Playing Overtime at the Dream Factory

Picture yourself in a crowded bar on a weekday night, squeezed in between three or four ravishing, sensationally dressed women, and an equal number of natty, dapper men. Picture yourself in a place where the air is filled with the scent of expensive perfumes and raw power. You are not dreaming; you are at Nicky Blair, a glitzy shimmering Sunset Strip restaurant and bar, a mini-dream factory where you can find the Hollywood your mother told you about, and one she didn’t tell you about as well.

In less than one short year of existence, Nicky Blair has catapulted into Tinseltown immortality alongside Ciro’s, Romanoff’s and more recently Spago, as “the place” to be after business hours in Los Angeles.

There’s no denying that the driving force behind this mercurial rise has been Blair himself, actor, bon vivant, ladies’ man, and congenial host; an ebullient man who glides around his domain with the effortlessness of a swan after sunset on a silent lake.

The waiters are in stop motion; they can’t move through the narrow passageway at the service end of the bar from which they pick up their drinks for the dining room. The bar is jammed.

I spot an old friend Gerard, affectionately known as Jay-jay, a former waiter at Ma Maison, clad in Paris designer late-model dinner jacket, sipping diffidently on a small aperitif. We exchange greetings, as he gestures to the crowd and shrugs in an implacably Gallic way. “I used to be a waiter here,” he says, “but it was too dingue, you know, crazy. You couldn’t move, just too busy.” And so he took another job. Most waiters yearn for busy nights; at Nicky Blair, you pray for rain.

As I’m talking to Jay-jay in walks Blair himself, surrounded by well-wishers, sybarites and admirers. After introductions, he rushes me over to a corner of the bar and introduces me to three beautiful women. They greet me as an old friend. “Isn’t Nicky marvelous?” one says.

Lively Atmosphere

The women turn out to be regular people, but it’s hard to tell amid all the chic and excitement. One, Lydia Christopher, is a beauty consultant and businesswoman. Another, Judy Parker, is a publicist and businesswoman. Lydia tells me she’s been married 25 years. She looks barely 25. Maybe I should go into business myself.

The air is thick with introductions: “Hi, I’m Jerry,” says a man in a gray suit sporting a yellow tie; “Marv Fisher, Billboard,” says another. I’m beginning to feel like an old friend myself.

Nicky bounces over like he’s on roller skates to tell me that Don Rickles, Dyan Cannon and Bob Newhart have been in that evening. He shows me the reservation list . . . it reads more like a cast list. Celebrity does not seem to be in short supply.

People certainly aren’t, and they’ve come from everywhere. Seated at a table near the door are three Korean students, taking it all in with wide eyes. More hand shakes uncover the presence of Lloyd McCullough, a science teacher from Winnipeg, two Serbs from Belgrade who remind me of Steve Martin and Chevy Chase. Mehes Chaba, a Hungarian film distributor, and simply Tanya, from Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, a mechanical engineer whose enticing figure is a subset of complicated mathematical equations.

The crowd gets younger as the evening gets older. Piano bar music is heard through the din. Gershwin, Porter, and the disco version of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.” It’s midnight and things are still in full swing, people are still waiting for tables. Doesn’t anybody here work tomorrow?

Roger Bourban, the graceful, lanky maitre d’, who ran a marathon in under 2 hours, 25 minutes, has stepped outside for a breather. Blair has vanished, but not his elfin, enthusiastic presence. His name can be heard throughout the bar.

A charming woman is leaning over the bar to talk to a friend separated by the masses. “Why do you come here? Why Nicky Blair?,” I ask. She looks at me for a second. “Where else is there to go,” she says. Where else, indeed?

Nicky Blair, 8730 Sunset Blvd., (213) 659-0929 .