After spending more than 12 years in virtual social clubs, last week my club partner James and I launched a new of social club with a permanent clubhouse in San Jose, California.

After just one week, we have 21 members, and the feedback from both members and guests has been overwhelmingly positive.

Before I describe what we built and why it seems to be working, it's worth looking at what happened to social clubs and America's interactive third spaces over the last 40 years.

The Decline of America's Third Places

For most of the 20th century, many Americans routinely spent time somewhere besides home and work. These "third places" included civic clubs, service clubs, bowling leagues, churches, fraternal organizations, hobby clubs, community centers, VFW halls, neighborhood bars, coffe shops, volunteer organizations, and countless informal gathering places.

Beginning in the 1960s, participation in nearly all of these institutions entered a long decline.

• Membership in civic organizations such as Rotary, Kiwanis, the Elks, PTAs, and many volunteer organizations has fallen dramatically. Overall participation in civic organizations has declined by roughly 50% since 1980.

• Religious participation has steadily declined, eliminating what was once America's largest recurring social gathering outside of work and family.

• Americans entertain friends at home roughly half as often as they did in the 1970s.

The physical places themselves have also been disappearing.

Researchers have documented the loss of churches, community centers, neighborhood gathering spots, and other informal meeting places. Some communities have become "civic deserts" with very few accessible places where residents can gather regularly.

The consequences have been profound:

• Rising loneliness

• Fewer close friendships

• Lower social trust

• Reduced volunteering

• Less civic participation

• Greater political polarization

• More people reporting that they don't feel they belong anywhere

Recent surveys suggest that roughly two-thirds of Americans either belong to no clubs or organizations or rarely attend meetings.

If friendship and community is built through repeated, low-friction interaction, then we have quietly dismantled much of the infrastructure that once produced friendships naturally.

People didn't suddenly forget how to make friends. The places where friendships naturally happened largely disappeared, and everyone gradually fell out of practice.

That is the problem we set out to solve.

Building a Different Kind of Club

We decided to build a club with no employees. The members set up, run, improve, and clean up the club themselves. Participation isn't symbolic, it is operational.

We found an older 1,850-square-foot professional office space in San Jose for $1.35 per square foot, an unusually good price for Silicon Valley.

Almost everything inside came from member donations or Facebook Marketplace. We were surprised how much furniture a clubhouse needs when it's the size of a house but has no bedrooms: eight sofas, nine tables, fifteen chairs, bookshelves, lamps, artwork, games, and a fully stocked bar.

The space naturally evolved into four distinct areas:

• A main gathering room

• A game room

• A library

• A bar

James and I became the founding members. We then invited six mutual friends, people we both enjoyed without reservation, and every one of them joined. Those eight founding members became the first stewards of the culture. Every subsequent member has full sponsoring rights.

Joining the club requires one introduction and two sponsors. Those sponsors aren't just references, they take responsibility for helping new members become part of the community. If problems arise, the sponsors serve as mentors and the first point of contact rather than leaving everything to the founders.

Every member signs a two-page membership agreement and code of conduct. Members are also strongly encouraged to organize several events each year because a thriving club isn't created by a handful of hosts, it is created when the majority of members take turns leading and driving.

After only one week, we're seeing signs that this community is taking shape and ready to thrive. We opened a new third space and we gave the loneliness epidemic a small love tap to its giant torso.

In future posts, I'll share what we've learned, what surprised us, what mistakes we made, and the design decisions that seem to produce unusually high engagement.