Outdated bunnies at new Playboy Club

Las Vegas: Flaunting bunnies, booze and blackjack, the first Playboy Club in nearly two decades opened in Las Vegas on Saturday night with high hopes that its time-tested combination of sex and celebrity will attract a new generation of high rollers.

With a distinctly vintage feel, Playboy bunnies wearing the distinctive ears and cottontail delivered drinks and dealt cards to a mostly male crowd at the Palms Casino Resort.

Playboy founder Hugh Hefner surrounded himself with a bevy of blonds - and one brunette - in a red corner booth while pulsating music filled the smoky room.

"There's a new generation ready to come out and play," Playboy Enterprises founder Hugh Hefner said before the party, saying the Playboy brand was just as relevant today as it was when he started the men's magazine in 1953.

"Playboy has always stood for something - a social, sexual and political agenda that has real meaning," the 80-year-old Hefner said.

Almost a half-century has passed since Hefner opened his first club in Chicago in 1960 and helped usher in the sexual revolution while the Playboy bunny and the Playboy centerfold skyrocketed to American icon status.

Now, the flagship magazine faces depressed advertising and lower newsstand revenues amid competition from magazines like Maxim and Internet porn.

At the same time, however, Playboy has attracted new fans through The Girls Next Door, the reality television show about Hefner's three live-in girlfriends, and a successful licensing business.

While once controversial, the brand appears almost quaint amid today's X-rated offerings, said Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University, who says that Playboy represents a pivotal moment in American culture.

"(Hefner) was starting a revolution to break down fusty, infantile, puritanical mores that probably needed to be broken down," Thompson said.

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"At the same time he was creating a cultural climate that made many women who were just starting to make progress in the young feminist movement very uncomfortable,” he added.

In their heyday, the dozens of clubs reached as far as Japan and Jamaica and featured the hottest entertainers of the time like Sammy Davis Jr and Sonny & Cher.

But the symbols of flesh and freewheeling began shuttering their doors in the late 1980s amid escalating costs, and a sense among many that the bunny brand had peaked.

Now, Playboy is banking that its retro appeal will lure younger fans into the club.

The bunnies have been told how to deliver drinks and how to "perch" themselves delicately on the backs of seats.

"Bunnies don't sit," said bunny Ashley Rovenheiser, who said she loved being a bunny.

"It's so exciting,” she added.

Patrons have rules, too, said bunny dealer Charity Mays.

"It's kind of like at the zoo - don't touch the bunnies!" she said.

According to Palms owner George Maloof, the Playboy club will be a welcome respite from the X-rated offerings available elsewhere in Vegas. Maloof said he expects young women to frequent the club, along with bachelor parties and high rollers.

"There's plenty in Vegas to do if you want to go to a strip club," Maloof said earlier this week.

"This is a sophisticated place,” he added.

Cocktails are served up at the bar adorned with thousands of diamond-shaped crystals, while Playboy's famous rabbit ears adorn everything from the carpet to ashtrays to gambling tables. The bathroom walls are covered with centerfolds, with mirrored centerfold images on bathroom stalls.

Bunnies say the best part of their job is the outfit. Still, it has its drawbacks, said bunny dealer Mays.

"People kept taking the bunny tails - now they're attached so they can't come off," she said.