Art Stock’s Playpen North was a popular nightclub on Scottsville Road that had two entertainment rooms, one for live music and the other a dance club.
The Playpen, as it was commonly called, was where fans of rock music mingled with fans of disco as amiably as they could. Many who went to the Playpen roamed from one side to the other, the rockers typically checking out the dancers when the band went on break.
The place was owned by Art Stock, a nightclub mogul and thoroughbred horse owner from New Jersey and Florida who at one point co-owned and coached one of Rochester’s pro basketball teams. An obituary of Stock called him the “one-time king of New Jersey nightclubs” whose empire included as many as 14 places, including an Art Stock’s Playpen South in the Fort Lauderdale area of Florida.
Stock opened the local Playpen in early 1980. It replaced another well-loved club, the Varsity Inn, which had been there since the mid-1960s. The old VI, as it was known, was revamped with a new layout for the dual approach to entertainment offerings.
“Stock had a man in from Florida for three months doing the wood-working in the disco room, hand-cutting cedar,” Bill Beeney wrote in a 1980 Democrat and Chronicle column.
The club got busy in a hurry.
Chris Kayes of Rochester deejayed there and posted on Facebook, “Always something going on at the Playpen!” The first year included tryouts for dancers for the Rochester Lancers soccer club (with a new name for the squad, the Lancer Goaldiggers) and a mechanical bull like the one in the movie Urban Cowboy, which was released that year.
Those who dared to ride the contraption got free belt buckles.
That was around the time that Stock was involved with the basketball team, the Rochester Zeniths. He bought 50 percent of the team from owner Dick Hill (of Hill TV fame) and appointed himself coach and general manager for the 1979-80 season.
Those moves led to the firing of Mauro Panaggio, who had been named coach of the year in the Continental Basketball Association the previous season after winning the league championship.
The tumultuous tenure didn’t last long. Stock and Hill sold the team later in 1980 to a group led by Panaggio, who became coach again. The Playpen North continued to do booming business.
The club won Upstate magazine’s poll as best local disco for 1980. Stock had a British double-decker bus that he used to promote the Playpen. Big-name bands like Duke Jupiter and, later, Bachman-Turner Overdrive played there.
Things sometimes got a bit too risqué. The Playpen got in trouble in 1981 for hosting wet T-shirt contests, leading the Chili Town Board to ban such events in town (along with topless and bottomless dancing). The Playpen hosted annual “Miss Legs” pageants and Mini Skirt contests and held a “Disco Oldies Bash” that brought in disc jockeys from several by-then-closed local discos like Club 2 on 2, Maxwell’s Silver Hammer and Club 747 (which later reopened).
A Memorial Day bash in 1982 included a meet-and-greet session with members of the new Rochester Flash soccer team and a performance by Herb Gross & the Invictas. The Playpen held “Rochester’s greatest Halloween party” in October and a summer Halloween party in August.
Lots of people shared fond memories of the Playpen on a Facebook post.
“What was there not to love about Art Stock’s Playpen North?” wrote Sherrie Lynch. “It was like getting two bars for the price of one. You could get your live-band experience on one side and indulge your disco queen on the other side.”
Kitty Snicks posted about the “awesome” pizza burgers and chicken wings, the disco dancing and wild ladies’ night events. Jon Raustler posted about the “advantages” of two clubs in one.
“I remember having a girl on each side of the bar, one on the live rock-and-roll band side and one over on the disco side,” he wrote. “By the end of the night, I knew which one I was going to (be with). I was in my early 20s and crazy. Closed that bar down more times than I can remember.”
By the mid-1980s, the Playpen North was bringing in more hard-rock bands for the live-music side, including a 1986 appearance by Megadeath. A 1987 Upstate story about local band Immaculate Mary said that only two local clubs — the Playpen and the Penny Arcade in Charlotte — were consistently booking local and national heavy-metal acts.
Art Stock’s Playpen North finally closed in 1992. The building was transformed again and soon became Diamonds Bar & Dance Club. Stock died in 2009.
A lot of fun times were had at the Playpen North, sometimes of the sort that folks remember as best-left-unsaid. As one woman posted on Facebook, “Because my name is here, I can’t share any memories.”
Whatever Happened to …? is a feature about Rochester’s haunts of yesteryear and is based on our archives.
Morrell is a Rochester-based freelance writer.
Editor’s note: This story was originally published in July 2018.