Los Angeles
A neighborhood club for Mount Washington
Steep hillside streets, canyon parks, and almost no commercial frontage. $49 a month, and everything inside at a 10% mark-up.
Mount Washington is a hill with houses on it. Elyria Canyon Park sits near the top, the streets are narrow and winding, and there is effectively no main street anywhere on it. Everything happens at the bottom, in Highland Park or Glassell Park. A club at the base would function as the front door Mount Washington has never had.
What going out in Mount Washington costs
Nothing up here sells a drink, so every evening out starts with a drive down to Figueroa Street or Eagle Rock Boulevard. The descent is five minutes and the return trip is the reason people either stay home or stay out too long. Prices down the hill are standard: six-dollar coffee, cocktails near twenty, dinner for two over sixty. Two nights a week comes to roughly five hundred dollars a month for a couple. The IRL arrangement is forty-nine dollars each and a menu priced 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 Mount Washington
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 Mount Washington
Residents skew older and more settled than in the flats, with a fair number of architects, teachers and people who bought decades ago, plus younger families arriving now. The isolation is geographic rather than social. Hiking trails and the elementary school do some of the work, but there is no indoor equivalent and no reason to be anywhere in particular at eight in the evening. Regular hours and a room at the bottom of the hill would fix that part of it.
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 Mount Washington 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. Mount Washington opens when enough people here are on the list, which is the only thing that decides the order.
Landmarks inside or bordering the radius: Elyria Canyon Park, San Rafael Avenue, Self-Realization Fellowship Mother Center, Heidelberg Park, Mount Washington Drive.
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 Mount Washington list together.
Near Mount Washington
Other Los Angeles neighborhoods
Questions
- Is there an IRL club in Mount Washington 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 Mount Washington list is what decides whether and when a club opens here.
- How much does the Mount Washington 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 Mount Washington 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 Mount Washington 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 Mount Washington 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.