Even a $2,400 membership fee can't insulate The Battery, the private club founded by Michael and Xochi Birch, from the ubiquitous protests against Terra Nova Industries, a nonunion contractor. A tipster sent in this photo from last night.

There was a valet stationed outside The Battery on Sunday night. Even for a private clubhouse with a $2,400 annual fee, this seemed superfluous. San Francisco's Financial District turns into a ghost town after 6 p.m. The neighborhood was so desolate, the only place I could find to charge my phone was a SUBWAY® around the corner, where they gave me free rein over an outlet behind the soda fountain.

There aren't enough ways for the Bay Area software crowd to insulate itself from people with regular jobs: and so, The Battery exists. But what's going on behind the $2,400 doors of the startup clubhouse? The New York Times took a look, and it's just so, so boring.

Silicon Valley's new money imitates its urban center: awkward, underdeveloped, and hoping so very badly to be noticed. So it's no mistake that the buzziest addition to the San Francisco social scene is The Battery, a private clubhouse that apes so much that's lame and gauche about Manhattan.