The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 6

6 The Boston Globe Saturday, July 15, 1978 ITS AT LARGE DIANE WHITE The beach blanket blahs A perfect summer day. She is being held prisoner at the beach. She has come there with two friends, a man and a woman. They are lying on either side of her, basking in the sun like hap- I I J) I i They are turning brown. She 0 -ft 1 rfOS 1j r.

la mining itu. iiti luciic 11 icuu a bikini is iridescent green, even briefer than her woman friend's, a hot pink floral number. She is wearing her new bathing suit, meant for serious swimming, in which she resembles a brown latex sausage. Her friends have slathered themselves with a tanning preparation, a viscous fluid that smells like a pina colada. They are deeply involved in competitive tann- i -----i 4V' ing.

Every so often they sit up to I compare shades and talk tanning. i "You're darker than I am," he says, proferring a nut-brown forearm. "But you're more burnished than I am," her woman friend i.hvf.'- 1 -V. (Globe photos by Steven Geovanis) Dancers are caught up in a fog at New York, New York, a disco featuring antiseptic antipersperant in the men's room. 1 Deceiit into York mm Vi says, holding her arm next to his.

Isn.t this wonderful stuff?" he says of the tanning oil. "My sends it to me from Florida. It's the only place you can buy it. It's for serious tanners." She picks up the bottle and reads the label. It contains 16 different oils, including turtle and mink.

"Warning!" it reads in part. "Do not use unless already tan!" There is no chance that she will use it. She can't join the tanning competition. She walks disconsolately toward the water. It is too cold to swim in.

Her skin is prickly with sunburn. There is samd in her bathing suit. She looks around. Some people, she decides, are made to go to the beach. They are impervious to heat.

They do not burn. They look swell in next to nothing. She is not one of them. God did not make her to go to the beach. He made her to sit indoors in heavy sweaters and watch television.

She puts on a hat and a long-sleeved shirt and settles down to read the newspaper. They have been at the beach exactly 90 minutes. "When are we leaving?" she asks. Her friends laugh. They think she's kidding.

"When do we leave?" she persists. She sounds like a petulant 4-year-old. "We just got here," he says, misting his baking body with a plastic spray bottle full of Perrier. She sulks. A few minutes later she hears herself say, "What a beautiful day.

It's a shame to waste it at the beach." When she dies she wants her epitaph to read, "She was fun to be with." In order to make sure this happens she must take pains to avoid the beach. It's her own fault. Each year, as predictable as the solstice, she falls under the delusion that this summer she will like the beach. There is no logical reason why she should harbor this hope. She has been to the beach many times.

She has never had a good time, except, on-, and that was after dark. There are a number of ressons why she dislikes the beach. (1) Sand. It has a tendency to stick to the skin and collect in orifices. It does not go well with sunburn.

(2) Sun. It burns andor induces wrinkles. If your ancestors lived nearer the arctic circle than the equator there is every reason to avoid the sun entirely. (3) Water. Swimming can be pleasant, but not in the Atlantic Ocean off the shores of New England.

The water is too cold and there are things in it. (4) People. There are usually too many of them on any beach. This applies especially to children. (5) Lack of air conditioning.

(6) A shortage of hot showers. (7) No television. She knows all this. But she also knows that next year the summer ritual will repeat itself. Some force more powerful than she will propel her toward the shore.

Life is long, memory is short. And next year she might learn to like it. V-' "if i 'it I 4 4' St 7 Yi -f PETTIE, Studio 54 bartender I JERRI HALL at Xenon RYAN O'NEAL at Xenon many freaks," he concludes emphatically Ice Palace 57, on West 57th street, -is clearly a gay disco. It has no but its manager, Lou Prince, is explaining; that his doormen like to keep out what he calls "undesirables." He is a trifle vague about what constitutes such people, but heti-o erosexuality is not necessarily among theif traits Th( rnnm rlparlv Viae tViA lrticf nail'-. By Nathan Cobb Globe Staff NEW YORK Disco is this city's latest form of royal court.

Watch closely as the new nobility arrive at Regine's, at Studio 54 and more recently at Xenon. See the paparazzi clamor for shots of Margaux, Andy, Bianca or Truman doing the Latin Hustle (of sorts). Observe the knowing glances being tossed about like cold cash. Back in Boston discotheques are populist places. Any kid from Maiden can walk into Club Max, in Park square, while any salesman in a leisure suit may meander into Jason's, off Copley.

All that is required to get past the burly gentlemen at the front doors of such establishments is acceptable attire and, on specific nights in particular clubs, the prescribed admission charge. Not here. To be sure, certain discos have such plebeian requirements as membership fees. Studio 54, for example, charges $150. It is said, however, that such a stipend means nothing if the club's co-owner, Steve Rubell, does not crook his finger at you as you arrive upon his doorstep, thereby plucking you from among the riffraff and magically transporting you into the plush world of the chosen.

If such an endorsement is not forthcoming, you will wait outside with the hoi poloi until hell or 54th street freeze over, whichever occurs first. Perhaps this is why New York City's Department of Consumer Affairs recently required the club to refund the cost of membership. Spending two nights searching for the significance of such zeal within a five-by-sixteen-block chunk of Manhattan does not necessarily answer New York's most pressing question. Namely, is there life after disco? (An ax murderer is loose in Brooklyn, but never mind. Mayor Edward Koch recently proclaimed Disco Dance Week.) Nevertheless, certain truths are revealed between 10:30 p.m.

and 6 a.m., or from the instant record spinner Jonata Garavaglia first turns up the decibels at Regine's, on Park to the moment 77-year-old Disco Sally launches into her dancing chimpanzee imitation at Studio 54. At Regine's, diners linger over the last scraps of l'escalope de homard aux truffles et a la tomate fraiche before descending the four steps to the chic restaurant's black and red dance floor. The music starts at 10:30, but no one wants to lead the way. The patrons sit amid the art deco splendor of maroon and silver, each waiting for someone else to make the first move. Then, when that initial couple at last stands up to be counted, the others follow as if on cue.

This is upper crust disco. Membership at Regine's is priced at $350 the first year and $150 annually thereafter. Members are allowed the privilege of not paying $10 to enter on weeknights, $12.50 on weekends. Segments of the movie "The Last Tycoon" were filmed here. men's room attendant speaks French The male guests wear jackets and ties and the women cover much of their flesh.

The mood is not sex and violence. It is more like sex and violins. The dancers, not a few of whom are middle-aged, freelance to the recorded music. When our party decides to move on to livelier climes, the waiter brings a bill for $9.44 for three drinks. Outside, a chauffeur in livery offers to rent both himself and his limousine for less money than the price of the drinks.

Such a car wouldn't have made a difference. Outside Studio 54, which signaled the arrival of true disco elitism when it opened CHILDREN'S ROOKS Terrific tall tales on the Great Plains ing, the most cigarette burns on the carpet and the highest temperature of any New" York disco. It also has some of the better, dancers It is 5 a.m., and back at Studio 54 Disco Sally has arrived. She is 77 and is print dress, a red baseball cap and outrageous sunglasses. "Hey, Sally-Sally!" the; regulars call out to her as she makes her way to the dance floor on the arm of a young man for whom the onset, of puberty was obviously not a Dhenomenon of the distant Dast.

Sallv is a Studio 54 fixture who, when asked to explain the necessity of disco, has an answer ready. 14 months ago in a converted theater, the ragtag members of a small midnight vigil are hoping that the barrier will be magically removed and they will somehow be allowed to pay $10 to enter. Our own boarding pass for this SST of discos is a 26-year-old fashion model who is both a regular at the club and a possessor of the trait its administration and habitues most admire: Blonde hair. The rabble and the rope part like the Red Sea. "People just come here to see if they can get in," says the model, whose name is Bonnie George, as we slide through the rococo lobby.

"I have friends who I tell how to art and what to wear, and they still can't get in." The assemblage here is younger and mere manic than at Regine's. Its late 1970s attire is heavy on satin, roll-up cuffs, pullover pants, baseball jackets and tank tops. The waiters are bare-chested young men who wear gym shorts and sneakers. A bartender named Bob Pettie dances by himself as he mixes drinks and provides tickets for free libations to the well-known. He is twirling beneath a fountain which spurts water and glycerin.

Dancing? Yes, of course. Dozens of writhing bodies flow beneath hundreds of spotlights. But that is not the point. Having achieved entry, the patron's ultimate mission is to see and be seen. On the second floor, several people lounge on couches, sucking up the vibrations.

That is not all they are taking in: Cocaine is not entirely absent. A young woman named Beverly, who has two children and lives on Long Island, is explaining why she drives to Studio 54 on the average of two nights a week. "It's a show," she shouts over the music. "You can see freaks, rich people, everyone. "You're leaving?" she asks incredulously as we prepare our exit.

"You'll be sorry. It'll all be downhill from here." Alas, Beverly is somewhat prophetic. Not much is happening at Xenon. It is the city's newest and probably most expensively created discotheque. Located in a converted theater (naturally) on West 43d street, it charges a $250 annual membership fee and seems to be trying to sell itself to people whose nightstyle falls somewhere between the show affluence found at Regine's and the calculated zaniness of Studio 54.

No less than a reported $2 million has been spent on audio and visual gimmickry, the latter including a large "mothership" which descends from the ceiling. And yet there is something missing. Oh, actor Ryan O'Neal is here, disappearing into a soft couch with a friend. And model Jerri Hall, Mick Jagger's paramour, is gliding in large circles in the middle of the dance floor. But as one newcomer puts it, "I wouldn't come here unless I didn't want to be seen." Which is about the worst thing that can be said about a Manhattan disco.

Xenon doesn't yet seem to give off the vibes that, say, the Romans must have felt when their empire was beginning to show a few cracks. However, it is making its own small contribution to disco lore. According to the multitudes of insiders, Jerri Hall dances here because Studio 54 is Bianca Jagger's turf. Bianca, of course, is Mick's wife, and apparently would rather not set her dark eyes on Miss Hall these days. So it goes in the latest episode of "As The Disco Turns." And so it goes toward dawn At New York, New York, on West 52d street, the only laser beam in disco captivity is shooting streaks of light onto a large wall screen.

(In Boston we have a Boston, Boston discotheque. Can Akron, Akron be far behind?) Membership is $150 annually, which gives its holders somewhat reduced rates at the door. Tonight a local television crew is frantically chasing dancers around the floor, trying to film them amidst machine-induced fog. The men's room features extra bottles of antiseptic anti-perspi-rant for particularly active dancers. At the bar, a jacketed fellow named Lenny is drinking something called a Hurricane and allowing as how he feels this is a classier environment than that found at Studio 54.

"Not as we auuuiu iidvr uiuic uni.u, aiic aii- nounces firmly, "because if we had more discos we'd have fewer wars." But of course. With this pronouncement, Sally beings to dance. Well, actually she just kind of bobs i anil rlAurn a ViQrsnv rhimn MR. YOWDER AND THE GIANT BULL SNAKE, written and illustrated by Glen Rounds. Holiday House.

$5.95. Ages 6-11. Master of the tall tale, Glen Rounds, is bound to have fans young and old laughing at his most recent yarn about a sign painter, Mr. Yowder, and his sidekick and traveling compan- ion, a bull snake. i Set on the Great Plains in the days of Buffalo Bill (who makes an appearance which is not altogether glorious) the sto-; ry moves rapidly from one preposterous event to another.

It seems that Mr. Yowder was once painting signs in Oklahoma Territory where there were a number of snakes "and almost no people, so if I wanted anybody to talk to, I had to learn snake." Because of his remarkable gift for gab in this obscure tongue, Mr. Yowder strikes up a friendship with an underfed bull snake, whom he eventually dubs Knute. Knute becomes obsessed with the idea of exercise and body building, a direct result of Mr. Yowder's stories about how "Mr.

Teddy Roosevelt took exercises and became President of the United States." Knute does not become President but he does become enormous. Mr. Yowder and Knute take a break from sign painting and become buffalo hunters for the US Government. Knute is not above enjoying the prestige of being "the only snake in the world working for the Government." On the story goes until Mr. Yowder and Knute inadvertently cause a buffalo stampede I and almost obliterate the President, Buffalo Bill, and several wagonloads of important people.

So the hilarious twosome slips quietly away from the scene perhaps into some new adventure. Manhattan discotheques have clearly learned a lesson about New York, and the lesson is that the city is not at all a classless society and doesn't want to be one. By creat ing an atmosphere in which few are the discos have produced the frantic desire to squeeze through the-doors regardless of 1 i inc nuinuiaiiuii ur cosi involved. Arrogant doormen and membership fees are part of this. So are the roving photographers who know that there is a ready market for pictures of, say.

Sylvester Stallone disco dancing on his birthday. Publicity creates the scene and the scene creates publicity! The new royalty, both real and imagined, are lined up outside the new courts. They are waiting and hoping to get in. To be excluded has become the unkindest cut of all. Stephanie Loer is children's books editor for The Globe..