Haresh Shah
The Rituals Of Wine And Women And All That Jazz
Imagine this: If you have ever been to Tokyo and cruised Ginza after hours – the people, the traffic, the shuffle crossing at multiple cross roads where the traffic comes stand-still at every street corner and hoards of shoppers and revelers crossing streets this way and that in each every direction, and the crowds of salarymen making ruckus, drunk out of their minds, some carried by the group up above their heads like a soccer player having just scored the winning goal, and the roaring loud cacophony of it all. It’s a different world, nothing you have experienced anywhere else on the planet. Otherwise straight-laced and well behaved like poor little lambs, after-hours the Japanese let themselves loose. No one you would recognize the next morning when you walk into the office for your long drawn out meetings.
Imagine then, that twelve of them having won Playboy Japan’s reader contest are transposed to the Lincoln Park Playboy Club in Chicago, sitting around the tables pulled together side-by-side with the bustling Bunnies making fuss over them, serving drinks with their smooth seductive Bunny Dips, big sparkling smiles on their faces, being as sweet as they can be. They know that these young men have won Playboy Japan Reader’s contest and that their role is also to play gracious hostesses to our guests from the faraway land. The young men are all around twenty five – self-conscious and shy and in awe of the VIP treatment they are afforded. Far from being their drunken and rambunctious selves in Ginza, they are extremely well behaved, amazed and feeling like kids in the candy store.
And they still have ahead of them the highlight and the finale of their trip, a night out with two Chicago based Playmates. They have already seen photo spreads of sultry Suzi Schott (August 1984), and Carole Ficatier is scheduled to appear in the center pages of the year-end holiday issue of December 1985. Also accompanying them are me and some of my charming female staff. We are dining at Tony Ramo’s Restaurant and Jazz Club, or was it Andy’s Jazz Club? Don’t hold me to his one, because my memory about the exact venue is a bit fuzzy.
Earlier in the week, they have spent some days in Los Angeles and have been treated to the Dodgers’ game, with hot dogs, beers and all and are given a grand tour of Playboy Mansion West. Following my trip earlier in the year to Tokyo, we have embarked upon an ambitious push to regain some of our lost readers and acquire some new ones.
Connecting Jazz with Playboy and its Playmates is a well thought out itinerary to showcase the Americana and the World of Playboy. Jazz has always been a part of Playboy in that Hefner (Hugh) himself has been a serious aficionado since his youth. So much so that in addition to having featured many a jazz musicians on his earlier television show, Playboy’s Penthouse and in-house performances at Chicago Playboy Mansion, the magazine sponsored its first Playboy Jazz Festival in 1959 to celebrate its 5th anniversary. Come Playboy’s 25th birthday in 1979, it has become an annual cultural phenom, now permanently housed at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, something that invariably gets Hefner out of his self-contained Mansion and out in the front row of the open air concert hall. In a recent interview to coincide with the Festival’s 35th anniversary, he said to Jeff Weiss of Bizarre Ride blog: “I would hope my championing of jazz will be remembered in a connective way with what’s unique about Playboy and my own legacy. As a musical form, jazz represents the same liberation and freedom that America represents in its most ideal form.”
And if not exactly co-incidental, Japan has been one of the most passionate Jazz countries outside of the United States. One of mine and the world’s most favorite Japanese scribes – Haruki Murakami, often links Jazz with his characters and at one time even owned and ran a Jazz bar of his own in Tokyo.
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At Tony Ramo’s, or Andy’s, the tables are set up in a way that each one of us could face the Jazz band to play that night. My staff and the two Playmates interspersed between the readers. Tonight’s dinner is planned to be more informal than the one at Playboy Club. Keeping up with the general theme of the Americana as portrayed in the magazine’s lifestyle features, we want the contest winners also to have a real taste of the newly emerging California wines – in 1985, still something of a joke for the wine snobs of the world.
We have assigned Suzi and Carole to order wines for the group. Suzi, the younger of the two at twenty four, has grown up in Chicago’s western suburb of Addison, Illinois and is more likely to have ordered, as she puts it herself: “I will go into a restaurant and order a root beer or Dr. Brown’s black cherry soda” than vintage wines. She is not of the wine know-how and is coached by me and the sommelier about the wine list and the rituals of ordering and approving a bottle of wine.
Carole, a bit older at twenty seven, born in Auxerre, France, scant twelve miles (20 km) from the wine region of Chablis, has been a professional model and for her work has traveled and worked in not only Paris, New York, Zürich, Hamburg and Milan, but also in Tokyo. This adds something to the mix in that both Carole and I are able to sprinkle the conversation with Ohayo Godaimazu, Arigato and Domo Arigato Godaimazu, to get a bit of amusement and a chuckle or two out of them. And Carole knows her food and wines and is as familiar with the California wines as she is of the French.
As the bowed waiter holds the slanted bottle of the California Chardonnay for Suzi to approve, she fakes earnestness in scanning and reading the label. Her eyes moving sideways and up and down the label to make sure that it reads the same as what she remembers to have ordered.
‘Yes. That’s it’. She nods.
The waiter stepping back, swiftly but stylishly drives in the cork screw and out comes the cork with a pop. He carefully and delicately places it in front of her, while balancing the bottle in his other hand. She picks it up as previously instructed, lifts it up to her nose ever so slowly, sniffs it with her eyes dreamily closed, as if she is savoring the fragrance and can really tell the difference. Puts down the cork and signals for the waiter to pour. With a thimble full, she delicately picks up the glass from its stem, holds it up against the light, twirls slightly the liquid, turns the stem in her fingers, tilts the rim of the glass to take in the bouquet and touches the glass to her lips. The taste of wine swirling in her mouth, she gulps it down and gently puts back the glass on the table, and deftly raises her head.
‘Its delicious!’ Like a connoisseur. We all applaud.
Now it’s Carole’s turn. Still partial to the French wines, she picks a particularly good California Cabernet Sauvignon. The same routine. Waiter standing there holding the slanted bottle. She looks at the label and nods. And the waiter goes through the motions of opening the bottle, pulling out the cork with a pop and placing it in front of her. She looks down at the cork, and then up at the waiter – trying to hold back the laughter wanting to burst out on her face, she lets a slight smile of amazement escape her lips.
‘Just pour Honey. We don’t do this back home!’
© Haresh Shah 2013
Illustration: Celia Rose Marks
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STRANGERS ON THE PLANE
We have all joked, wondered and wished about what it would feel like to join the Mile High Club. As much air traveling as I have done throughout my life and through my Playboy years, something’s got to have happened during one or more of my trips. No? Well! 🙂
playboy stories 
wonderful, down memory lane..great.
Rikhav