Playboy Goes West: Is the Midwest’s Only Great Magazine Heading Into the Sunset?
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At 7 pm on the evening of 12th April in Chicago, about 20 people were gathered inside the Gold Star Sardine Bar, a tiny, dimly lit cabaret tucked away at the end of a corridor on the ground floor of 680 North Lake Shore Drive. After 59 years in Chicago, Playboy Enterprises was moving its operation to Los Angeles. The magazine, which had operated on the 15th and 16th floors since 1989, was hosting a party to bid farewell to the city where it had begun.
North Lake Shore Drive is in the smart Streeterville neighbourhood in downtown Chicago. From the Playboy offices—which will be occupied shortly by the Children’s Memorial Hospital—you can see Lake Michigan and much of the city.
The pastel-coloured invitation to the party showed a rocket, with the iconic Playboy bunny symbol on its side, steaming into the sky. It requested “proper attire.” Several men were dressed up. Jimmy Jellinek, the magazine’s baby-faced editorial director, served drinks from behind the bar in a white suit and black t-shirt. Most of the women wore sweaters and jeans. There were no bunnies. No one was naked.
Conceived as a homage to the 1940s, the Gold Star Sardine Bar, which had been shuttered since 1997, was specially opened for the evening. Looming over the bar was a portrait (framed by pink neon) of the cabaret singer and pianist Bobby Short, who had played there to much acclaim. Hanging diagonally opposite, a monitor looped black and white video clips of the original Playboy Clubs which had opened in 1960 and which closed long ago.