General Discussion

jsr

(7,712 posts) Sat Jan 11, 2014, 10:17 AM Jan 2014

The latest example of how San Francisco is increasingly geared for the rich (NYT)

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/12/fashion/San-Francisco-club-Battery-Michael-Birch-Xochi-Birch.html

At a Bay Area Club, Exclusivity Is Tested
With Their Club the Battery, Michael Birch and Xochi Birch Alter a San Francisco Scene
By SHEILA MARIKARJAN

Once a marble-cutting factory in the city’s Jackson Square neighborhood, the century-old building at 717 Battery Street now houses an assortment of wall-mounted animal heads, a wine cellar covered with Napa Valley corks, a 20-person hot tub, a conference room with reverse painted glass panels, and women in sheath dresses who check members in on iPads. It is a 58,000-square-foot, five-bar, five-story house of mirth.

Though members-only clubs are not new in this city, the Battery has provoked some ire. The Gawker-run blog Valleywag called it a “private clubhouse that apes so much that’s lame and gauche about Manhattan.” It has also been held up as a symbol of the rapidly gentrifying city, where a corporate bus to Google’s Mountain View headquarters was blocked recently by protesters upset at how tech wealth is driving up housing prices and fundamentally changing the way people live.

A blogger for The New Yorker neatly summed it up this way: the Battery’s existence “reflects the bigger issue at hand: San Francisco itself is turning into a private, exclusive club.”

Opened last November, the club was founded by Michael Birch, 43, and his wife, Xochi, who turned 42 on Saturday. The couple earned their tech stripes with their previous start-up, the social networking site Bebo, which they sold in 2008 to AOL for $850 million. (Mr. Birch bought it back last year for $1 million.) They were inspired by the private clubs of London, where they met, and wanted to recreate that sense of propriety in their new hometown.