Ahh There You Are...
Part One
Well all is back to normal again. I'm almost looking forward to good night out again. A knees up if you will. I might be at one this weekend, or it may wait a while. We shall see.
So I Went to Ibiza
It was all a bit weird as I was there without Slinx. I did however pull my socks up and get down as it would have been very remiss not to. My company for the week was luckily The Duke who can always be relied upon for a rolled up sleeves approach to any project.
I'm not going to give a complete review for two reasons. 1) Other people's holiday stories are a little like other peoples holiday photo albums. In short, like rotting fish, they are usually best avoided. Unless you are a good travel writer of course? Which I have not yet attempted to be. 2) My memory isn't that reliable. Yours woudn't be either after what I've been through so don't complain.
I would also add as an addendum that I didn't see enough of the island to really give a proper story. The bits I did see though, and the people that peopled them were, on the whole, bloody good.
Bars of note:
Base Bar. At Ibiza town on the harbour
Rock bar. Next door
Bar Mambo. Sunset strip San Antonio
Savannah, 2 doors from Mambo
Bar Tahiti, On the beach next door to the now dead Bora Bora in PDB. Music OK.. At least it has some. Their Tahiti chicken, bacon and all the rest sandwich is worth a mention. Number 16 on the menu if you are served by the big bald French bloke who, perhaps can't read words.
The bar by my pool Errm by the pool obviously.
Clubs / nights ticked off:
El Divino. Hed Kandi Closing Party. Saturday 18th September.
My god! Don't bouncers get born with clickers in their hands for a reason? Well obviously they do in Ibiza to, but they don't use them for number controlling in clubs. Nah, in Ibiza they just use them to tot up the takings as its quicker than counting the cash.
Hed Kandi nights are now obviously seen as the place to be if you are on your hols with 10 lads from Scunthorpe. I assume that they must have flogged all the stock at night from the cake factories and car part manufacturers they work for back in Blighty to afford a few drinks and the entrance fees. They must have been seduced by the cd covers and believed that the night would be populated by curvy, perfect, pert, high heeled girlies who would just smile at them at the mere raise of a puggy eyebrow. At least I think that must have been the case as they couldn't even afford shirts. Now I'm all for an access for everybody policy in theory, but I inhabit a real life world and I'm happy in it. Being as its my real life world I hate theory and can I please be in charge of the door policy so that the people who really, actually want to dance and get into it can actually enjoy themselves I almost expected a conga to break out. Fights nearly did. Hail me.. The night clubbers Stalin.
The Duke and I shoe-horned ourselves outside onto the terrace and mostly shuffled for a long time. Women, for there were some there, occasionally struggled through the crowds to get air. They didn't stand still for long as the stark choice of suffocation inside or having Gary from Humberside stuffed in his shorts with a sweaty back, mouth dribbling on them whilst gurning pitifully at them made them make a choice. Some, of them honestly hurled themselves on to the harbour rocks over the VIP area in a spatter of blood and gold high heels rather than face the truth. The truth being. Die from lack of air, or die from Gary's lack of charisma and very old fashioned mating tactics, circa 10,000 BC. Class.
We had a result at about 3AM! Someone had left 2 small unopened bottles of water on the table we were leaned against. I'm not normally like this but being as the bar queue was longer than a printout of Iceland's central heating bill we eyed them for an eternity. That's the frozen food store if you wondered, not the country.
In the end we drank them with no consequences. Result £15 whole quid saved.
I have to say it did improve as the numbers thinned. The San An boys faded away and only those with real stamina and good pharmaceutical tolerance remained. The joint rocked from 4.30 ish till 8 AM when I left. Don't quite know what happened to The Duke, he was last seen talking to a small and pretty, female blond thing...
Defining memories...
1. The Duke jumping up and down on the dance floor pointing at me whilst grinning like a loon.
2. The bloke in the shirt behind me from the North who suddenly shouted "Yes!. Lets Haaave IT! so loudly the whole floor (and DJ Box) turned and cheered him.
3. A peck on the cheek from a pvc clad female nurse on stilts.
I won't mention that I also kept getting chatted up by chaps batting for the other side, it must have been The Duke's little joke of stuffing in that hanky hanging from my arse jeans pocket.
I managed a small amount of fruit for breakfast and slept till 12.
Space
The defining club. They had said that "its a unique experience" They had said, "There is no where quite like Space" In fact a day later I was describing what it was like on the outside terrace at Space when a passing Ibiza veteran, all bracelets and bone walked over and interjected with the statement
"There are not enough suitably good superlatives in the world to describe the terrace at Space on a Sunday afternoon". He was right. His name was Henry. I hold with that statement.
Back to Sunday. We did Space from early afternoon and subject only to an early evening break I left at nearly 3 AM. The terrace which is the main floor and sort of outside shuts at 12 PM. The terrace is what its all about. Expect beautiful people, ugly people, munted people, lady boys, bikini girls, posers, freakers and a friendly, packed wasted crowd. Also expect extreme chemical excess and pumping uplifting noise. Party until you simply don't care.
Inside after the terrace shuts is hard and repetitive. People in there were simply past caring (or in some cases even seeing) but I still see the flashing lights when I shut my eyes.
One word of advice at this juncture. Male or female, animal or vegetable. Don't text and then phone your significant other. In my case the beautiful Slinx to tell them that you miss them and that you really wish they were there to share it with you.
Even though they will wish the same and in reality be pleased that you care, you never sound quite as compos mentis as you would like (because you arn't) and, truth be told. They want to be there to. Leave that one in the theory box.
People don't appreciate it. Give your mobile to your mate and the battery to another mate. Or even a stranger. That way everything will be cushtie.
3.30 AM to 9AM Sleep
Breakfast
Beach
Pool
Kip
10PM Monday: Rock Bar Ibiza Town.
We met up with some fellow clubbers from London including the infamous Harry who we had bumped into at Space on Sunday. Its like that. Its a funny thing.
Manumission Closing Party Monday Night
Manumission is held at Priviledge which is officially the biggest club in the world with a capacity of 10,000 people. Its run by a bloke who's real name is actually Mike Manunission. No really. And his wife. What a job eh?
Everyone had said that you might not go back but its a must see for a one off visit. I hadn't been to any of these places before so we went.
This place is enormous. I can't begin to describe it. Just the car park approaches remind you of an Olympic sports venue. Only grubbier with more wasted people staggering around. If you had arranged to meet someone there you would have needed GPS systems and a team of scout dogs. And that's before you get in....
Intermission
Its a long blog this and I will update it with the final and concluding episode soon. In the meantime I shall carry on bouncing in my chair to this album.
The Album
Its Space.. And the first CD IS the terrace, buy it, bounce and weep with joy!
More to come...
And some more non-clubbing stuff too.. A taster for those of you with long memories. I saw the bag man today. He's selling Poncho's.. don't get me started...
TG - To be continued.
PS: Dont worry. Slinx and I are very fine.
Part Two
Ibiza Continued (Written 4th October 2004)
Well you didn't have to wait long. Then again I couldn't wait long either as my memory (as mentioned in part one) is fading as quickly as my hardly noticed tan.
Without further ado I shall knock the last bit out. Oh please... This is literature, keep that thought to yourself.
Manummision Part 2
As I said, its big. The main room / floor is like a football pitch but without the grass, and indeed the terraces. Instead of a centre area it has a swimming pool. In the middle of the swimming pool reached by a slender walkway across the water is the DJ booth which is like the bottom half of a large Dalek. The walkway was guarded by a monolithic bouncer. I'll leave you to picture that.
I'm assuming the bouncer was there to stop anyone from getting within 60 feet of the DJ's as at a number of moments during the night, charging over it and hurling them into the icy depths seemed like a laudable idea.
To give you an idea of the ego of Mr Manumission you only had to follow the signs for the toilets. There at the top of the stairs going down was a sign which said "Welcome to Manumissions World Famous Toilets" I did use the facilities and I have to say that other than in scale they were unremarkable. The only slightly unusual sight I did see on one visit was an elderly Spanish lady replete in traditional black mourning lace who was armed with a toilet duck and a bucket. She was giving the urinals a good old clean seemingly oblivious to the clubbers milling around her.
This was at about 4.30 (or maybe later?) in the morning, and a more questioning man might have spent a little time pondering whether the move from agriculture and peace and quiet to an economy entirely driven by drugs and clubs can be good for a people. She did however take pride in her work and whilst stoically ignoring all around her wielded her damp cloth and bleach like only a proper mum can.
The Shows
Now, the thing about this place is that its all set up so you can all (in theory) see the enormous stage at the far end from the entrance. The stage is indeed huge and its backdrop is in keeping. At the rear of the stage there is a wall. It acts as the backdrop. Its about 6 or 7 storeys high (perhaps its only 5, I can't quite remember) Anyway it was filled at various times by scantily clad femmes wearing not very much, who, with the help of a hunchback and Mike M and his wife broke into theatre like shows during breaks in the music.
It doesn't really work. The only good spots to view it from are high up VIP areas which you can only access if you're really in the know, or on the main floors. Sadly the main floors were populated by gangs of orcs with numerous Gary's as their leaders. The floors were also covered with broken glass and were in main traffic areas making things a bit tricky. Also once you have half seen one, you have seen em all. Sure the girls dance reasonably well but the shows would make Busby Berklay spin in his grave. Its a nice thought and for many people there it was obvious that this was what they had come to see. Perhaps they don't have TV?
Perhaps its just me. I applaud anyone who can fill this place but would I go again or recommend it. No I woudn't.
And that's before you pay 10 Euros for a glass of coke from a siphon.
It was a curates egg. The music tried to please everyone and chopped and changed every 10 minutes and the crowd tried desperately hard to please themselves.
We weathered it till nearly 7AM and headed for the laid on bus to Space for the afterparty.
As we were about to board the bus a Manumission rep worker person encapsulated the issue. He didnt mean to but he foolishly said, "Why are you all going, there,s another hour or so yet?" A dozen eyes swivelled, some quite erratically, toward him and in a few words people just said "errm, it was a bit shit"
Space The Final Frontier
The bus of oblivion lurched off with me, The Duke and a chap who we had met called Ritch onwards back to Playa Del Bossa.
Space wasn't open for another 40 mins or so. The bus poured out its contents outside a bar. Drinks were in order.
Its been a long time since I have been in the company of such a rag tag band of determined. The after party at Space was to go on till 4 PM and then there was a beach BBQ party till god knows when which would follow it.
It was going to be a hard slog and was patently already to much for some of the jockeys. I had a lovely conversation with a chap who coudnt actually speak at all. His brain was willing but his mouth and vocal chords simply belonged to someone else. He nodded and used his eyes a lot.
The people who served us at the bar were charming. To be hit by 100 zombies at nearly 8 in the morning didn't seem to bother them at all. Back to that economy changing debate I think.
We went to Space. The Duke went at 8.40 for his plane which was a bit sad. I stayed.
By about lunchtime the music was getting harder and the terrace was packed. All I was really doing was nodding my head. Even though I was with a good group of nice people (Big hello to the Cork crowd!) I realised that continuation whilst medically possible wasn't medically advisable. I skipped the rest of the carry on and left them all to it.
I was all clubbed out.
Tune in soon for part 3 which I promise will be an amusing even perhaps well written summary of the other bits that was this trip.