Granted that a landlocked lass undulating in a topless (and often bottomless) swim suit is a far cry from rock-'n'-roll idol Chubby Checker mesmerizing adolescents with 1959's niftiest new dance, the twist; nevertheless, San Francisco's swim clubs owe their existence to twist pioneer Chubby's initial efforts. Not since the Twenties has any dance had the impact of the twist and its progeny (bug, frug, hully gully, pony, monkey, swim, watusi, et al.). The twist spent several post-Checker years as a teenage tribal rite before café society discovered Gotham's Peppermint Lounge, a somewhat raffish twist temple drat overnight became ultra-in. The jet set took the twist to Europe, which soon came up with a "twist" of its own--the discothèque An amalgam of deejay (disquaire) and dance floor, the discothequè was born in Paris where devotees of le tweest made boites such as Chez Reginee, New Jimmy's and the original Whisky à GoGo de rigueur for tourists. The GoGo's Hollywood namesake added glass-showcased, short-skirted watootsies, and a flock of facsimiles quickly appeared. Society has its own favorite watering holes--Le Club, L'Interdit, II Mio and Shepheard's in New York, The Id in Chicago. But it remained for San Francisco's roisterous Barbary Coast to provide the final fillip. Fashion designer Rudi Gernreich's sensational topless bathing suit supplied the costume gimmick that turned a multitude of Barbary Coast swim clubs into bare-bosom bistros. (The proliferating swim clubs proved the major attraction--outside of Goldwater & Co.--at last year's Republican Convention.) The twist and its exotic offshoots, prime targets for gloom-and-doom prophets, have been characterized as "neo-primitive dances of fear which foster segregation of the sexes," as "sick sex turned into a spectator sport" and as "symbols of a mad and often frightening era." Conversely, one sociologist has defended the practitioners of the pony and such as "a new generation, anxious to achieve its own independence and expression, adopting new sounds and gyrations as its red badge of courage."
