Essence Festival Party Club

Salem: The sway of the '60s Playboy

LOS ANGELES

It is a lush, plush anachronism, a 100-year-old Tudor mansion on a lavishly landscaped two-hectare estate in the heart of exclusive Holmby Hills. Purchased by Hugh Hefner in 1971 for $1 million and change (U.S.), the Playboy Mansion and the grounds surrounding it are now estimated to be worth more than $50 million.

It was the ancestral home of vicarious sexual excess for the best part of the tail end of the 20th century (the original Chicago mansion was shuttered back in 1974). Today, however, it is little more than an elaborate set for rent and all-purpose party venue — as it was last week for the kickoff party of the Television Critics Association fall preview tour.

But the house and all its hedonistic trappings seem somehow faded now, even shabby, dulled by a patina of metaphoric dust. Last February, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health determined that party guests had contracted Legionnaire’s disease from bacteria in the infamous hot-tub “grotto.”

In her 2010 memoir, Bunny Tales: Behind Closed Doors at the Playboy Mansion , former Playmate Izabella St. James wrote: “Everything in the Mansion felt old and stale, and Archie the house dog would regularly relieve himself on the hallway curtains, adding a powerful whiff of urine to the general scent of decay.”

Now 85 and the mansion’s sole resident, Hef’s hatchet features have degenerated with age into something more closely resembling the Cryptkeeper of comic Tales From the Crypt . His reputation as a promiscuous, pipe-chewing, pyjama-clad cad has been called into question by his former fiancée, disenfranchised “girl next door” Crystal Harris, who besmirched his legendary prowess on air to Howard Stern.

And yet the Playboy Mansion somehow continues to fascinate, even in these more enlightened times, with The Girls Next Door , a six-season cable hit, spinning off another two Playboy “reality” shows, and another two that remain unsold pilots. The degeneration of Hefner’s relationship with Harris got its own hour-long Lifetime special, Hef’s Runaway Bride .

Oscar-winning Canadian documentarian Brigitte Berman filmed an independent profile, Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel , that premiered two years ago at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Underage Festival 2011 - preview | Hackney Citizen

Billed as ‘the best teenage party on the planet’, Underage Festival ’s rather novel ethos of being open only to those aged between 13 and 17 is its whole, carefree essence.

A suitably curated line-up is headed up by Bombay Bicycle Club, although this is by no means an indie-exclusive affair.

Ms Dynamite, her fledgling US successor, the creatively bold Janelle Monae, and local girl CocknBullKid represent the female side of the rap and r’n’b contingent, likewise their male counterparts Roll Deep and Giggs.

A day festival in Victoria Park wouldn’t be complete without a dose of indie rock, provided by Frankie and the Heartstrings and the somewhat heavier Pulled Apart By Horses.

There are plenty of newcomers too, including Is Tropical, Fixers and The Chapman Family, and a smidge of electronica with Crystal Fighers, and grime with Devlin. This is a knowing and smart festival set up by a teenager – musician Sam Kilcoyne -  who decided to write his own rule book after being turned away from an over 18s gig.  It’s pocket money-friendly, original in concept, safe and, most of all, a celebration of new and inspiring music.

USA

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