I was inverted in the cavelike yoga studio at Hume, the almost alarmingly chic new Los Angeles fitness club in Venice, considering my pedicure, when one of my classmates asked what I was doing after. “A few of us are going to sauna, cold plunge, and then get matchas on the roof,” she said. I told her I’d catch up after my massage. “Ooh,” she said. “Ask about a B₁₂ shot, and then come join.” I might as well—I wasn’t going anywhere.
For as long as humanity has liked to sweat, we have liked to do it together. See: the Greek palaestra, Turkish baths, the YMCA, the contemporary preponderance of workout-minded meetups. And really, all with good reason: Studies have shown that community and social connection are as important for a long, happy, healthy life as diet and exercise. In an era where digital connection remains the assumed norm for everything from professional meetings to dating, the yearning for a third place (a location for social interaction outside of home or work) has never been more present.
So when it comes to the new class of wellness clubs, it’s no surprise that founders are emphasizing social opportunities. For $395 a month, Hume members can chill out together in a minimalist earth-toned space that invokes a remote spa. “I used to do all this wellness stuff with my friends spread around town before we had a space to do it in,” Hume cofounder Roger Briggs tells me; they called it “summer camp.” And I have to say, after yoga, a leisurely green juice with some new acquaintances, and a lymphatic drainage massage from a provider who’s nearly impossible to book anywhere else, I wouldn’t have turned down a friendship bracelet.
Around 45 minutes northeast in Hollywood, Heimat, a five-floor members club ($350 a month) housed in a former record-pressing plant, billed itself as the “world’s first concept fitness club” when it opened in 2022 with decadent Martin Brudnizki interiors. There’s a salon for nail treatments and facials and massages, a Michelin-chef-created restaurant, and a coworking level with a library. “I just go and stay all day,” one stylist friend told me. “I take a Pilates class, take a meeting, go to the sauna, get lunch.” She’s made new friends and met new clients there, she says, “and I don’t spend all day in the car.” (In LA, this may be the biggest perk of all.) When I visited in the fall, headphone-sporting members were taking Zoom meetings; down a level, the pool deck lounge chairs had wait lists. In the marble-lined dry sauna, a pair of 20-something friends were trading dating-app war stories. Faced with all this communal activity, the gym seemed almost beside the point.
“I first thought about this back in 1985,” John Mackey tells me. This is Love.Life, a 45,000-square-foot “complete wellness solution” that the Whole Foods cofounder opened last summer in El Segundo. For $750 a month, Love.Life promises to be your one-stop gym, spa, fast-casual plant-forward lunch spot, physical therapist—even your primary care physician. They also have a killer pickleball setup. (“I’ve probably made a hundred friends since I started playing pickleball,” Mackey tells me.) The 71-year-old Mackey sees Love.Life as the culmination of what he calls his “hero’s journey”: a mission to help people heal and thrive, and part of that is getting to know like-minded people. Call it the millennial and Gen Z answer to the country club. “Instead of a gin and tonic and watching people play golf while they’re getting high, this is about people coming in and realizing their highest potential,” Mackey says.
“There’s a million places to go drink,” Jeff Halevy tells me. But how about spending a day optimizing? His club, Continuum, opened in New York’s Greenwich Village last spring, targeting masters of the universe with biohacking aspirations and decision fatigue. (This is a more robust market than it sounds.) Continuum drew headlines for its serene interiors and its eye-watering price tag ($10,000 a month). To ensure there would never be a wait for a massage or a machine, membership was capped at 250; three times that number applied. Halevy says it was a surprise how many were under 40. The membership is closer to a dream dinner party than a Forbes 400 list—“just a really super cool brew,” says Halevy. “We’re not ending up with 250 finance bros.” The city is no stranger to private clubs—places that tend to be associated more with “models and bottles”—but living forever is the new living large.
“I think our generation is the first generation that truly understands, my body s my number one asset,” Remedy Place founder Dr. Jonathan Leary tells me. When Leary started Remedy Place in Los Angeles in 2012, he was envisioning a way to make self care social, inspired by the time he’d spent as a concierge doctor for the city’s elite. “My goal was to change the narrative of how people socialize,” Leary tells me. (Step one: No more fun cocktails—alcohol is a depressant, and sugar is the root of all evil.) Remedy currently has spots in New York and Los Angeles, with plans to open two additional clubs a year starting in 2025.
The locations, whose moodily-lit black leather interiors can err on the side of after-hours-club dark, are recovery rather than fitness focused, offering cryotherapy and contrast therapy, hyperbaric chambers, and traditional Chinese medicine. “This is your date night, this is your meeting spot; this is what you do instead of your happy hour,” Leary says. There is a bar in the West Hollywood location, though it just vends smoothies, Rest Digest herbal tea, and occasionally gold stick-on acupressure ear seeds. “You don t need to go to Remedy to be healthy,” Leary tells me, just like you didn’t have to go to a country club to get dinner with your family. But maybe the possibility of some friendly faces is what gets you there.
Amid the inventory of advanced fitness gadgetry and potential for fewer doctor’s visits down the line, I kept coming back to the social aspect. In our increasingly insulated world, a place where you can connect may just be worth the price of admission, even if you never do lift a weight or get a DEXA body scan. Later that week at a party, when I ran into the woman I met at Hume (this time right side up), seemingly aglow with ruddy good health, I nearly put down my mezcal and considered making the hour-plus drive to Venice. “People make fun of me for joining a ‘fancy gym,’ ” she said. “But everyone I’ve met there is kind of great.” The next morning I signed up for Heimat; I’ve already started booking post-workout lunch meetings. You know what they say: Membership has its privileges.