Pacha

So, the first real night down, and on the cards was a club night in Pacha

By the way, I'm gonna use this blog mostly for personal reflections and club/bar reviews... Hopefully you're interested in what we're actually doing as a team too, so you can have a look here, which we'll try and update as often as poss...

So, Pacha. Arguably the best house club in the world. Certainly the best in Ibiza. (This is all hearsay as yet, but from the looks of their summer line up & residencies, i don't see any reason to contest it...)

Last night was "Flower Power." None of the permanant community had been to this one before, and someone had told them that it was old skool house - so, the kind of stuff that got me into clubbing in the first place. Turns out it was a 60's and 70's night. With hindsight, a name like 'flower power' should have been a dead giveaway. ;-)

So, a brief review...

Atmosphere:

Phenomenal. This was my first superclub, so the sheer size of it was always going to blow my mind, but the true greatness of the place was in the attention to detail. Many of the clubbers had made real effort, getting dressed up in their best hippy/disco clothes, and the decor was almost all specific to the night. The tech staff must literally spend every minute between closing (sometime between 6 and 8am) and opening again (about midnight) changing the decor. And with the place open every day, thats no small task.

Bars:

Since we're an alcohol-free team, I won't be reveiwing what the booze was like. however, because i'm an ex-bartender (and more importantly, because i'm a total loser) I went to have a look at how good the bar staff were... Bear in mind that, because of the club's reputation, I was expecting the best. They weren't. I've seen far slicker bar teams in london, and even cambridge for that matter. Still, the club's layout as regards to bars was interesting: instead of several massive ones, they had about a dozen tiny ones (1-2 tenders each) which would seem to be a far better idea... less walking about to get a drink, less queues - hopefully. Anyway, with 330ml water bottles at 8 euros, and red bull at 13 euros, i decided to smuggle in my own water and spend the equivalent money on better things another time... like say, a house.

Dancers:

Pacha employs a number of ridiculously beautiful people to dance on its podiums - once you're past the self-consciousness of how beautiful they are, and how good they are at dancing (and therefore making light of my weaknesses in both departments ;-)) it's a pretty impressive show: Costumes, hair and make-up (covering all different fashions from these decades) were the sort of quality you'd expect on a film set, but not only did they dance, but every half hour or so they'd put on a show of some kind, involving the clubbers... my favourites included

- During "Yellow Submarine" 4 dancers carrying a massive (8' by 4') painted wooden cut-out of the Beatles' yellow submarine through the crowd encouraging the clubbers to be the sea!
- Handing out sparklers to EVERYONE (c. 4000 people, by the way) to wave during "Give peace a chance"
- Girls handing out heart-shaped lollies from the podium whilst loads of tissue paper hearts fell from the ceiling.

Loads of fun - customer involvement is definately the way to go in a club!

DJ's:

As I said, the main room was 60's & 70's, so mixing that sort of stuff is not an easy thing. The mixing wasn't anything to write home about, but the playlist was pretty sweet... everything a good 60's/70's night should have :-)

Then we saw that Rob Da Bank was playing the Global sideroom at 3, so we went in there for a bit of that action... I dont know much about him, but I'd heard good things. He played a fantastic set - mostly hard house, but a little bit of allsorts thrown in to mix it up a bit! my favourite little bit went like this:

*hard house* --> Blur/Song 2 --> New Order/How does it feel? --> Wink/Higher State of consciousness --> *Hard House*

seamless. impressive.

So, despite being in the mood for an awesome house night, i still had a pretty sweet time. Although i would say just one thing:

Going to flower power at Pacha is like asking Raymond Blanc or Gordon Ramsay to cook you a hamburger. It'll be the best damn hamburger you've ever had, but it'll still be just a burger.

I think to truly 'experience' Pacha, I need to go on one of the nights it's famous for. Pete Tong is resident on friday nights, and i'm free this friday...


Where's that ticket seller?

C