If I’d seen this photo on its own, never in a million years would I have guessed it’d been in the basement of the Hong Kong Peninsula.
When I took family and other out-of-towners to the Pen for tea, I certainly didn’t see groovy kids dancing to Jimi Hendrix like they’re doing in this photo. The Pen of the 1990s was serious and sophisticated.
But back in the early 1970s, when my grandparents traveled to Hong Kong–and stayed at the Pen–the basement housed this pulsating discotheque for swingers of all ages.
Does swinger mean something different in British English than it does in American English? Or did it have another meaning 40 years ago?
I found this ad in a 1972 Hong Kong guidebook. I love the dresses–both the mini and long one–and that the guys dressed so formally.
It was the Peninsula, after all.
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