Looking around the web site for The Space, the new private club and concierge service that’s opened recently across 9th Street from the Washington Convention Center, you get the sense that its proprietors want you to think it’s a stuffy lounge space reserved for the wealthy — there’s the wedding invitation-style scroll fonts, the vague descriptions of what exactly this place is trying to be (“For those who love traveling, living, dreaming and discovering,”) and the membership application that asks for credit card details without anywhere disclosing what the fees might be. It’s the web design equivalent of “if you have to ask, darling, then you probably can’t afford it.”

The interior of The Space turns out not to be too pretentious (think partially paint-stripped white ceilings, nice comfy black and white couches, unfinished floors and plenty of rose petals floating in water), but after a conversation and tour with managers and event planners Jodi Silis and Wilmot Mwandanda, it would be easy to come away with the impression that their web site is having the desired effect. When asked about The Space’s mysterious billing on the web, they replied that they “kind of like it that way.”

So though it’s hard to say what The Space definitely is, here’s at least a few things about it that are true:

Photo courtesy The Space