"Au Bar E 58th St c1994 Matchbook" (SOLD)

Sz: 2 1/4" x 2"

From a drawing by Cocteau

From 5/1/1988:

This season, the just-opened-in- January Au Bar is considered “the” hottest haunt. So hop a cab to East 58th Street. But don’t get confused. You won’t see a name, a sign or lights at Au Bar’s hideaway entrance. Just a velvet rope and a few suited gatekeepers.

There’s a strict “New York door policy” that translates to: If you want to get in, you’d better look good. Or “bad,” as the case may warrant. Door charge is $10 on weeknights, $15 on weekends.

You descend beneath a modern office building and enter a veddy British gentlemen’s club.

The decor is library through and through. Polished wooden floors, Oriental rugs, velvet and silk overstuffed couches, damask-fringed draperies, marble fireplaces with brass accoutrements. Even antique wooden shelves filled with the classics. Only an upward glance at the black-ducted ceiling will bring you back to reality.

Au Bar owner Howard Stein is no stranger to the New York club scene. Back in the ’60s, he was a rock concert promoter. He opened the Capitol Theatre, where groups such as the Grateful Dead and Mott the Hoople played. Then he got bored with rock, donned a white Travolta suit, married a Patti Labelle lookalike and opened Xenon’s, which became the New York disco of the ’70s.

When New Wave turned into commercial, Stein opened the Rock Lounge. But when punk died a pitiful death, along with Sid Vicious, so did it.

Which brings us to the present yuppie datebook time, and to Stein’s latest, Au Bar, the snobbiest, chicest club in town. Au Bar opens at 9 p.m., closes at 4 a.m., and has an elegant dinner menu and breakfast bites. Everything from scrambled eggs to caviar, pasta to desserts. Prices are $6 to $20 for entrees; drinks are $7; a well-chilled bottle of Dom Perignon runs $125.

The Au Bar crowd varies with each tick of the clock. The later the hour, the prettier and hipper they get. The young and the tasteless are replaced by Euro-trash flashy fellows with slicked hair who cavort with Pretty Young Things in black minis and horn-rimmed glasses, while the bored and bedenimed Trust Fund Babies spend their time and Daddy’s money with a well-fevered passion. “Part of the success of the club is the interesting mix of people. It’s everything from black tie to black leather,” one employee says.

Around 2, the club lights dim and the dance floor rocks. The club prides itself, with reason, on the most eclectic musical menu in town. “In an evening, you’ll hear everything from cool jazz to hip show tunes, from Southern soul to rhythmic island beat to the latest Euro-pop dance music,” says Mark Gorbulew, Au Bar music coordinator.

It’s been said that Stein was after an Algonquin lobby ambiance, a round- table feel. And he got it. Lock, stock of books and whiskey barrel imported from merry old England.

But decor aside, Au Bar is a swinging New York nightclub. There isn’t the glittering literati clientele to match the elegant, intellectualized interior. Don’t listen for any Dorothy Parker barbs or well-flung Robert Benchley sarcasm. Oh, and those antique classic books? They sit untouched on the shelves.