“I really shouldn’t be drinking right now,” says Stephanie, a bikini-clad twentysomething sucking down Modelo Especial from a can. “I’m having surgery in three days.” The unemployed hairstylist momentarily feigns concern before doubling over with impish laughter. Her smile beams bleach-white against a complexion that’s more self-tanner orange than sun-kissed brown. “I’m getting ’em done, again,” she explains, giving her breasts two quick squeezes. “I want ’em bigger—triple D, almost an E!”
Today is the Playpen’s biggest “raft up” of the year, the Chicago Scene Boat Party, which was started in 2000 by Ted Widen, publisher of the luxury lifestyle mag Chicago Scene. The usual hundred or so Playpen regulars are joined by several hundred more boats packed to capacity with party people raring for the six-hour daylight bacchanal. “Boat Scene,” as the event is sometimes called, doesn’t have any sense of higher purpose. Its essence is simple and as shallow as a birdbath: see, be seen, get mind-meltingly intoxicated. It’s a Panama City Beach spring break come north, except that the participants—many of them professionals—no longer have the undergrad’s excuse of youthful indiscretion.
The extravagance of custom CO2 jets seems only slightly less silly when you consider that this particular vessel is co-owned by Chicago and Las Vegas nightlife promoter Brian Pfeiffer, whose company, Surreal, is in charge of getting bodies through the doors of spots like the Mid, Bodi, and Prohibit—places where people practically beg to be blasted with novelty semiliquids. Like other boat-owning nightlife entities that ply the Playpen, Surreal uses Verry Necessary (the extra R in verry “just for the heck of it,” Pfeiffer says) as a literal vehicle for boosting attendance at the company’s club events. “The yacht is the preparty. You invite the girls and the high-end clients onto the boat, get them to meet each other. Then you take that party to the venue at night,” Pfeiffer says. “Hopefully you don’t get anyone too wasted on the boat so that they can’t come out to the club. Some people just go home and pass out.”
“There was some guy from Hawaii, and he had all this crazy weed with red tips,” the teacher’s wide-eyed friend gushes. “He handed me a giant bud, like, ‘Here.’ And I don’t even smoke.”
It’s a far cry from the days when the publisher was a sort of two-bit Hugh Hefner and the Playpen served as his waterlogged Playboy Mansion. Widen began partying there during the mid-90s, and once every summer, he and a few friends would circle their boats for a comparatively modest affair. “The problem was there was a small stereo on each boat and everyone was dancing to a different drummer. You’d have one person dancing to ‘La Cucaracha’ and another person dancing to whatever,” he says. “It drove me nuts!” When a buddy purchased a 60-foot yacht, Widen had a thought: “Why don’t we get one big sound system and put it on the fly bridge? That way we’ll all be dancing to the same drummer.”
Because he spends so much time out on the water, Lobo often has the chance to play hero to a stranded seafarer. “If something goes wrong out here, you don’t have a lot of options. You can’t park, walk to the store, and pick up what you need.” The job has also showed him an uglier side of the Playpen boat parties: when the uninhibited atmosphere leads to a woman being cornered—or worse—and he responds to a distress call.
