The Playboy World; NY Vs. Chicago
Airdate:
Wednesday - March 31, 1965
WOR Show Original Airing
First Spoken Line After Theme Ends
I don't like to frighten you too quickly. . .
Show Description
[ Courtesy: Dave Post - ]
Shep has returned from Chicago, having visited the "pleasure dome" he calls Xanadu. He never mentions the Playboy mansion by name. His mission this show, is to tell New Yorkers what Chicago and other cities are like.
Throughout the show Shep takes the typical provincial view and calls New York City "New York" and city dwellers ,"New Yorkers."
NY is the last bastion of Victorianism, but Chicago is Babylon revisited.
Chicago is hip, NY is Squaresville. Sybaritic life is so rampant in Chicago that everything in NY looks like a Girl Scout troop.
In Chicago, Musak has taken over everything, even funeral parlors.
The Playboy lifestyle is actually available in Chicago. In Chicago, the good life and bad life never mix. Fist fights and bums are found everywhere in NY but Chicago has a coral for that.
Chicago has much less traffic and people are not crammed together. Compares Chicago weekday traffic to NY Sunday traffic.
Chicago is casual. In Chicago, he lived in a house, implying the Playboy Mansion, where no one used last names. Says last names will vanish, because names are controversial and say something about your background.
During the commercials, he runs a tangent and says if he had all the money he spent on cars, he would own WOR and fire all the Klutzes at WOR.
NY is incredibly filthy, dirty. Suspects it is one of the dirtiest cities in the world. Chicago thinks it is a dirty city but it is relatively clean.
NY is noisier than an oriental bazaar.
NY has a certain sense of excitement, but other cities have a sense of architectural style that makes NY relatively ugly. He bemoans New York's ugly architecture to some length.
New Yorkers have lost the virtue of civic anger, and are tolerant of annoyance.
Banging in a grill while parking is completely accepted.
Radio, television is different in Chicago. NY doesn't have live, personal ads.
In Chicago, commercials are watched as a form of entertainment, including fan clubs.
Chicago television seems more alive, NY television is kind of dead.
New York Worlds Fair is lifeless, built to be there. Maybe NY is dead and maybe what America will be is happening outside of NY.
The show ends on a reflection that on his trip, no one on the plane was interested in looking out the windows and that everything going on in the cabin is designed to substitute for looking out. No one was interested in seeing the incredible geology below.
