A Tuesday in March, just past 9 p.m., on Lafayette between Houston and Bond. Merge Pilates is still lit — bodies folded into expensive discomfort behind glass. The bar on the corner has space; the coed bathhouse next door has a line. Across the street, a club takes phones at the door — sticker over the lens, no photos. Call it the L.A.-fication of New York. For years, it was a punchline — the imagined Erewhon in SoHo, the 5 a.m. run club, the $22 mezcal cocktail — until it stopped being a joke. The city that spent decades looking down on Los Angeles is now importing its social architecture: members clubs, wellness temples, curated privacy, the morning as the new night. New York has been quietly absorbing California habits for decades, whether it be through its cuisine or workouts, its surfer fashion or plastic surgery. The pandemic didn’t invent this newer shift; it accelerated it. An Angeleno landing at JFK can now run a week of L.A.…