Inside the LA club where work, workouts and social life share one roof

Hybrid work has changed where Angelenos spend their days.At the Los Angeles Athletic Club, some members now stay for as long as 10 hours – moving between laptops, workouts, meals and nights out without leaving the building.For some members of the Los Angeles Athletic Club, stopping by for a workout is no longer the point.“There’s members who spend more time here than we do,” club director Najeeb Shamsid-Deen said.

“There’s members who spend ten hours here.”It is a pattern the downtown private club says accelerated as hybrid and remote work became a permanent part of life after the pandemic.Shamsid-Deen said members who once might have spent the day working from home increasingly wanted somewhere else to go – without giving up the flexibility that came with remote work.“Maybe you don’t want to sit at your dining room table all day,” he said.Instead, members began bringing laptops to sofas and common areas, eventually prompting the club to invest in dedicated coworking space.

More than half of its new members now have hybrid or flexible work schedules, according to Shamsid-Deen.The biggest news, opinion and culture shaping California right now.

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Never miss a story For member Caroline Valmont, that means the boundaries between the workday and the rest of life can become unusually porous.“It coalesces the work and the social part,” she said.Valmont has held meetings and worked remotely from the club, where stepping away from a laptop can mean grabbing a coffee – or taking a swim – before getting back to work.Longtime member Wellington Phillips described an even fuller version of the routine: arrive for a morning workout, work for a few hours, take a class, hit the sauna or steam room, eat lunch, work again and then stay for trivia, karaoke or another evening event.“So you spent your w...