Playboy is trending this month after they announced that they'll soon stop featuring nude models in their magazine. Coincidentally, a fake Playboy nightclub just opened in downtown Shanghai, in the same space as the old Ibiza club on Jiangning Lu. Instead of a dancefloor, there is a giant boxing ring in the middle of the club, with no clear path across.

The vibe is dark tackiness. The club feels like a place where you could get stabbed, and people would just point and laugh as you bled to death under the flashing lights. When I walked in, I immediately got shoved in the back by a dude on a cell phone. The only two other foreigners there invited me to their table, where we drank endless, free Snow beer (2% alcohol) with ice cubes while the DJ played mashups of "Get Lucky", "Black Betty", and "Show Me Love" as an MC repeated "Rolllllllll up…Rollllllllllup! In-ter-national Playboy Club!!!"







Let's back up a minute. According to The LA Times, the real Playboy did in fact plan to build a club in Shanghai, way back in 2004, but that didn't work out. Playboy still got a foot in China though, but rather as a clothing brand. It's worked out for Hugh & Co. -- Playboy made 5 billion USD in China over the past decade, and has plans for serious expansion. This club is not part of their vision. We spoke to Playboy's PR team, who verified that this is not an official Playboy venture.







But we already knew that. "Play Boy Club" doesn't feel like the product of an empire that has published works by David Foster Wallace, Roald Dahl, and Ray Bradbury. This is pure 5th-tier club vibes in downtown Shanghai: tables and bottles, blinding lazers, bellicose security, deafening speakers, table girls, and a lack of conversation. The club is so loud that you can only order by pointing at the iPad menu. Each couch area has its own speaker, pointed right at your face, so you can enjoy The Poetry Of Play Boy Club at Guantanamo Bay torture volumes:



"BOOTY BOOTY BOOTY BOOTY ROCKIN' EVERYWHERE

BOOTY BOOTY BOOTY BOOTY ROCKIN' EVERYWHERE

BOOTY BOOTY BOOTY BOOTY ROCKIN' EVERYWHERE

BOOTY BOOTY BOOTY BOOTY ROCKIN' EVERYWHERE"



"We have parties here every night. You got friends? Call your friends, tell them to come. How many beers can you drink? We're gonna drink all these beers, then comes the vodka", says the promoter who invited me to his table. Our silent waiter kept lighting people's cigs and refilling our glasses with Snow beer, a.k.a. The Beer For People Who Hate Fun, but only to the ¼ way point. The other tables were full of newly-minted youth and bosses throwing back shots, playing dice, scrolling through WeChat, and smoking hookahs. Occasionally a parade of a dozen girls streamed by and stood in front of those tables, waiting to be picked. To the right was some kind of "MMA Cage" VIP area, full of empty glasses and empty-eyed table girls.







I didn't stick around long enough to see the 1am boxing match, although there was a "pre-show" with some Foxy Boxers in glittery uniforms doing dance routines to EDM remixes of "Anaconda". In the bathroom, an uncle tried to massage my neck with a hot towel while I was emptying all that Snow. I asked him to please stop and he just cackled at me and walked away. It felt like time to leave, and when I moved in to take pictures of their bootleg shark tank (pretty sure they were catfish), the security got hostile. Exit through the metal detector. The world of dark tackiness still exists in downtown Shanghai, just a few blocks north of the real Gucci store.



