Firetop

The nightlife in Ibiza takes a bit of getting used to, clubbing doesn’t start properly until around 2am and it finishes well after 6am. Due to the shift in the hours we’re keeping I’ve felt a bit jet-lagged all week, and for the most part seem to require twelve hours sleep each day. We shouldn’t really have bothered to get breakfast included in the accommodation package as we’ve only been up early enough for that once - and even on that occasion we went back to sleep again afterwards. On Tuesday evening we went to the Gatecrasher night at Eden nightclub in San Antonio; a very different clubbing experience to El Divino in Ibiza Town…

Earlier on the evening (after watching the Liverpool match in Ray & May’s English Pub) we walked along the coastal path to the main San Antonio bar strip that you might see featured on TV shows like ‘Club Reps’ or ‘Ibiza Uncovered’. Known locally as ‘the west end’ it’s not really my cup of tea now that I’m getting old basically a street full of young blokes around eighteen years of age getting drunk in the street.

We popped into the ‘Eden Bar’ for a quick drink before heading over to Eden nightclub but it was a real dive, not very classy at all, and full of more ‘England lads’. The drinks were quite generously poured by the barman but unfortunately the ice cubes which he used smelled bad, so we didn’t finish our beverages (they smelled like dirty dish water).

We had high hopes for Eden as both The Thrillseekers and Dave Pearce were playing, Dave can be quite commercial but we had a good time when we saw him at Brighton´s Creation nightclub back in 2004. Outside Eden a bar rep advised us not to go in just yet as it was a bit empty inside and Dave wasn’t on until 3am. However, we ignored her ’sales advice’ and thank god we did - the Thrillseekers were great, they played some very good classic house tunes from the past decade.

Dave Pearce however was disappointing. Hard ‘bangin’ house isn’t really our thing but we normally do our best to enjoy it, his set wasn’t great though. The strange thing was it didn’t seem to suit anybody in the club, so many people just standing around on the dancefloor looking confused. Gatecrasher at the Honeyclub in May with Matt Darey was so much better. The worst thing Mr Pearce did was crank up the music so loud that it distorted the speakers, it was so loud that when we left we actually couldn’t hear each other speak. The sign of a bad DJ is to just crank up the next tune louder to obscure bad mixes… perhaps he was doing that? A real shame as the Thrillseekers did just fine at a decent level, we even commented that the sound system was good when we first arrived at Eden - typical that Dave should muller it.

DJ’s aside, unfortunately the environment at Eden didn’t really suit ’vintage clubbing connoisseurs’; most of the clientele looked like they’d never been out after midnight without their parents before and I’ve never seen so many glow sticks. ‘Eyeball Paul’ I kept saying to Suzie_Q as this really was the stuff of the Kevin and Perry Go Large film. The male to female ratio was about 90/10 so any poor girl on the dancefloor was immediately surrounded by a small circle of acne-ridden boys. We know now not to go into San Antonio town again, if we ever come back we’ll do a short weekend in Ibiza Town instead - but at least now we know we’re officially too old for San Antonio!

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