Since its debut last October in the heart of the Crescent City's Vieux Carré--just off legendary Bourbon Street--the 727 Rue Iberville branch of Playboy Clubs International has become the swingingest boite in a town noted for its unstinting devotion to food and fun around the clock.
The New Orleans Club's gala "closing" was heralded by a blare of sirens as a phalanx of motorcycles escorted Playboy Club executives from the airport to the Club where the city's Mayor, Victor H. Schiro, gave Playboy Editor-Publisher Hugh M. Hefner a key to the magnolia metropolis and received one to the Club in return. Like all other key-holders, His Honor will find that his key opens Playboy Club doors, present and future, everywhere.
As prescribed by a New Orleans law prohibiting exterior architectural changes in the French Quarter, the gleaming white façade of the New Orleans Playboy Club, with its shuttered windows and iron grillwork, was left intact (concluded on page 125)Playboy Club(continued from page 52) and resembles many of its antebellum neighbors. But once you get past the Club's portals, marked by the redoubtable rabbit set into the leaded-glass door and flanked by a bunny-emblazoned metal emblem, you enter that glamorous world particularly and pleasurably Playboy's--a world replete with lush decor, beautiful Bunnies, topflight entertainment, epicurean edibles and potables, and relaxation with a hiply fashioned flair. The Library and Penthouse showrooms share the same excitingly fresh talent which also appears at the Chicago and Miami Clubs. The intime Playmate Bar dispenses prime libations before a glowing backdrop of illuminated gatefold reproductions displaying Playboy's most dazzling Playmates of the Month, some of whom are on hand as Bunnies.
Echoing its Chicago and Miami counterparts, the New Orleans Club's Living Room offers the elegant comfort and tasteful furnishings one might find in a sophisticated bachelor's apartment, the enticement of a sumptuous buffet dinner for $1.50, which is also the price of all drinks, the pulsating piano bar and festively accented Cartoon Corner.
The Living Room features an added fillip--one which gives it the swinging stamp of the spawning ground of jazz. Round about one a.m. a Dixieland Band in full battle dress puts on a breakfast blast, and the saints come marching in till morning, turning the Club into the Southland's merriest early-hour emporium.
Playboy plans to add another nine Clubs in the U.S. before the year is out, will then embark upon an international expansion into Canada, Mexico, South America, the West Indies, Tokyo, London, Paris and Rome, while continuing to add to its domestic roster. Eventually, it is expected that every major city in the United States will boast a Playboy Club. And, of course, keyholders will be red-carpeted into any Club anywhere in the world.
For further information about joining The Playboy Club, write Playboy Clubs International, Inc., Playboy Building, 232 E. Ohio Street, Chicago 11, Illinois.
