“Bunnies for the ’80s.” The last remaining Playboy Club in America closed its doors July 31, 1988, in Lansing, Michigan, its memorabilia auctioned off for charity. Located in the Hilton Inn, the Lansing Club was the last of five Midwestern franchise clubs that the new 32-year-old president of Playboy Enterprises, Christie Hefner, had opened in the 1980s in an attempt to revive the company’s Club division. In the end, a reason given by a Hilton Inn official for closing the Lansing Playboy Club was that “it sometimes discourages group meeting planners from selecting the Lansing Hotel.” The franchised Playboy Clubs in Des Moines, Iowa, and Omaha, Nebraska, had closed their doors that spring. The only Playboy Clubs remaining in the world were five franchise clubs in Japan. Ellie Parrino Ellie Parrino, owner of Miss Ellie’s Homesick Bar and Grill in New York’s Upper West Side, says, “I wanted to be a princess, but there were no princess jobs. I had platinum blonde hair and wore four pair of eyelashes, so I wasn’t exactly typing-pool material.
