"Hiding in Plain Sight" by Audrey Ference in The L Magazine (III.12)

Lately everyone's been all a-chatter about secret bars. ... Bars that are only known to people that are in the know are pretty much the definition of exculsive cool. The problem is that when one is sitting in the secret bar that only the elite know about, everyone there knows about the bar.

Which is of course the appeal of the private club, which actually does hide in plain sight. Everyone knows about it and yet still can't get there. Or even more so the quasi-secret society, the one everyone knows exists, but has secrets (even if those are not interesting in and of themselves) like the Masons or Skull and Bones.