A little before noon last Saturday, a smattering of boats began chugging across Lake Michigan from various directions to a point about 200m offshore. Anyone driving by on Lake Shore Drive, which bends around miles of lakefront, would not have noticed anything unusual; just another summer scene. An hour or so later, though, what had been a random group of a dozen or so boats had turned into a sprawling armada.
Hundreds of boats, from million-dollar yachts to speedboats to fishing dinghies, had merged with rubber rafts, water trampolines and makeshift docks into roughly five connected chains bobbing across a no-wake zone unofficially known as the Playpen.
It was the annual summer boat party sponsored by Chicago Scene magazine, a larger and more promotional version of the smaller but no less bacchanal gatherings that have been taking place just north of the Navy Pier here most weekend days for the past several summers.
"Where else can you go and get a view like this and have a party on water?" asked Frank Montana, 34, a Playpen regular, as he waved his arm toward the skyline behind him from his 40-foot Sea Ray Express Cruiser.
In one undulating line of boats, several small to medium-size yachts were bound together in the center of one cluster. Banners spelling out the name of local clubs hung from their sides, and coordinated sound systems blared music from local DJs.
In the surrounding boats, bikini-clad women tried to stay upright as they danced on slippery runners or hopped from boat to boat looking for better drinks. Others tumbled onto giant floating trampolines or fired meter-long squirt guns at one another. On a few boats, grills were being fired up.
disk jockeys
Fueled by wealthy boat owners and the young women they and their boats can attract, the daytime parties have become a magnet for local nightclub owners and promoters who use the scene to draw people to their clubs once the sun sets. Last year club owners upped the ante by ferrying DJs out to spin during the day.
"It's like maximum exposure," Jason Kalendr, 28, better known in the club scene as DJ Kalendr, said during a break from spinning tracks one recent Saturday, his baseball cap turned ever-so-slightly sideways.
"Everyone who is in this business is out on the lake," says.
He, like any well-known Chicago DJ, spins for free on the lake. And it's hard to imagine a more perfect confluence of money, skin and exhibitionism.
"I bought 11 bikinis for the summer alone," said Jamie Coates, 23, a model who took time from comparing breast sizes with a friend to talk to a reporter. She's been going to clubs since she was 18-years-old.
"Been there, done that. This is something new, something real," she says.
For boat owners it's a ticket to Girls Gone Wild come to life. Montana, a demolition and excavation contractor, plays host to 30 to 50 people every weekend (last Saturday he had 57) on his boat. He refers to his party as "Club Montana" and has already burned out one smoke machine this summer.
Joey Vartanian, an owner of the Chicago Crobar, said he has been a boater for 20 years but only started taking Loonacy, his 44-foot Sea Ray, to the Playpen to promote his club in the last two years. Though he thought last Saturday's blowout might put a damper on the evening's club scene.
core group
"The Playpen scene mobilizes people to party all weekend long," he said.
"It creates a core group that later show up at your club, and they are great wallpaper," he said. "I see the same people in my club on Friday night, on the boat Saturday, in the club Saturday night and sometimes even on the lake on Sunday."
Last Saturday, Vartanian and his business partner held parties on Loonacy and two other boats they had chartered, including a 21-footer dubbed the Crobar Special Ops Boat, which was filled with well-toned men and women in skimpy camouflage suits spraying guests with water "machine guns."
Ray Poe, a 38-year-old real estate developer, has seen how a US$400,000 investment in a 43-foot Carver motor yacht can pave the way for an extravagant life after hours. He bought the boat earlier this year on a whim and now he has some 30 people most weekend days on his boat -- about 20 of them women -- and hauls sound equipment, along with vodka, beer and ice for Brian Pfeiffer, a promoter for a club called Surreal Chicago. In return, he is welcomed into the VIP rooms of many clubs in town.
"When you own a boat, everyone is your new friend," Poe said.
While the Playpen area has always been a popular spot to drift, swim and enjoy the skyline, locals say the scene has become a destination to drink and socialize only in the last few years.
Looking at the scene last Saturday, Ted Widen, publisher of Chicago Scene and the architect of the day's event, tried to count the boats.
"It's exhausting," he said, recalling the last six years of parties. "We thought a few years back when there were five to 10 boats, fine. Then there were 50 and we thought it couldn't get bigger than this. But the next year, there were a hundred. It's just nuts."
This year police estimate that more than 500 boats showed up.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
South Korea has adjusted its electronic arrival card system to no longer list Taiwan as a part of China, a move that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said would help facilitate exchanges between the two sides. South Korea previously listed “Taiwan” as “Taiwan (China)” in the drop-down menus of its online arrival card system, where people had to fill out where they came from and their next destination. The ministry had requested South Korea make a revision and said it would change South Korea’s name on Taiwan’s online immigration system from “Republic of Korea” to “Korea (South),” should the issue not be
Tainan, Taipei and New Taipei City recorded the highest fines nationwide for illegal accommodations in the first quarter of this year, with fines issued in the three cities each exceeding NT$7 million (US$220,639), Tourism Administration data showed. Among them, Taipei had the highest number of illegal short-term rental units, with 410. There were 3,280 legally registered hotels nationwide in the first quarter, down by 14 properties, or 0.43 percent, from a year earlier, likely indicating operators exiting the market, the agency said. However, the number of unregistered properties rose to 1,174, including 314 illegal hotels and 860 illegal short-term rental
AIR ALERT: China’s reservation of airspace over the Yellow Sea and East China Sea could be an attempt to test the US’ response ahead of a Trump-Xi meeting, the NSB head said China’s attempts to infiltrate Taiwan are systematic, planned and targeted, with activity shifting from recruiting mid-level military officers to rank-and-file enlisted personnel, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) integrates national security, intelligence operations and “united front” efforts into a dense network to conduct intelligence gathering and espionage in Taiwan, Tsai said at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee. It uses specific networks to screen targets through exchange activities and recruiting local collaborators to establish intelligence-gathering organizations, he said. China is also shifting who it targets to lower-ranking military personnel,
RSS