Colin Butts (Plastik) says...

McRackin

McRackin

Super Moderator
Been thinking about what the future holds for Ibiza. I've written a few aricles on it before and whilst a lot of what I've predicted has happened, I'm sure there's a few things off the mark.

With the US on board and dance music (sorry, I mean EDM) globalising, Ibiza's position as birthplace of that scene should ensure its mythical status continues for a while with the ensuing pilgrimages. Well, at least until a scriptwriter (possibly me) does a Hollywood movie that completely ignores historical facts and rewrites history so that it wasn't a few South London DJs who started the rave scene by going to Amnesia in ‘88 but some DJs from New York who went to Mexico. Or something like that. As long as the Americans are the heroes and there's a British baddie, who gives a ****? Sure Keanu Reeve will end up playing whoever the equivalent of Oakenfold and maybe Danny de Vito as Nicky Holloway. I think I've used the Gary Coleman as Erick Morillo one before. Anyway, I digress…

On the plus side, the globalisation will ensure that the bigger clubs and more upmarket venues can carry on charging stupid money for a few more years. Plenty of wealthy overseas visitors and dumbass bankers left to still enjoy the pissing contest for best VIP table or biggest bill. On the downside (for Ibiza), there will be more European locations that have venues just as glamorous but without “Ibiotic”, self-serving, greedy politicians who seem intent on bringing in all sorts of ill-thought out, foot-shooting laws that sabotage the very scene that has made most of them (or their families) fantastically wealthy. Croatia and Bulgaria are already on it.

For 30 years. Northern Europeans have been coming to this beautiful island and spending their hard-earned money in garages turned bars and fincas turned night clubs. All the locals have had to do is open their doors. Sweeping generalisation though it is, one can't help but feel a simmering resentment that God forbid, they actually have to put some thought into how to attract people now there's a bit of competition. The ones who have responded to it are the ones who have done well. The others..?

Take San Antonio as an example. Ibiza Uncovered slaughtered its reputation. No smoke without fire, granted, yet it was more what it did for how San Antonio was generally perceived. It's always been about more than the West End. Several times I've come close to chinning a new arrival, ensconced with his trustafarian friends in San Juan who has looked down his nose at the very mention of San Antonio. Why do you think the island became so popular in the first place pal? Because John Cleese and Graham Chapman came here to write some Monty Python sketches in the sixties? Don't think so.

Ibiza is going Vegas. There'll be a handful of superclubs controlled by a handful of people. Bossa will become the new West End (but worse) and those visiting the superclubs in Bossa will be dropped off and picked up in their concierge, blacked out Range Rovers as frantically and fearfully as a news crew visiting the flavellas.

And San Antonio? There'll probably be another beach club or two spring up for the aspirationally wealthy and eventually some decent quality hotels will redevelop to counter the all-inclusives (as decent accommodation is the key to its resurgence). Sons of the West End bar owners won't want to inherit a bar that hasn't been decorated for decades and with the declining demand, they'll change use and it will become more of a pedestrianised, daytime shopping area, with less but better quality bars for the younger visitors at night. Pernicious laws by local politicians should speed up that process

After the 1,2,3 festival, the land next to Mambo is all set to eventually be allowed to be developed so when the time is right there's a good chance that whole area will have more of a Marina feel to it and it will be that which eventually defines and changes San Antonio.

The fundamental problem is still that the season is too short and that's in part responsible for why prices are so high. Astronomic DJ fees don't help (though to be fair, market force dictated). However, I read last year that one of the reasons Pacha and Danny Whittle parted company was because Pacha was sick of paying such large fees to DJs. Very admirable. Can anyone tell me if Pacha have dropped their bar prices this year? No, didn't think they had.

If the season becomes longer then things may change but ironically, it's the same people who own the superclubs who will control any yet to be developed golf courses or marinas, two of the main things that should make the season longer. If they sort out winter flights of course.

At the moment, the best thing about winter flights for me would be that it allows me to get OFF the island.

Think I may have got out the wrong side of bed this morning…
 
Nice post. Sad to see it in black and white, but that's the way it is.

Some people just dont want to see it that way though. Time to wake up and smell the coffee.
 
Good post . I think the next 5 to 10 years will be an interesting time. If Ibiza goes up its own arse and does end up like Vegas I think the potential is for somewhere else to take that crown.
 
Ikoda said:
Any ideas where?
Click to expand...

There is always somewhere that people say will be the new Ibiza and it has never happened. Been to Croatia and had a great time, but not liberal enough if you know what I mean.

I am just surprised somewhere else in Spain or Portugal hasn't tried the same 'Ibiza in the late eighties/early nineties' model and tried to do something less commercial and more underground. I can see a need for it over the next few years if Ibiza is continually pushed as a ‘Marbella' type holiday destination as I know a number of people are being slowly turned off.

Always wondered why somewhere like Tenerife never took off as a clubbing destination with 12 months of sunshine and relatively close proximity to the UK. It would be great to have an 'Ibiza' to go to with sunshine at any time of the year.
 
I think partly that is down to history, Ibiza has alwasy had its hedonistic roots, even back to roman days! Look at places like Ayia napa, that just rose up as the new clubbing destination in the late 90s, it was said this is the place to be if yoru into garage etc, but it wasnt, it was just fake and marketed that way, look at it now, people dont talk about it as if its the new Ibiza anymore

Plus some of the clubs on Ibiza date back a few years, es parardise, privilege and pacha for example opened in the 70s, so its had many years to build the reputation (whether good of bad) over the years
 
The reason Ibiza keeps going is because it is constantly reinventing itself every year , some years more than others & the most important / influential institutions on the island also have enough money to override any downturn. ( black economics etc)
 
Ibiza Uncovered was 1997 yet it still makes me laugh at the way visitors - even new ones - think it's really cool to curl their lip with a superior sneer and an immediately adopted, "I wouldn't be seen dead there" attitude. Vilifying San Antonio for one street featured in a documentary nearly 20 years ago is as accurate as saying everyone in San Joan is a trustafarian. Obviously, less so.

Do you think Ibiza would be the island it is now were it not for San Antonio? Do you think it would have the economy it has? It's the kids who were here in the 90s and noughties holidaying or working in "scumsville" who are occupying many of the VIP tables now and you only need to have the most basic understanding of the history of rave culture to know that the pioneers like Nicky Holloway were San Antonio based and actually started their nights off in places like (the just closed) Nightlife before heading for their awakening at Amnesia.

Cut off the San An funnel then the VIPs will have no fodder to show off in front of any more and as soon as the yanks and the others coming via the island's globalization realise that Ibiza is no cooler than St Tropez or Marbella, we'll see how many businesses survive long term, shall we?

Rather than sneering at San Antonio or rejecting it, why not try to celebrate the efforts the likes of Javier Anadon Mambo has made over the years to provide true quality, or Andy McKay's Ibiza Rocks, or the likes of Ocean Beach Club upping the ante? And bars like our own Plastik constantly re-investing and encouraging quality bars from cities like Barcelona to come here, e.g. Flaherty's Irish Bar Ibiza. Or why not stay in one of the ever emerging, better quality hotels and hostels - there's even a gay hotel opened not far from the West End The Purple Hostel by Ibiza Feeling - THAT'S how much San Antonio has come on!

The island of greed needs to be just a tad less self-serving and short-sighted in certain quarters. Spread the love, spread the spoils, spread the longevity.
 
I may take the piss out of PDB, but most if the time I am being ironic to exactly the people who are mentioned above. Those that paint San Antonio to be the West End and that only. Most of them have never even stayed in San Antonio.

To me San Antonio is a fantastic place, full of real people and not the plastic faux ravers that appear to have populated most of the island over the last few years. It is what attracts me to Ibiza year after year.
 
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I went in 1987 as a 12 yr old and 2008. In 1987, the place was crawling with football hoolies in union jack boxer shorts, mooning at strangers in the street. One guy was beaten up for having a French accent. Nightclubs playing the birdie song. Diving board in pool vandalised. Aghast spanish tourists wondering - not without reason - if the English were mentally ill. That sort of place.. In 2008 it had improved a lot. The rough element were still there to an extent but it seemed more relaxed and diverse. Eden even had some respectacle DJs. I still generally swerve the place because it's not the ibiza i want to see, but my snootiness isn't anything like it was. *Colin is probably biased by the way - he has a vested interest making money writing novels about the low end market
 
Blagh. The drug lords will ensure that not too much changes... Rich people may buy drugs the same as regular folks but there are a whole hell of a lot more regular druggies out there with money to burn/snort/whatever.
 
Posted on Facebook by the man with many talents. A nice read.


"It is with heavy but healthy heart, problematic pancreas, lesioned liver and sombrero'd (ish) Shar Pei, that today I indefinitely head back to the UK for what at the very least, will be my first full London summer since 1999.

From initially visiting Ibiza in 1983, to working here in those magical years of 87 & 88, to visiting friends all through the beautifully naive nineties, to vowing to never come back in 1999, to moving over to Ibiza the very next summer with my 56 channel desk recording studio and seeing the remix we did of Sweet Dreams explode, to getting Is Harry on the Boat? made into a film that same year, to finding that studio a more permanent home in a record shop called Plastic Fantastic, to thinking it would be good to have a cool little bar there in 2002 and that eventually evolving into Plastik, to buying a villa here in 2007 so my winters were spent here too, to eventually getting A Bus Could Run You Over made last year... So much seems to have happened yet it all seems like yesterday.

When I started my relationship with Ibiza she was a lot more innocent, like a naturally beautiful young girl not fully aware of the effect she has on people.

I leave her having grown into a far more sophisticated, hard-nosed businesswoman.

I leave her constantly trying to deny all the things that drew me and so many others to her in the 1st place - now she wants to be taken seriously. It's all about the businesswoman and she is trying to deny her past, deny her initial appeal as though that innocence ashames her.

She is super successful - rich beyond her wildest dreams - but I leave her even more nepotistic, greedy, spoilt, knowing what she doesn't want but half clueless as to what she does want, particularly for San Antonio, a massive part of her initial appeal that she now looks down at like a gangrenous toe that she'd rather amputate than cure.

God/Allah/My Little Pony willing I am intending to come back but inept and short-sighted politicians may well make me think twice.

Maybe I'd be more tempted to return if they brought back stocks to every village so that any "agent" asking stupid fees and prices for seasonal or long term property rental could be locked in them and have rotten fruit thrown at them. Or rocks.

Also stick in the planners who defy logic to order the most disruptive road works at the worst times. Feel free to add any other stock victims below.

I could rant for hours but would rather end on a positive note by thanking all my Ibiza friends who have rallied around and supported me, be they still living on this frustratingly magnetic island or elsewhere in the world but who know that our deep connection is rooted in this island.

Adios seems inappropriate so hasta luego Ibiza.

Have a good summer everyone xxx"
 
15 years ago I had the idea of putting my recording studio in a record shop and having a little bar in there for the more discerning San An visitor to frequent. I was too busy with writing and music projects at the time to run it (plus tbh I didn't have the attitude, inclination or skill set to do so!), which meant I needed to bring someone in.

I'd just got to know a young PR who seemed to have a bit more about him, so asked him to be a partner and run the bar. That PR was Andy Matthews who turned out to be a natural and a testimony to his commitment is that in those 15 years I can probably count the nights off he's had on one hand.

As many of you know, I've had to abandon Ibiza so it seemed right to hand the bar over entirely to Andy so he can try and secure a future for his young family (if the powers that be in San Antonio don't continue in their seeming quest to eradicate the already dwindling bar culture). Last Friday I was in Ibiza* and that has now all been signed and finalised.

I want to wish Andy every success and to thank all the amazing kids who have worked for us over the years - I know it gave many of you a grounding to go on to better things. I'd also like to thank the countless old friends who have been in to see us and the new friends we've made as a result of the bar.

Whatever the future holds for me, Plastik will always have a special place in my heart and I would hope that if it prospers, the odd glass might occasionally be raised so a part of me lives on with it.

¡Salud!



* like ed sheeran, on friday he was at w.a.r! to see his pal example (who appears on his movie white island)
 
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