Bachelor pad

From ArticleWorld

A bachelor pad is the home, usually an apartment, of a single male. Since the 1990s the term has been used to describe homes that are not cleaned very often, contain more alcohol and remnants of food than food, where dirty and clean laundry mix, and where geek toys and such things as Gameboys and dartboards play a prominent role. From the mid 1950s to the 1960s, though, a bachelor pad was a far more appealing place, celebrated film and fiction.

The original bachelor pad was stereotypically the kind of place James Bond would live in, with classic 1950s design and fittings, a lot of high tech gadgets, because high fidelity recording and record playing technology had just been commercially launched, a sophisticated bar, mirrors, shag rugs, leather upholstery, bold but nor bright colors, masculine but clean bathroom and kitchen, sun deck etc. Above all, bachelor pads oozed modernity to the point of being referred to as 'space age bachelor pads'.

Today bachelor pads have a higher status because the average British or North American college student or man low down on the career ladder cuts costs by sharing, and anyone who therefore has a bachelor pad is thought lucky. Usage is slowly changing to include any place, even shared, inhabited by young single men with little regard for hygiene or order. Yet the original bachelor pad was meant to present a distinctly luxurious sense of masculinity, while also being welcoming – and seductive even – to a woman.

An entire genre of music arose from the bachelor pad phenomenon, specifically the alleged seductive power of bachelor pads and their men. Key composers include Juan García Esquivel, Serge Gainsbourg, Ennio Morricone, Korla Pandit, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Astrud Gilbert, Sergio Mendes and João Gilbert's early bossa nova, and rather more ironic contemporary musicians like Stereolab and Air.