Skip to main content

Parlor Aims to Shape Tomorrow’s Borderless Social Club Today

Apps aim to make life easier, but Parlor Social Club founders Jan Cieślikiewicz and Fredrick Ghartey want to take this several steps further to improve all aspects of existence, from widening work relationships to deepening friendships.

“The traditional way to create communities as an adult has disappeared,” Cieślikiewicz said. “One problem in modern society is that people don’t have these relationships. If you put the right people in the right room, though, they can connect over business, hobbies, a sense of humor, and even mutual attraction.”

Parlor Social Club founders Jan Cieślikiewicz and Fredrick Ghartey
Parlor Social Club

Launched last month with a current membership base of 4,000 and a waiting list of over 24,000, Parlor is a tech-forward, app-based social club trailblazing a new wave of modern-day social clubs — without the high price point or location-based commitment. Along the way, they scrapped the idea of a physical location to digitize the social club and bring it to various locales. Based on member input and a “human-powered algorithm,” the pair forged Parlor to provide broad access to an intimate social institution.

Recommended Videos

Cieślikiewicz and Ghartey first tapped into the membership club space in 2011 with a traditional brick-and-mortar club in SoHo, New York City, with a similar goal — to connect people. Since then, they have spent years tracking habits to further understand the desires and patterns of potential target members. Parlor uses the latest technology and a robust, survey-based algorithm to offer members personalized crowds, events, and a member experience that allows for variety in the venue, event type, and member interactions.

Each half of Parlor’s pair arrived in the middle from dissimilar paths followed in moving to town from Boston. Where the Polish Cieślikiewicz arrived from Harvard having to make a conscious effort to establish a network, Ghartey arrived with a huge network headlined by a brother and sister connection where he could hit the ground running.

“I soon realized, though, that other people have a different experience,” Ghartey said. “I wanted to create a business to replicate my experience. A private club setting where the focus was on curation was the perfect setting.”

Curation is a critical word here because that’s what the Parlor experience is about. Members take a personality test upon sign-up. This was developed over years of getting people together and digs much deeper than a typical, one-dimensional focus.

“The more we learn about your preferences, the more we can tweak the experience for you. It’s always what you want,” Cieślikiewicz said.

This helps influence Parlor’s member calendar and social preferences. This optimizes the community aspect of the social club and ensures engaging events and long-lasting connections between members.

Parlor Social Club event attendees commiserate over cocktails
Parlor Social Club

“People don’t really want to go to the same location over and over again. When somebody joined, they would always come for the first couple of months and then they wouldn’t show up as often, so we started experimenting with the idea of creating a distributed social club, partnering with people that would be able to host our members at different locations, and deliver a special experience to them,” Ghartey said.

“And that’s when we realized we could actually become a tech company and that we don’t need a venue,” Cieślikiewicz said.

Events range from comedy clubs, intimate dinners, art gallery meetups, curated cocktails, and even boat parties around the city in the summer. Guest lists will almost always be slightly different, so members will meet new people in settings tailored to their interests, preferences, and backgrounds.

“What we want to do is to be a one-stop solution for your social life,” Ghartey said. “Trying to find things to do in the city is rather disjointed. We sort it out. You’re able to log onto our app and have this complete 360 circle of potential things to do. We just want to make it seamless.”

This easy transcendence applies to the app’s growth as well. Right now, Parlor is only available in New York City, but the founders have big plans to expand. At present, Parlor’s partnered with businesses and venues in Miami, with its close connection to New York, and founders are in constant discussions with other places.

“Part of the reason why we are excited about this concept is because it is expandable,” Cieślikiewicz said. “With our technological approach, we can extend to other types of demographics relatively quickly. And partnerships in New York will extend to other venues and cities.”

Plan costs are also being sorted. If you’re considering jumping into Parlor’s social scene at some point, it might behoove you to get on the guest list early.

Learn More

Matthew Denis
Matt Denis is an on-the-go remote multimedia reporter, exploring arts, culture, and the existential in the Pacific Northwest…
Tony Soprano vs. Walter White: Who is the ultimate antihero?
TV's biggest heavyweights duke it out for the antihero crown
Breaking bad season 4 screen shot

Sports fans often debate between two heavyweight legends. For basketball, it's LeBron James and Michael Jordan. Switching to tennis, you have Roger Federer fans and Rafael Nadal diehards. Debates like these are ingrained in the culture of athletics, but TV fans have their own version of this sparring match.

Tony Soprano from The Sopranos and Walter White from Breaking Bad are the two characters who still send shockwaves through every drama in the 21st century. These men were the perfect mix of good and evil. They navigated family life and the criminal underworld with cunning intelligence and ruthless risk-taking. Every show with morally gray characters at the center owes its storyboard to Walter and Tony, but which character deserves the antihero crown? This is Tony Soprano vs. Walter White for all the marbles.
Who was the more complex character?

Read more
Learn how to smoke a pipe the proper way with our guide for beginners
Let us show you the classy way to smoke a pipe
Packing a pipe

Pipe smoking is the most aesthetically distinguished way to enjoy tobacco, but you lose the classy effect if you don’t know how to smoke a pipe properly. Smoking a pipe has become a lost art, and these days, most people who engage in pipe smoking do so to achieve a sense of nostalgia. Perhaps your grandfather enjoyed a puff now and again paired with a good stiff whiskey, or maybe your goal is to emulate a pipe-smoking artist.

I know that I enjoy a good puff on a pipe now and then, and knowing the right way to enjoy a pipe has made the experience much more pleasurable for for me. Whatever the case, if you intend to take up the time-honored tradition of unwinding with a pipe like me, you should learn how to smoke a pipe the right way. And smoking a pipe is very different than smoking a cigar (except you shouldn't be inhaling either).

Read more
Don’t ruin your cigars: here’s how to properly season a new humidor
Seasoning secrets every cigar lover could use
faceless man presenting a cigar humidor with cigars inside with gloved hands

If you're a newcomer to the world of cigars or just bought a brand-new humidor, you'll need to season it. And no, I'm not saying to add salt and pepper to it. If you've never heard of it, you might ask, "What is seasoning for a humidor?"

Don't think you need to flavor the box or anything — seasoning is really about getting the wood inside your humidor so as not to rob your cigars of precious moisture. Easy to understand, and getting it done is relatively straightforward as well. The trick is figuring out the "why," and we'll get into that in a bit. But let's first discuss seasoning a humidor.

Read more