Photo by Michael J. GallegosTribune

Tribune

Chris Burmeister reads in his bedroom on a chair designed by Australian Marc Newson. Burmeister surrounds himself with collectible art and modern furniture in his West Side town house. "If I was married or living with someone, I'd have to make my living environment about both of us," he says.

Photo by Michael J. GallegosTribune

Tribune

Bachelor Jay Sabatini talks on the phone while waiting for friends to arrive for a homemade dinner at his East Downtown loft. Sabatini says he cooks almost every night and has friends over at least twice a week. "On weekends it's like a hotel in here; there are so many people," he says.

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At 25, Jay Sabatini is too young to have picked up Playboy magazine in 1953 and seen the dapper, pipe-smoking man, martini in hand, inviting a woman over for "a quiet evening's discussion of Picasso, Nietzsche, jazz and sex."

The man is standing in a room furnished in Danish modern, art on the walls, chic and cosmopolitan. It's a bachelor pad, and Sabatini owes him, and Hugh Hefner, a tip of the hat.

Sabatini's East Downtown loft has stained concrete floors, black leather sofa, glass coffee table and flat-screen TV. It's clean, uncluttered and stylish.

It's cool.

"I like not having to compromise," says the unattached marketing manager for Dekker/Perich/Sabatini architects. "I know what I like, and when you live with someone you have to find things that work for both of you. When you're on your own, you have the freedom to decide what you like and want and make your space reflect that."

Ouch, ladies.

The bachelor pad has only grown in distinction in the 54 years since Hefner, that standard-bearer of bachelorhood, enshrined it in the pages of Playboy as a place where urbane men could themselves fashion a space that was manly but inviting to women.

In a search for Albuquerque's hippest bachelor pads, everyone asked knew of several, describing them in reverent tones. "You should see . . ." the replies began.

And I did. The pads are in all parts of town, owned by bachelors of all ages and income levels.

There's Chris Burmeister's art-filled, Bart Prince-designed townhouse on the West Side, Casey Seis' soaring Downtown loft, Lee Holcomb's swank Northeast Heights apartment and Phil Prevender's classy house in High Desert.

There are many, many more.

A cultural icon

The bachelor pad has earned a place in our cultural heritage.

"Despite what Virginia Woolf said about women needing a room of their own, men have felt for a long time that they needed a room of their own," says Michael Kimmel, a sociology professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and author of "Manhood in America: A Cultural History."

He says the Victorian home of the early 20th century was "utterly feminized" with ornate furniture, heavy drapes, thick carpeting and elaborate fabrics. "When men went to the corporate jungle they were in a man's space; when they came home they were in a woman's space," Kimmel says. "Men were exiled from the home. There was nowhere there they could go to be real men."

Interior design models cropped up to get women out of the home and men back into it, Kimmel says. Apartments were designed without kitchens so women could gather in cooperative cooking spaces to socialize and watch each others' kids. Men got a room of their own, the den, decorated in a masculine way.

"They could have oak and leather furniture, books on the wall, dead animal skins on the floor," Kimmel says.

Cooperative kitchens flopped, but not the den, which morphed into the basement, workshop, garage, study and backyard barbecue - "all those places men colonized as their own," Kimmel says.

The den fathered the bachelor pad, which blossomed with Playboy in the 1950s.

Bill Osgerby writes in "The Bachelor Pad as Cultural Icon," from Oxford University Press' Journal of Design History, that Playboy "was a paean to a masculine lifestyle of material pleasure, page after page crammed with images of fashionable menswear and mouth-watering consumer goods."

He says the magazine's luxurious "Playboy Pads" were aimed to the outlook and tastes of the "hip man about town."

"Sleek and sophisticated, these `bachelor apartments' were icons of high-living modernity," Osgerby writes.

Little has changed.

Unencumbered by the demands of family, a bachelor can spend freely on himself, encouraged by advertisers and TV shows like "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," Kimmel says.

"The playboy in the bachelor pad nowadays is a very refined and metrosexual version of the single man," he says.

The pad has essential elements.

Decor is modern and minimalist. No clutter, no chatchkas. Furniture is leather. Floors are bare. Art is on the walls. The sound system is state-of-the-art. And it's geared to entertaining.

The `Playboy Bed'

Albuquerque interior designer Katie Santillanes is working on an island-themed bachelor pad for a contractor who loves to vacation on the beach, a "guy's guy," she says.

"The house is fun and playful," she says. "It's all about casual entertaining and making people feel welcome. The living room isn't a living room. It's an entertainment room. It's a comfortable, cigar-smoking type of room."

The colors are browns, golds and reds. The dining area has a round table that does double duty for poker. There's a wet bar with ice-maker and a wine refrigerator.

Santillanes says a guy's biggest decorating decision is: "Where does the TV go?"

"They want the latest plasma flat-screen," she says. "They're all about watching the games."

And gadgets. "Men really love gadgets," she says.

Osgerby writes that the aesthetic of the gadget-laden bachelor pad reached a zenith in the circular "Playboy Bed," a mighty eight feet in diameter and fully motorized to vibrate and rotate at the flick of a switch. It was equipped with telephone, radio, TV, stereo and a mini-bar and refrigerator.

A bit much for the modern bachelor, but Santillanes' client is going for remote control drapes, fireplace and TV.

"They love anything where you don't have to get up," she says. "You just push a button."

Decorator Sunny Gee-Byrd says bachelors give a lot of thought to their space, and personalize it.

"They make their homes about who they are and what their interests are," she says.

Burmeister's townhouse reflects his love of art. His collection of modern paintings and sculpture compliments select pieces of designer furniture.

But tucked amid the sleek modernity is, yes, a den with a huge flat-screen plasma TV.

"I have three TVs," Burmeister says with a laugh.

The 39-year-old therapist also has a Bang & Olufsen stereo system, a wine fridge, a Jacuzzi tub and every kitchen gadget imagineable.

"I love to cook and entertain," he says. "I think it's fun to create the environment you're going to live in, to shape and change how you live from day to day."

Burmeister says he had to "adapt and change" when he lived with a girlfriend. "It was difficult," he says.

Holcomb, 60, designs his space around music.

"I've invested a lot in my audio system," he says. "When I was married, I had a 22-by-24-foot great room. It had a white leather sofa, glass coffee table and big speakers standing 10 feet out into the room. I put in high-grade electrical outlets and positioned them so the audio system would be in middle of the wall and everything would fit smoothly.

"That's something you don't find a wife getting excited about."

Holcomb's bachelor pad is sleek, airy and neat-as-a-pin.

"I hate clutter," he says. "And a lot of women are nesters who never want to throw anything out. Less is more with regard to furnishings. A few well-chosen, quality pieces is all you need."

Seis' three-story penthouse loft has breathtaking views of Downtown, no better seen than from the rooftop with its outdoor kitchen and hot tub. "A hot tub is a necessity," says Seis, 45, a stucco consultant and restaurateur.

Inside he has a beermeister fridge and wine cooler, and such special kitchen equipment as a warming drawer.

"I like to cook. I like to entertain," he says. "I like designing my own place. I focused it around the kitchen and not a dining room."

Prevender, 41, a financial planner, chose High Desert for his bachelor pad because of its Sandia mountain vistas. He had wood and wrought-iron furniture custom built for the house.

"The house has a lot of curves. I don't like boring, straight walls," he says. "I wanted the furniture to work with the house."

Like the other bachelors, his home is more minimal than cozy. "At the end of the day, the house has to be decorated," he says. "And I wanted to do it in a nice way."

Kimmel says the popularity of the bachelor pad is part of a larger demographic shift.

"People are delaying marriage and family for up to 15 years after college," he says. "So where are you going to live? Being single is now a stage of life."

The Albuquerque bachelors all said they hoped not to be single forever, but were a bit spoiled by the free hand they've had in designing their environment.

"You hope if you end up in a permanent relationship it will be with someone who shares your perspectives," says Holcomb. "You can buy what you want to and not have to get some sort of a consensus on the decision. Spatially, I make wise decisions and I don't want to have to argue with someone. It's selfish, of course."

He smiles. "I'll just have to look for someone with the same taste so there won't be so much trauma."