When I heard about the Space Ibiza party the penny didn’t drop that it was modelled after the club “Space” in Ibiza. Naturally, as soon as I realised that it was Space in Ibiza, which has been voted one of the world’s best clubs in the world, and that Roger Sanchez was the headliner (supported by two actual Space Ibiza residents, Danny Marquez and Camillo Franco) I knew they weren’t messing around!
Upon Tweeting this I received a mixed review, half the audience said “who?!” and the other half said “What! Roger Sanchez is coming to Cape Town?! YAY!” So I knew the audience would be of an “older” set. I was really keen to attend the event but I know the house audience is SUPER pretentious and I really hate people who don’t focus on the party but rather on being cool. None the less, I was determined to be open and attend the event without my back up.
Space Ibiza was held at the Shimmy Beach Club at the harbour in Cape Town. We had to park a mile away but now that I’ve been there, I’m glad there was any parking! These events draw a huge number of people (and vehicles) which were managed reasonably well, excluding cab drivers who tend to cause congestion, on the night. There were also car guards on site which helped me leave my vehicle in confidence.
It took us no time to enter the venue but I was surprised to learn that there were no cash bars but that only vouchers would be taken! At first I was pretty annoyed by this because if you have left over coupons then you can’t trade them in again for cash. So basically it’s a scaly way to get money out of consumers. However, the bars were a little over priced so we ran through our vouchers in no time! At least they made the price of things logical – R30 for a bottled drink, R30 for a tequila. So we didn’t have to wait around for change which meant the bar service was very quick.
I have to say that the Shimmy Beach Club bar staff worked flat out all night. I don’t know how they made any money because you can’t tip with coupons really. And they deserved tips! I felt really sorry for them because, as I suspected, there were a bunch of complete douche bags at the event with zero etiquette for their fellow clubbers. And sadly the chicks that were the worst this time.
When my friend texted to ask what the people were like, my response was, “A whole bunch of people from the past reliving the house dream, mixed with ok ppl, the cool Cape Flats massive and a bunch of pretentious fucks.” Basically, I’ve learnt that these big “parties” are actually viewed as a show. People go there to throw money around and have an experience. It’s not really about the music but rather looking cool and acting self important. Having said that, there were some people there who were genuinely interested in the music and were jamming all night now matter how high their heels, or their boyfriends, were.
Now for the interesting bit – the production at Space Ibiza was awesome! So many screens, platforms for professional dancers, fire, smoke, lazers, 2 external dance floors and 1 indoor dancefloor . They even put a wooden dance floor down over the sand WHICH I’d have appreciated knowing if Shimmy had replied to my Tweet enquiring about the dance floor! So I was one of the loser girls not in high heels. Boooo hehe The sound was really awesome too and I understand the crew behind Ramfest, Cosmopolitan Leingerie Fashion Show ++ Ultra Events were behind the production. Well done to them.
Dean Fuel played an awesome opening set to set up for Camillo Franco. Franco dropped Goldfish’s Soundtracks and Come Backs which I thought was a fun gimmick until I realised that Goldfish had a residency at Pacha (if I recall correctly) so Franco might have been legitimately playing the track and not trying to gimmicky at all! (Which I hope is the truth 🙂 ) Of course the dancefloor went off as hundreds of people sang along.
He in turn set it up for Roger Sanchez who actually didn’t blow me away on the night. I thought his set would be more house-trance than tech-house. I felt he dropped the ball a little bit and half the party died by that time because people were too pissed and started fading.
Over all Shimmy Beach Club was an awesome venue and their security and bar staff were top notch. My only infrastructure complaint is that they didn’t have any sign boards up which meant I had to mission around quite a lot at the start of the evening to figure out what was where. And there were no line up times. The Samsung Galaxy Experience also promoted responsibly partying by handing out breathaliser tests. I tried one out but couldn’t get it to work HAHA Was I drunk?! 😉 Either way, I thought that was a great idea.
Over all, apart from some of the people (which I admit is pointless writing about because jerks don’t care how others feel otherwise they wouldn’t behave the way they do) it was a really well thought out, planning and executed event. Check the video for yourself, I’m sure you’ll agree that it looked and sounded AMAZING!
