The Roar of the Cheetah, The Look of the Crowd

He: "I think it looks ghastly."

The reply: "Of course it's ghastly. It's meant to be. That's what's so great about it."

They were talking about Cheetah, Manhattan's newest and noisiest fun house, which roared into life last week with the growl and din of a gigantic concrete mixer. It had a familiar look, a return to the big, brash scene of the 1930s marathon dance halls, and on opening night some 2,000 invited guests pushed through the door of the Broadway and 53rd Street site known to their parents as the Riviera Terrace and, before that, the Arcadia Ballroom.

Nathan's 50-c- "We recognize people's urge to be exhibitionist," said Olivier Coquelin, founder of one of Manhattan's first discotheques, who holds 51% of Cheetah's $100,000 tether along with 49% owned by Borden Stevenson, middle son of Adlai. Coquelin knew his clientele. A rush-hour subway crowd pushed, shoved, stalked and stared at some 200 models dressed in the latest mod fashions. Men in flow ered shirts and wide ties squired girls wearing everything from Pucci prints and Paco Rabanne disks to weirdies from London's Carnaby Street and vinyl suits from Manhattan's Third Avenue boutiques. After watching the kinky Whip Dancers brought up from Andy Warhol's new discotheque, self-conscious squares rushed to get into the mod in the "Space Age Boutique." There, "his" and "her" cylindrical dressing booths hung from the ceiling; changing in them was like dressing inside a barrel, with head and legs exposed. To cheer the customers on, each booth was decorated inside with a leering photograph of the opposite sex.

Most swingers remained on the 8,000-sq.-ft. dance floor, gyrating to three alternating bands whose blast and big beat were amplified through a loudspeaker system suddenly gone berserk. For those driven out by the din, the club has other diversions: a reading room and TV room (one color set), a movie theater (avantgarde shorts). Street-vendor carts push Nathan's Famous hot dogs (50-c-), and the bar serves liberal portions of Pepsi-Cola, but nothing stronger than beer and wine is served.

"Out of My Mind." In Coquelin's opinion, Cheetah is needed if New York is to regain its rightful place in the nightclub vanguard: "London has taken the lead from us. There's always excitement in the air. In New York there's only air pollution." But to 33-year-old Bachelor Stevenson, who has already dabbled in Wall Street (Lazard Freres), educational films, Caribbean real estate, and an unsuccessful antique-car rental service, Cheetah is "an investment that I know will be a success." To reporters he elaborated: "I'm not a nightclub man, and the music drives me out of my mind, but I have inordinately good taste." Did he feel he was cashing in on his father's name? "Only the narrow-minded would say that. I think Dad would have enjoyed it. He might have been a little perplexed. But then, so am I."

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