way to actually meet the other members.
- Memberships open in pairs or groups. Anyone who joins through your link is in your group, and bigger groups move up the Echo Park list together.
Near Echo Park
Other Los Angeles neighborhoods
Questions
- Is there an IRL club in Echo Park yet?
- Not yet. Every neighborhood starts as a waitlist, and the first Los Angeles club is planned for Atwater Village. We open a neighborhood once enough people who live nearby have signed up, so the Echo Park list is what decides whether and when a club opens here.
- How much does the Echo Park club cost?
- $49 a month, the same in every neighborhood. Inside, the menu runs at cost plus a 10% mark-up: $2 drip coffee, $3 lattes, $4 cocktails, $6 lunch, $8 dinner. There is no initiation fee, no minimum spend and no card required to sit on the waitlist.
- How much would a Echo Park member actually save?
- On a normal week of five coffees, two lunches, four drinks and one dinner, Los Angeles menu prices come to about $766 a month. The same week at IRL is about $270 including the membership, a difference of roughly $5,959 a year before tax and tip.
- Do I have to live in Echo Park to join?
- No, but it helps your position. Clubs are built around a walking radius, so we weight the list toward people who actually live close enough to drop in without planning it. You can join the Echo Park list from anywhere and tell us whether you live locally.
- What is the volunteer shift?
- Members are asked to work one three-hour shift a month, and to join one park clean-up day a month. Neither is mandatory. Both exist because they keep the cost base low enough to sell a cocktail for $4, and because working a shift next to someone is a faster way to meet them than standing near them at a bar.