Grand Prix de Monaco: Gentlemen, Start Your Libidos

It probably wouldn't please its namesake to know that Monte Carlo's version of a strip--a long arc of lawn-lined, palm-planted street anchored at one end by the showgirl-filled lobby bar of the Loews Monte-Carlo Hotel and at the other by Jimmy'z, Régine's mirrored art-deco cellar disco in the Monte Carlo Sporting Club--just happens to be named Avenue Princess Grace. And although Grace Kelly's avenue is certainly not a street made gaudy with neon nor one suitable for open trolling (which in Monte Carlo is generally an indoor diversion), it is a strip nevertheless. For it is where the clubs are, and in Monte Carlo, where the clubs are is where the girls are, in season and out, though more so each spring, when the Grand Prix de Monaco gets in gear.

Drivers such as last year's Grand Prix winner, Keke Rosberg, and a few of those who finished behind him, such as Nelson Piquet, Alain Prost and Patrick Tambay, are true celebrities on the European Grand Prix circuit; but during that week in Monaco, they are kings or, at the very least, princes, and for many of them the girls, often referred to as racing junkies, are their royal perks.

You see them T-shirted, hanging around the racing pits along Monaco's old port, or bikinied, stretched out on the pebbled beaches of Grace's avenue, or as unclothed as their whimsy will lead them to be, lazing about on the tiny patch of cement beside the pier just off the Monte Carlo Beach Club. They amble along the cobbled streets near the Hôtel de Paris, nibbling on pan bagnat, the Riviera's version of the hoagie, crammed with tuna, black olives, radishes and olive oil; and they look. Over in Cannes, their topless preserve is the stretch of beach in front of the Carlton Hotel, split by a small pier running out into the sea.

The Carlton's terrace, cool after the sun has set, is an early-evening spot, and if you don't mind competing with wealthy Arabs or a sheik or two, you may meet an interesting companion. Ditto for the Carlton's elegant competitor nearby, the Majestic, which positively oozes Saudis and oil money. And women. Check out the Blue Moon disco in Cannes, but don't miss Circus, Circus, which is precisely what its name implies. It is a playground for whatever sexual persuasion is preferred, and with its lighting effects that change the look of the place every 30 seconds or so and a continuous slide show projected on its walls, it is very much a place to be. If you just care to look, there's a tiny balcony in back of Circus, Circus--sort of a voyeurs' grandstand.

In St.-Tropez, you also might try a little bit of transplanted Middle Eastern luxury called Byblos. There are 59 rooms, more like salons, in this hotel-bazaar-sauna-nightclub, which is set up like a miniature casbah, with Persian rugs on the ceilings, no less. It is an outrageous place whose lamps are imitation palm trees with bulbs, and it is where everything happens, particularly in its night club.

If you're lucky and arrive in Monte Carlo at the change of night-club seasons, you will get to see both Jimmy'z clubs, perhaps being changed over by Régine herself who may be in Monaco during race week. From September to June, Jimmy'z is Jimmy'z d'Hiver, a dark-blue-lacquered circular grotto in the Café de Paris on the Place du Casino, full of mirrors and barrel-shaped chairs that really don't seem to be made for people to sit in. And perhaps they aren't. You're supposed to circulate at Jimmy'z, hang out at the bar, buy drinks (at about $12 a throw). In July and August, Régine moves her Jimmy'z road show out along Avenue Princess Grace to the water level of the Monte Carlo Sporting Club, where it is called Jimmy'z de la Mer, and the round mirrored cave becomes black lacquered and purple. Ask your friendly cabby which Jimmy'z is open, and where.

You go down into one of Régine's cellars in a mirrored elevator. It opens and a beautiful hostess in a long black gown says hello and leads you along a hall into the club, which looks out over a palm-lined lagoon and several jetting fountains set into rocks in the middle of the Sporting Club grounds. Ahead is the red dance floor, surrounded by those round chairs and tiny tables. Up three steps to the right is the bar, all mirrors and glass mosaics, recognized as the singles' preserve, its little booths for nightly rendezvous.

A short walk away, down another level, is Parady'z, another, newer Sporting Club outpost, open only during July and August. As you might expect in something sleek and new, the crowd at Parady'z is young, the girls 18 or thereabouts.

Jimmy'z and Parady'z are owned, as is just about everything else in Monte Carlo, by the Société des Bains de Mer, Prince Rainier's golden holding company. But the people who go there don't think ownership; they think disco, and the clubs are places to go to after dinner.

There is a night club in the Loews Hotel called Edward's, but the Lobby Lounge is somewhat more of a club, and if you manage to wedge your way in comfortably among the Folie Russe showgirls who congregate there to compare their gigs in Amsterdam, Rio, Paris, Vegas and Atlantic City, you'll probably make a friend. The best time to get to the small, circular bar with its mirrored ceiling and its windows on the Mediterranean and Vladimir Ferrari--yes, that's Vladimir Ferrari noodling on the piano--is about nine o'clock, for that's when the girls come out. They've danced the night before, watched the sun come up and then gone to sleep, and the evening is their morning.

When you leave Loews, if you take a hard left just before going onto Avenue (concluded on page 214)Grand Prix(continued from page 127) Princess Grace, up the hill along Avenue des Spélugues, you come upon a nest of small clubs, most of them glitzy but predictable night spots, such as L'X Club, others very much "in" places, such as Le Tiffany's and The Living Room. Tiffany's is where the Monegasques (that translates as "people of Monaco") go to dance and mingle with the singles. It has a small bar, a little dance floor and lots of movement. Next door is The Living Room, currently Monte Carlo's hottest club, and old Monaco, young Monaco, natives and imports know that it has become the place where the girls are.

It is a private club, and you get in if the manager, known to its denizens only as Murphy, likes the way you are arranged. The Living Room is exactly that. It is filled with deep, plush sofas in muted beiges, blues and reds, and against its walls are bookcases stocked with books. But nobody goes to The Living Room to read; you go to meet women. It has a tiny bar and a tinier overhanging balcony from which to look down on the sofas and reconnoiter.

Back down the gently curving hill onto Avenue Princess Grace, the strip begins to bubble with clubs such as La Boccaccio and Gregory's ... After Dark. The latter is located in a recently completed luxury-housing complex called the Palace Apartments. In Monte Carlo, they know Gregory simply as Gregory, the young, handsome, Russian-born singer who is host of the club and one of the principality's great gossips. Girls go to Gregory's in twos and threes and most often depart in ones, with company. And it is easy to find company there, in either the video-game room or the backgammon room, even in the card room, a warm-up for the casinos.

Nor is that all of the action in Monte Carlo. You'll find the girls hanging around the lobby entrance to the Loews Casino and in the Monte Carlo Casino and around the blackjack tables in its American Room, with its ceiling of painted cherubs. There will be fewer in the salon privé and none but the invited in the salon super privé, where the action is of a different kind. Whichever you opt for, bonne chance and happy winnings.