Continuing my tour of emerging sub-communities in the LA media world (and yapping about MeetWell), I recently went to the monthly meetup of The Social Fabric on a sunny, caffeine-fueled Friday morning at Zinqué in Century City. 

Founded by AJ Vernet and Cory Treffiletti (with Brian Aucoin hosting the podcast on LinkedIn), the Social Fabric’s mission is to bring people together IRL for real business relationships. 

You can apply on their website, and once you join, you’ll be invited to a lively WhatsApp group with sub-groups organized by city. Lots of cool opportunities to connect with the media friends you have and didn’t even know you had in LA and around the country.

You can also join me and check out their next meetup in partnership with ThinkLA on 11/18 at Zinqué in Century City from 8:45-10am.

I also hosted the inaugural MeetWell Meetup at Father’s Office in Culver City last week. Thank you to those of you who showed up, and another one will be on the schedule soon. IRL is alive and well!

- Robbie  

The historic Magic Castle is a private Hollywood club dedicated to magic, dining, and swanky outfits.

The Castle is one of those LA spots that most people know about, but many have never been. It’s also notoriously tricky to get into if you don’t know a member.

There is a loophole to get in if you’re going with a larger group and rent out the private Houdini Chamber for dinner.

Before and after dinner, it’s a choose-your-own-adventure night. You wander the old Victorian mansion full of bars, close-up magicians, and shows big and small starting every 15–20 minutes.

Partway through, you’ll sit down for dinner and head back out for more magic when you’re done eating. 

For dinner, you can do the standard three-course dinner, which leans toward classic steakhouse hits, with mains like filet mignon, prime rib, roasted chicken, seafood, and pasta. 

You can also add on the Houdini Séance after dinner. One of the Castle’s professional mediums will lead your group through a performance inspired by Houdini’s life and his fascination with communicating with the dead.

The medium stages an attempt to contact Houdini’s spirit, using darkness, sound, and theatrical illusions to create the feeling that something supernatural is happening right there in the room.

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Added value: The Magic Castle is not a cheap evening, but it is an LA institution. I’ve been fortunate enough to go a few times, including with clients, and it’s delivered every time. Vibes are high, everyone is dressed to impress, and the whole place has a kitschy, old-school Hollywood feel to it.

Beware that they’re not messing around on the dress code. First time I went, I showed up wearing nice khakis and was told I needed to sprint down to H&M on Hollywood Blvd and get some suit pants. Unfortunately, I’m 6’7” and finding pants is not that easy, so I grabbed what I could, and showed off a few cheeky glimpses of lower shin all evening.  

Jon & Vinny’s offers private, chef-led pizza-making classes at its Fairfax and Slauson locations.

Over about 2 hours, a Jon & Vinny’s pizza chef walks your group through stretching dough and choosing toppings to make your own pizzas. 

Everyone gets two doughs to work with, along with appetizers to snack on throughout the class. You can also order additional food, beer, wine, or other drinks from the regular restaurant menu.

A heads-up for the weather-sensitive: the whole experience takes place outdoors and is standing-room only. 

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Added value: Like many of us during COVID, we got a little crazed on sourdough and bought a small pizza oven to start making our own pizzas at home.

Most of our creations came out charred on the outside and soupy in the middle, but they were sure as hell fun to make, especially with friends and a few beers. 

The Jon & Vinny’s crew will set you straight on the pizza-making, so you and your clients get to focus on the fun part without the soupy middle.

Bar Fortuna is a new Italian cocktail and pasta bar on Main Street in Santa Monica, from chef Brian Bornemann of Crudo e Nudo just down the block.

The cute, 40-seat restaurant opened in late October and is already getting heat from Eater, LA Magazine, and local food influencers like Brittany Van Horne.

As far as client dinners go, Italian food + cocktails is fairly safe territory. Think handmade pastas, a marble-topped bar, an Italian-heavy wine list, and enough Negroni variations to make you start fantasizing about a cocktail-infused vacation on the Amalfi Coast.

On Fridays, Bar Fortuna also opens for lunch, which would be a fun opportunity to see if your client might be down to get out of the house for a chill Friday lunch (and cocktail) at the bar.

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Added value: An Italian client dinner isn’t exactly groundbreaking, but the classics are the classics for a reason. This is food most of us love and appreciate (see: hordes of American tourists flocking to Italy this summer), and the buzz and credibility around Bar Fortuna give you a fun, crowd-pleasing new option on the Westside to run by your clients.

Ever been hanging with a client and conversation just runs dry? Whether it’s recent and topical, or general and evergreen, the Oasis is about giving you one idea for helping in that moment.

What’d you do with your rainy Halloween evening?

This is an easy one to bring up with clients this week since most everyone had high hopes for a Saturday night Halloween.

Growing up outside Chicago, crappy weather on Halloween was practically a given. I’ve never been the best planner when it came to my Halloween costume, and one year when I hadn’t figured it out, my mom convinced me it’d be funny if I went as a nun (funny for whom, I now wonder). 

I didn’t put a ton of thought into it, and had an important Mario Kart race to attend to at the time, so I just decided to roll with it. 

It happened to be one of the colder Halloweens of my childhood, so my nun robe had to go outside my massive puffy winter jacket. I can still see the faces of the confused adults seeing a dorky pre-tween boy rolling up to their front door with massive shoulders/arms wearing a nun outfit.

Sort of a Johnny Cash ‘Boy Named Sue’ situation where it did give me the resolve to figure out my costumes in advance going forward, but if I ever have a son there’s no way I’m encouraging him to dress up as a nun on Halloween.

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