In Acapulco, a Return to Glamour

March 2, 2008
By ARIC CHEN
IT was a balmy evening in Acapulco, and up and down the town’s main drag, the college party crowd was again on its nightly pub crawl, belting out one too many Jimmy Buffett tunes and guzzling a few too many Coronas. Nearby, the famous La Quebrada cliff divers had finished the evening’s last show, sending moms and dads to Planet Hollywood to keep their antsy kids distracted, as two hulking cruise ships sat towering on the waterfront.

But on the other side of Acapulco Bay, perched high above the tourism mayhem, a stark wood-and-glass pavilion offered an escape hatch from the city’s clichés. Inside, a sparkling white restaurant opened up like a giant flashbulb onto the glittering coastline beyond, with house music throbbing to the clinking of wineglasses and the clattering of stilettos on polished concrete floors. A crowd of young Mexicans in open-collar Gucci shirts and fluttering Pucci dresses circulated about, perhaps hoping to catch a glimpse of the actress Tara Reid, the singer Luis Miguel and the other boldfaced names who had been spotted there recently.

“It’s fantastic, no?” said Angelo Pavia, the owner of the restaurant Becco al Mare, marveling at his own creation as he swooped his hand across the soaring space for emphasis. “I would never think to make this restaurant like this. But my son and daughter? Yes.”

Jarring words, given that Acapulco has long seemed like a place only your parents could love. For many, this resort city of more than 700,000 people on Mexico’s southern Pacific coast is synonymous not with upscale chic, but with tourist hell: cruise ships unloading high-decibel families, spring breakers sloshing through drinks-to-go. Even the word itself, “Acapulco,” can sound a bit over-giddy, a name forever resonating in the shrieks of hyperventilating housewives winning vacation packages on “The Price Is Right.”

But Acapulco is having its second act, reappearing from the fanny pack-strewn beaches to recapture its faded Hollywood glory. Between the new luxury condominiums rising in Diamond Point and the vintage modernist villas in Las Brisas, a necklace of sleek new restaurants, fashionable nightclubs and designer hotels is drawing the glitterati back to the city’s azure shores. Even legendary resorts are getting a makeover, like old movie stars staging a comeback.

One thing that remains unchanged, however, is Acapulco’s natural beauty. Hugging the calm, crystal-blue waters of Acapulco Bay, the city cascades from the Sierra Madre, forming a yawning, near-perfect crescent ringed by rocky cliffs, palm-feathered slopes and miles of powdery golden sand. And it was this striking topography, along with the dependably flawless weather, that once made Acapulco an unrivaled playground for the 20th-century beau monde.

At its peak, Acapulco was a haunt of Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack, where Elizabeth Taylor married Mike Todd (the third of her eight weddings), and John and Jacqueline Kennedy headed for their honeymoon (as did a young Bill and Hillary Clinton). Howard Hughes spent his last days at the Acapulco Princess hotel. Lana Turner had a place overlooking the water, as did John Wayne. And well before the crew of “Girls Gone Wild” came trolling the beaches for spring-break shenanigans, “Fun in Acapulco” was not just a 1963 film starring a dashing Elvis Presley but an international shorthand for glamour.

It was dazzling ascent that started about the time Errol Flynn first sailed in on one of his infamous party boats. That was in the late 1930s and — though the city was an important port under Spanish colonial rule — Acapulco was then a sleepy fishing village. But before long, the Hollywood elite was flocking to its sun-dappled shoreline, with countless playboys, gold-diggers and titled Europeans in tow. They would cavort at hotels like Los Flamingos, owned by a posse that included John Wayne and Johnny Weissmuller (who played Tarzan in movies), and at glitzy fleshpots like the former La Perla and Tequila à Go-Go, where a Swiss night-life impresario named Teddy Stauffer reigned as “Mr. Acapulco.”

“The world’s first discos were in Acapulco,” said Esteban Matiz, a fashion designer and lifelong Acapulqueño, who remembers many of them well. Indeed, in 1967, a Life magazine cover article proclaimed Acapulco the “Top Jet Resort” and “one of the most sophisticated and pace-setting” spots in the world.

As the years progressed, so did the hedonism. By the late 1970s, Acapulco had become Studio 54-by-the-beach. “Grace Jones had a show one New Year’s, and it was the most outrageous show I had ever seen,” said Roberta Brittingham, who comes from a prominent Monterrey, Mexico, family that had a house in Acapulco. “She came out dressed as a tiger and literally pulled men on stage” — before stripping them of their pants. If Ms. Jones was insufficiently impressed by what she saw, Ms. Brittingham continued, “she would shove [the men] back down.”

But like a beachside Sodom and Gomorrah, the party was destined to end. A tidal wave of mass tourism, combined with poor planning and unchecked development, saw Acapulco’s majestic beaches marred by a jungle of concrete hotels. Crime and drugs followed. Meanwhile, Mexico’s original resort town was eclipsed by Puerto Vallarta, Cancún, Los Cabos and other places as the new jet-set destinations. The Pearl of the Pacific had become a polluted eyesore.

Well, half an eyesore anyway. Most of the giant hotels, tourist traps and chain restaurants are clustered along Avenida Costera Miguel Alemán, the city’s main thoroughfare, as it loops around Acapulco Bay. Even today, amid the Day-Glo bikinis and 2-for-1 drinks being hawked, one only has to cross the street to get from Wal-Mart to Hooters. But head south from the Zócalo, or old city, past the wall of high-rise hotels, and the new Acapulco emerges like a Miracle Mile of new celebrity-driven restaurants and bottle-service nightclubs.

You’ll find them winding along the Carretera Escénica coastal highway, as it stretches from the posh Las Brisas neighborhood, which crawls up the lush mountainside at the bay’s southern tip, toward the more secluded Puerto Marqués Bay and the new Miami-style condominium towers of Diamond Point. Fueled by the Autopista del Sol superhighway, which has cut the drive from Mexico City to about three and a half hours, a steady stream of affluent weekenders is now flocking to the latest pleasure palaces of this rediscovered beach resort.

Like a castle on a hill, each boasts of the best view of the city — and all are often right.

There are restaurants like Becco and Kookaburra, where a resident kookaburra bird looks down its nose at the tourist pandemonium below. Other newcomers include Zuntra, with its sleek rooftop bar soaring high above the bay’s arcing splendor, and Zibu, which serves a fusion of Mexican and Thai fare beneath a palapa, or thatched roof pavilion, so hyperbolically dramatic that even Philippe Starck would blush.

But the extreme makeover award must go to Madeiras, an Acapulco institution where everyone from Sinatra to Shirley Bassey once dined. Looking a bit dated after 30 years, it reopened last December after a chic contemporary overhaul with dramatic mood lighting, chiseled stone walls and modern Mexican-Asian dishes like achiote-hoisin short ribs. The restaurant is now owned by the chef Richard Sandoval, who inherited Madeiras from his father, and his business partner, the opera legend Plácido Domingo.

“I like Acapulco because it has been eternally the same,” said Mr. Domingo, who has long kept a home in the city.

But on a warm Saturday night last December, nothing about Madeiras suggested that Acapulco remains unchanged. With a soft breeze in the air, dark-haired beauties in flouncy dresses flirted with handsome men framed by the sweaters tied around their shoulders. As the city lights flickered in the distance, the scene felt more like a South Beach hot spot than an old Mexican resort having a midlife crisis.

Indeed, Madeiras could be a microcosm of Acapulco’s social rebirth — a place where old-school glamour meets the new in unpredictable ways. It is a city where the ghosts of Hollywood past confer an enduring (and, yes, sometimes deliciously campy) cachet, as in Palm Springs or Las Vegas, but also where a new generation of jet-setters is eager to plant its flag.

So while Joan Collins still makes her way to Acapulco, so does the TMZ-generation — nouveau celebrities and glamour pusses like Ms. Reid, Wilmer Valderrama and Ivanka Trump. “I lent her my car,” Mr. Matiz, the fashion designer and veteran man-about-town, said of Ms. Trump. “Even though she warned me not to.”

But don’t roll into Acapulco expecting to fill your autograph book. The A-list insists that no one goes out anymore — and they definitely don’t do the beach — preferring instead to party-hop from villa to villa, or lounge on private yachts and pools. And hotel bars? Why bother, when you can have your own mountainside villa for $10,000 a day? Indeed, among Acapulco’s elite, hotels are considered passé. But that may be set to change.

After years of stagnation, Acapulco is getting some flashy new accommodations. Grupo Habita, the trend-setting Mexican hotelier, is building a 54-room boutique property on Punta Bruja, which juts out from the southern point of Acapulco Bay. Scheduled to open later this year, it is like a jaw-dropping modernist puzzle, its jagged concrete profile cutting like a knife across the sky.

“WE want to be part of the revival of Acapulco — but a new Acapulco that gets something from its original DNA,” said Rafael Micha, a partner in Grupo Habita. “We have a lot of confidence in Acapulco.”

So much confidence, in fact, that Grupo Habita is also helping to revive the vintage Boca Chica hotel in old Acapulco. “It’s like the set of a 1950s movie,” Mr. Micha said. But soon, this 43-room gem is getting a design-driven facelift under its new owner, Fernando Romero, the Mexican architect and former Rem Koolhaas protégé.

Other venerable hotels have been spiffed up. The Fairmont Pierre Marqués, built by John Paul Getty at Diamond Point, has recently renovated bungalows and palm-shaded restaurants that serve foie gras. And at the legendary Las Brisas hotel, the pink-and-white Jeeps that once shuttled the Kennedys up its steep, hibiscus-carpeted slopes now ferry honeymooners, recovering power couples, and celebrities like Enrique Iglesias and Sandra Bullock to their pink-and-white casitas — all 251 of which have been newly made over, with a freshened-up spa on the way.

But if Acapulco’s revamped hotels haven’t given the glitterati an excuse to go out, the city’s reinvigorated night life has — and often until dawn. Forget your sunglasses? Club workers are known to pass them out at daybreak at Classico del Mar, a new nightclub that stands like a fortress above the Carretera Escénica. At 1 a.m. on a recent Wednesday, a young and sexy crowd was dancing to Latin hits on the rooftop floor, their spaghetti-strap dresses and slim-fitting T-shirts writhing against a backlit wall of water.

Over at the megaclub Palladium, the techno music, smoke machines and other special effects drew scattered Americans and Europeans among a more international crowd. Overlooking the city’s sparkling waterfront, the club’s enormous glass wall lit up in a kaleidoscope of reflected flashes at around 3:30 a.m. as a man dressed as an Aztec warrior took to the stage, beaming lasers from his costume into the smoke-filled expanse. The crowd went wild, jumping on banquettes and pumping their fists into the air.

But in true Acapulco style, the most exclusive club is also the longest-running. Baby’O erected its first velvet rope more than 30 years ago, and at 2 a.m. on a recent Monday, the well-heeled and well-primped were still arriving, ready to sweet talk their way past the hard-to-please bouncers.

Inside, the club looked like the set of “Barbarella,” a primitive-futurist cavern of artificial vegetation and faux-rock walls, all swirling beneath a field of undulating video screens. Men in tailored shirts and women in swishy camisoles gyrated on the sweaty dance floor, marking the spot where Madonna, Naomi Campbell and Bono were recently sighted.

“Acapulco is magical,” said Joe Nizri, a strikingly handsome 21-year-old from Mexico City, as he worked his way toward the dance floor. He had been at Baby’O until 7 a.m. the previous night and was back for more. Never mind that his parents used to go there, too. (In fact, they still do.) “I’ve been to Cancún, Los Cabos,” Mr. Nizri added. “But I prefer Acapulco at any time of year.”

LURING A NEW GENERATION OF GLITTERATI

GETTING THERE

Continental offers nonstop service between Newark and Acapulco on weekends only. Other flights from the New York City area require connections through Chicago, Dallas, Mexico City and other hubs. A recent Web search for March showed round-trip fares on Continental (through Houston) starting around $379; the Continental nonstops start at about $369.

WHERE TO STAY

Las Brisas (Carretera Escénica 5225; 52-744-469-6900; www.brisas.com.mx) is the classic 1950s Acapulco resort and remains a perennial favorite. Creeping up a steep, hibiscus-covered hillside, it is famous for its celebrity guests and pink-and-white color scheme. The 251 modern casitas have private or shared plunge pools. Doubles in high season from $225.

Completed in 1957, the Fairmont Pierre Marqués (Playa Revolcadero; 52-744-435-2600; www.fairmont.com/pierremarques) was built by John Paul Getty and retains its luxurious and idyllic character with low-slung buildings, villas and bungalows scattered among manicured gardens and swimming pools. Doubles in high season from 2,100 pesos, or about $190 at 11 pesos to the dollar.

The Fairmont Acapulco Princess (Playa Revolcadero; 52-744-469-1000; www.fairmont.com/acapulco) takes the shape of a 15-story Aztec pyramid set among acres of gardens, pools and a golf course. Doubles in high season from 2,500 pesos.

WHERE TO EAT

Madeiras (Carretera Escénica 33 at Puerto Marqués; 52-744-446-5636; www.modernmexican.com), a local institution, was recently reopened by the chef Richard Sandoval and his business partner, Plácido Domingo. The chic new interior, with walls of chiseled stone, is matched by a new Latin-Asian menu, featuring dishes like chipotle-marinated filet mignon (295 pesos) and baked mako (260 pesos).

The ultra-trendy Becco al Mare (Carretera Escénica 14; 52-744-446-7402; www.beccoalmare.com) occupies a soaring white-on-white, minimal-luxe space that’s open to the air. Homemade pastas include lobster tagliolini (480 pesos) and lasagnette with pesto and sardines (192 pesos).

Zibu (Carretera Escénica at Puerto Marqués; 52-744-433-3058; www.zibu.com.mx) pays homage to the city’s past — Acapulco was once a port for Spanish galleons sailing to Asia — by blending Mexican and Thai cuisines. Try the shrimp with mango and ginger salsa and tamarind chipotle sauce (273 pesos).

WHERE TO GO OUT

Still going strong after 30-plus years, the nightclub Baby’O (Costera Miguel Alemán 22, 52-744-484-7474; www.babyo.com.mx) continues to attract the elite, both young and not-so-young, with its intimate, cavernous interior and club-music standards. It can be notoriously hard to get in; having the right look (or last name) will help. Cover is 100 pesos for women and as much as 800 pesos for men, depending on the night.

Follow the laser beams to the mega-club Palladium (Carretera Escénica, Las Brisas S/N, Playa Guitarrón; 52-744-446-5490; www.palladium.com.mx), where techno music, horns, smoke machines and other special effects draw an international crowd. Stay until 3:30 a.m. for its signature Aztec warrior show. Cover is 450 pesos for men, 300 pesos for women.

Classico del Mar (Carretera Escénica 2, Las Brisas, 52-744-446-6475; classicodelmar.com.mx) looks a bit Busby Berkeley on the inside but tiki above, with bamboo and timber huts on its rooftop dance floor. It’s a favorite among Mexico’s children of privilege, who while the night away to Latin American pop and international dance hits. Cover is 300 pesos for men, free for women.

ARIC CHEN is a frequent contributor to the Travel section of The Times.