In Acapulco, a Return to Glamour

IT was a balmy evening in Acapulco, and up and down the town’s main drag, the college party crowd was again on its nightly pub crawl, belting out one too many Jimmy Buffett tunes and guzzling a few too many Coronas. Nearby, the famous La Quebrada cliff divers had finished the evening’s last show, sending moms and dads to Planet Hollywood to keep their antsy kids distracted, as two hulking cruise ships sat towering on the waterfront.

But on the other side of Acapulco Bay, perched high above the tourism mayhem, a stark wood-and-glass pavilion offered an escape hatch from the city’s clichés. Inside, a sparkling white restaurant opened up like a giant flashbulb onto the glittering coastline beyond, with house music throbbing to the clinking of wineglasses and the clattering of stilettos on polished concrete floors. A crowd of young Mexicans in open-collar Gucci shirts and fluttering Pucci dresses circulated about, perhaps hoping to catch a glimpse of the actress Tara Reid, the singer Luis Miguel and the other boldfaced names who had been spotted there recently.

“It’s fantastic, no?” said Angelo Pavia, the owner of the restaurant Becco al Mare, marveling at his own creation as he swooped his hand across the soaring space for emphasis. “I would never think to make this restaurant like this. But my son and daughter? Yes.”

Jarring words, given that Acapulco has long seemed like a place only your parents could love. For many, this resort city of more than 700,000 people on Mexico’s southern Pacific coast is synonymous not with upscale chic, but with tourist hell: cruise ships unloading high-decibel families, spring breakers sloshing through drinks-to-go. Even the word itself, “Acapulco,” can sound a bit over-giddy, a name forever resonating in the shrieks of hyperventilating housewives winning vacation packages on “The Price Is Right.”

But Acapulco is having its second act, reappearing from the fanny pack-strewn beaches to recapture its faded Hollywood glory. Between the new luxury condominiums rising in Diamond Point and the vintage modernist villas in Las Brisas, a necklace of sleek new restaurants, fashionable nightclubs and designer hotels is drawing the glitterati back to the city’s azure shores. Even legendary resorts are getting a makeover, like old movie stars staging a comeback.

One thing that remains unchanged, however, is Acapulco’s natural beauty. Hugging the calm, crystal-blue waters of Acapulco Bay, the city cascades from the Sierra Madre, forming a yawning, near-perfect crescent ringed by rocky cliffs, palm-feathered slopes and miles of powdery golden sand. And it was this striking topography, along with the dependably flawless weather, that once made Acapulco an unrivaled playground for the 20th-century beau monde.

At its peak, Acapulco was a haunt of Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack, where Elizabeth Taylor married Mike Todd (the third of her eight weddings), and John and Jacqueline Kennedy headed for their honeymoon (as did a young Bill and Hillary Clinton). Howard Hughes spent his last days at the Acapulco Princess hotel. Lana Turner had a place overlooking the water, as did John Wayne. And well before the crew of “Girls Gone Wild” came trolling the beaches for spring-break shenanigans, “Fun in Acapulco” was not just a 1963 film starring a dashing Elvis Presley but an international shorthand for glamour.

It was dazzling ascent that started about the time Errol Flynn first sailed in on one of his infamous party boats. That was in the late 1930s and — though the city was an important port under Spanish colonial rule — Acapulco was then a sleepy fishing village. But before long, the Hollywood elite was flocking to its sun-dappled shoreline, with countless playboys, gold-diggers and titled Europeans in tow. They would cavort at hotels like Los Flamingos, owned by a posse that included John Wayne and Johnny Weissmuller (who played Tarzan in movies), and at glitzy fleshpots like the former La Perla and Tequila à Go-Go, where a Swiss night-life impresario named Teddy Stauffer reigned as “Mr. Acapulco.”

“The world’s first discos were in Acapulco,” said Esteban Matiz, a fashion designer and lifelong Acapulqueño, who remembers many of them well. Indeed, in 1967, a Life magazine cover article proclaimed Acapulco the “Top Jet Resort” and “one of the most sophisticated and pace-setting” spots in the world.

As the years progressed, so did the hedonism. By the late 1970s, Acapulco had become Studio 54-by-the-beach. “Grace Jones had a show one New Year’s, and it was the most outrageous show I had ever seen,” said Roberta Brittingham, who comes from a prominent Monterrey, Mexico, family that had a house in Acapulco. “She came out dressed as a tiger and literally pulled men on stage” — before stripping them of their pants. If Ms. Jones was insufficiently impressed by what she saw, Ms. Brittingham continued, “she would shove [the men] back down.”

But like a beachside Sodom and Gomorrah, the party was destined to end. A tidal wave of mass tourism, combined with poor planning and unchecked development, saw Acapulco’s majestic beaches marred by a jungle of concrete hotels. Crime and drugs followed. Meanwhile, Mexico’s original resort town was eclipsed by Puerto Vallarta, Cancún, Los Cabos and other places as the new jet-set destinations. The Pearl of the Pacific had become a polluted eyesore.

Well, half an eyesore anyway. Most of the giant hotels, tourist traps and chain restaurants are clustered along Avenida Costera Miguel Alemán, the city’s main thoroughfare, as it loops around Acapulco Bay. Even today, amid the Day-Glo bikinis and 2-for-1 drinks being hawked, one only has to cross the street to get from Wal-Mart to Hooters. But head south from the Zócalo, or old city, past the wall of high-rise hotels, and the new Acapulco emerges like a Miracle Mile of new celebrity-driven restaurants and bottle-service nightclubs.

You’ll find them winding along the Carretera Escénica coastal highway, as it stretches from the posh Las Brisas neighborhood, which crawls up the lush mountainside at the bay’s southern tip, toward the more secluded Puerto Marqués Bay and the new Miami-style condominium towers of Diamond Point. Fueled by the Autopista del Sol superhighway, which has cut the drive from Mexico City to about three and a half hours, a steady stream of affluent weekenders is now flocking to the latest pleasure palaces of this rediscovered beach resort.
Like a castle on a hill, each boasts of the best view of the city — and all are often right.

There are restaurants like Becco and Kookaburra, where a resident kookaburra bird looks down its nose at the tourist pandemonium below. Other newcomers include Zuntra, with its sleek rooftop bar soaring high above the bay’s arcing splendor, and Zibu, which serves a fusion of Mexican and Thai fare beneath a palapa, or thatched roof pavilion, so hyperbolically dramatic that even Philippe Starck would blush.

But the extreme makeover award must go to Madeiras, an Acapulco institution where everyone from Sinatra to Shirley Bassey once dined. Looking a bit dated after 30 years, it reopened last December after a chic contemporary overhaul with dramatic mood lighting, chiseled stone walls and modern Mexican-Asian dishes like achiote-hoisin short ribs. The restaurant is now owned by the chef Richard Sandoval, who inherited Madeiras from his father, and his business partner, the opera legend Plácido Domingo.

“I like Acapulco because it has been eternally the same,” said Mr. Domingo, who has long kept a home in the city.