52nd City

The Curse of the Playboy Club

Over at 3914 Lindell, the old Playboy Club sits as a tempting target for club owners and developers. It's understandable. Arguably the first "superclub" in St. Louis, the multi-leveled, multi-roomed space served the Playboy corporate philosophy well during the 1970s, by many accounts, when the venue was the local outpost for would-be swingers and sophisticates.

In the late '90s, the building was run as Kearbey's, a sorta half-baked operation that tried to take advantage of the inherent coolness of the long-shuttered Playboy Club, including the hanging seating loft, a strange pit of couches hung between two seperate levels. This spot was only part of a series of neat, period pieces that dotted 3914 Lindell, including basement vaults, private party nooks and walls with inlaid photo slots, for pics of the working Bunnies. Though they flirted with some success there, Kearbey's ran its course, as clubs do, and the space was vacant again.

The City Grille and Brewhaus moved into the same venue recently, pushing a dance club, a restaurant and a brew pub. Despite some so-so reviews from friends and associates, I went to review the place for the P-D. More than once. On several trips, a handwritten sign greeted any visitors hopping up the wide front steps: "Sorry, closed until Monday." Last night, the sign was joined by a cartoonishly-large padlock-and-chain, which didn't exactly say "Welcome, be back in five minutes." Not assuming that they'll be gone for good, but... I'm not booking a return trip to City Grille soon.

While it might irritate some of the purer eyes reading this site, the suggestion here is that the Playboy Club was simply too (corporate) cool for our town, at the time, and too (retro) cool for succeeding businesses. It's hard for a modern operator to affect a winning vibe in a space so keyed in to its time. The Playboy Club is almost a museum, and as each new venture comes in, it chips aways at some of the inherent sharpness of the original locale; even a look through the windows last night showed a lot of different design elements jockeying for attention in just the classic lobby area.

Time for the building owner to sell the fixtures (which could fetch a pretty penny), hole the joint out and to seek a business looking for office space, or some other non-industry purpose.

The Playboy Club is casting a imposing shadow that few modern club operators can work under.