Bossman Paul from Tycoon a-GoGo and Lace Lounge is throwing himself a birthday party Saturday and, in true Nana Plaza fashion, this one is not exactly subtle.
This year’s birthday party theme is Playboy Mansion.
Starting at 10 p.m. Saturday, Lace Lounge will turn into a Bangkok version of Hugh Hefner’s old Hollywood playground, complete with Playboy Bunny costumes, champagne, bathrobes and Paul himself doing his best Hefner impression upstairs above Tycoon.
The hook for this year’s birthday party is simple: buy a bottle and get your own bathrobe.
Customers ordering bottle service during the birthday party will be given a robe to wear, turning Lace Lounge into a strange mix of VIP lounge, smoking room and late-night mansion fantasy.
Paul’s Birthday Barty Set in Playboy Mansion
The Playboy Mansion theme fits Lace Lounge better than most birthday party concepts.
The upstairs room has always had a quieter, more private feel than the louder bars downstairs in Nana Plaza. With red walls, low lighting, couches and a towering portrait of cigar-smoking Arnold Schwarzenegger looking over the leather chairs in the smoking lounge, Lace already feels a little bit like the sort of room Hefner might have used for an after-party.
Saturday just pushes that idea much further.
The dancers will be dressed as Playboy Bunnies, complete with ears, corsets, bow ties and fishnets, while Paul is expected to spend most of the night in a bathrobe, maybe even with a pipe in hand.
Anyone ordering a bottle gets to join him.
That may be the funniest part of the whole concept.
By 4 a.m., Lace Lounge could end up looking less like a normal Nana Plaza bar and more like some kind of strange Hefner convention with 20 middle-aged men in matching robes wandering around holding whisky glasses.
One of Nana’s Smaller Rooms
That is also why people will probably want to get there early. Lace Lounge is not a huge venue.
The upstairs bar only holds around 40-50 people and birthday parties there tend to fill up fast. Last year’s birthday party packed the room with regulars, expats, vloggers and Tycoon customers moving upstairs once the drinking downstairs started getting serious.
Lace can be reached either from the outside staircase next to Tycoon or from the internal stairs connecting the two venues.
Unlike many Nana Plaza bars, Lace is built more for sitting, drinking and talking than standing around watching stage shows. The music is lower, the couches are bigger and the whole room feels more private.
That chill atmosphere is part of why Lace has developed such a loyal following over the last two years.
Tycoon downstairs is still the main attraction, but Lace has become the place where people disappear once they want something a little calmer, a little softer and a little more expensive.
Bell Ringing, Bottles and Bathrobes
Paul’s birthday party also will follow the usual habit of escalating as the night goes on.
The original plan may be cocktails and champagne in bathrobes.
By 1 a.m., it will probably be bottle trains, bell ringing and somebody trying to convince Paul to take another birthday shot.
Tycoon and Lace have built a reputation for management birthday party that start classy and end messy.
Saturday’s Playboy Mansion birthday party edition has all the ingredients to do the same thing.
At the very least, it should be one of the stranger sights Nana Plaza has seen in a while.
There are not many places where a man can spend Saturday night drinking whisky in a borrowed bathrobe while surrounded by Playboy Bunnies. Then again, there are not many places quite like Lace Lounge.
