Ibiza unplugged

[McRackin]

Ibiza unplugged

[FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]After two decades of banging Balearic beats, Ibiza is rediscovering its mellower hippy roots[/FONT]

[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Stephen Armstrong
Saturday July 1, 2006
The Guardian[/FONT]

[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Full circle ... the new - or is that old? - face of Ibiza. Photograph: Richard Saker.
[/FONT]


It's a hot June Sunday in Ibiza at the start of the clubbing season. All over the island, clubs like Space, Privilege, Amnesia and Es Paradise are opening their doors and rubbing their hands in anticipation at the thought of all the euros they'll be taking.
About half an hour's drive from the main Ibiza Town-San Antonio drag, however, a different sort of hedonism is unfolding. At the end of a dusty track, there's a beachside restaurant called PK2 where a mixed bag of casual sun worshippers and sophisticated pleasure seekers have paid €10 for a restrained all-night party. The sea laps against the shore, just audible over the eclectic range of soft baselines throbbing from the wooden balcony, and people chat in muted friendly tones. It's about as far as you can get from the serried, concrete terraces of superclubs with their ranks of hands-aloft maniacs chanting the names of ageing DJs. And it looks like it might just be the future of the island.
This summer, Ibiza is having a bit of an identity crisis. The last couple of years, the world has started to lose interest in the monotonous thump of house music's endless bass drum. Visitor numbers have fallen and islanders have been casting around for a way to save their revenue now that the 1990s regulars have grown up and moved on.
Almost accidentally, the island is gradually returning to its roots in laid-back 60s hedonism. Small open-air parties on beaches, low-key cabaret nights in hotel bars and one-off performance evenings by experimental theatre troupes are the currency of this summer. It takes a little more work to find out what's on where, but the rewards are far greater for those who've chucked in the 'avin it approach that has dominated the island for the last 20 years.
Over at the Es Vive bar in Figueretas, for instance, there's a diverse series of monthly nights hosted by Smirnoff & the Electric Cabaret featuring the likes of The Cuban Brothers and Yoda Goes To The Movies, offering films, performance and DJing to a crowd of no more than 150 (you'll have to ask at the hotel reception or the Base Bar on Ibiza port for a free ticket on a first come basis). Meanwhile, there's Mardi Gras-themed nights run by drinks brand Southern Comfort in the gardens of a villa where theatre collective Gideon Reeling lead punters off into grottoes while Rob da Bank, Idjut Boys and Coldcut play live.
These bohemian revels recall the autobiography of author Janet Frame, filmed by Jane Campion as An Angel At My Table. Frame arrived on the island, met an American painter called Bernard and "felt at peace within my own mind, as if I were on an unearthly shore". Bernard "called on other Americans, many of them exiles from the McCarthy regime. "We attended recitals of music and poetry at the French Institute. We wined and dined with the men and women living with their chosen partners in the sensuous sensual kind of luxury enjoyed by the lotus eaters."
For Danny Spiegel, who's run the Eco Café in one-time hippy haven Sant Joan for the last 30 years, it's all very welcome. He remembers the first open-air parties around bonfires organised by a French hippy-entrepreneur called Anant with a sound system and a tent from Morocco. The parties attracted Mike Oldfield, Frank Zappa, Joni Mitchell, Robert Plant, Terence Stamp and Pink Floyd who made Ibiza a haven for the hairy jet set.
It was these hippy parties that gave Ibiza its reputation. In the early 80s, an unknown Argentinian dissident called Alfredo fled from the prisons of Galtieri in search of simple pleasures. With a limited box of records he managed to persuade the owner of a failing hippy bar called Amnesia to let him DJ. Amnesia couldn't compete with the open-air luxury of Freddie Mercury's favourite club Privilege, so they'd take anyone who was cheap. Alfredo's record collection was so basic and his DJ skills so poor that he was only allowed the 4am slot, playing to a handful of bedraggled refugees who couldn't afford Privilege's prices.
Then, by a stroke of luck, the strange Bhagwan Rajneesh cult operating in Sant Joan was broken up by the US government for tax evasion. The cult used 3,4-methylenedioxy methamphetamine, or MDMA, in its brainwashing rituals and once its founder had been jailed bemused cultists wandered the island with pockets full of the stuff. It took about five minutes for clubbers and cultists to meet, and before long Alfredo was playing to packed houses of joyous e-munching dancers who loved his mix of obscure US house music, old disco, Prince tracks and even reggae 12-inches. From there, the tentacles of what came to be known as acid house spread around the world and Ibiza became the good time grail for thousands of young Europeans keen to wave bottles of water and gurn like Worzel Gummidge.
And then the world moved on. Ibiza Town's bid to make itself the yachting crowd's haul over du jour hasn't quite worked. Instead, the glamorous set left behind by the acid house tide have started entertaining themselves. For them, the north of the island is home, and it's there that this summer's fun is to be had.
Jade Jagger, Elle MacPherson and their fashion friends meet in the bar at the Hotel Atzaro. The hotel is 2006's latest agrotourism delight. If it's intimate open-air soirees you're after, this is the place to pick up all the news. A little further down the road, there's the Aura bar - which does feel a little too much like a burger and pool dive in Notting Hill, but there's plenty of Ibicencos dropping by to play pool and gossip. It's a short cut into the smaller parties or just a way to make friends easily. You could also pick up tips over dinner at La Paloma, a pretty country restaurant in the village of San Lorenzo.
If the floaty fashion crowd and flamboyant cabaret nights aren't your thing and if you still harbour a sneaking desire for four-to-the-floor beats, then head further south. The music industry seems to gravitate around the Blue Marlin, also known as the old Jockey Club on Cala Jondal. It's right on the beach with an enclosed glass-fronted dancefloor - to overcome noise restrictions - while during the day everyone drifts through a garden filled with huge beds and hammocks. It's got the feel of the PK2 parties, but at heart it's a beach bar where people go to dance all night. After all, that has been the point of Ibiza for the last 40 years.


· The White Island, by Stephen Armstrong, is published by Transworld at £7.99.

 

[McRackin]

Ibiza Gets in Touch With Its Hippie-Chic Roots

A resurgent neo-hippie milieu is flourishing on Ibiza in clubs like Las Dalias.

By JULIA CHAPLIN
Published: August 6, 2006
The New York Times

Stefano Buonamici for The New York Times​

AT 3 a.m. a battle was under way on the dance floor at Aura, a small open-air nightclub on the Spanish party isle of Ibiza. It wasn’t a rap competition or a dance-off, but rather a kind of one-upmanship, where the person who returned from the most exotic, far-flung destination wins.

“I just got back from the Congo,” said a Briton, who had quit his job at Morgan Stanley a few years ago and was now grooving to house music in flip-flops and a salt-and-pepper ponytail.

“Yeah,” countered a guy next to him in a djellaba and sunglasses. “I was in Southern Turkey for the eclipse. We had to ride camels to get there.”

Then a woman, nondescript except for the large tribal-looking medallion around her neck, opened her hand to reveal a few purple-tinted marijuana buds. “It’s from Zimbabwe,” she said, as the others conceded defeat. “Wanna smoke some?”

The scene, which took place in the relatively undeveloped northern area of Ibiza, unofficially known as “the hippie part,” felt like something from 1972 or thereabouts. And for many people at the small gathering last June, that was exactly the point. Ibiza, about 50 miles from the Spanish mainland, has long attracted wealthy eccentrics like members of the band Pink Floyd and Roman Polanski, who still owns a villa there. But the island fell out of favor during the 1980’s and 90’s as a 24-hour party scene with techno-blaring mega-clubs and high-rise hotel package tours took over, earning it the nickname “Gomorrah by the Sea.”

But now, a new breed of visitors is trekking to Ibiza not to rave, but to resurrect a bohemian heyday when foreign-accented hippies lived in old farmhouses known as fincas, lazed under the sun and danced the night away barefoot at full-moon parties.

Jade Jagger, the daughter of Mick Jagger, keeps an 18th-century finca in the quiet village of Sant Joan, and counts Kate Moss and the designer Matthew Williamson as frequent guests. Carine Roitfeld, the editor of French Vogue; Jean Paul Gaultier;Bono; and Phoebe Philo are often seen behind dark sunglasses, perusing the secondhand shops in the labyrinthine streets of Eivissa and the famed hippie market in Sant Carles.

Ibiza, it seems, is returning to its hippie-chic roots. “We were able to hide behind the negative nightclub hype for a while,” said Serena Cook, who worked as Ms. Jagger’s private chef before starting her own company, Deliciously Sorted, which helps clients “sort out” villa rentals, party invitations and other high-life essentials. “But now the word is out.”

Not that fashion insiders were trying very hard to keep the island under wraps. You can see the sun-bleached Ibiza landscape behind the wispy models in recent fashion ads for Missoni, Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Roberto Cavalli. Last fall, Ms. Moss, fresh out of a rehabilitation clinic, modeled Mr. Cavalli’s collection on a weathered tree on the island’s west coast. The British fashion photographers Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott shot many of the ad campaigns on the island, giving them an excuse to hang out in the 10-bedroom Moorish villa that they bought three years ago. “We have house parties and go boating in the moonlight,” they said in an e-mail message from Ibiza. “The energy from the island is so calming.”

But just as the island’s hippie roots are being rediscovered, the conservative local government has been pushing forward a controversial plan to develop new golf courses, condominiums and highways. Many of the roads have already been torn up, causing traffic jams and vocal protests. Last summer 17,000 people took to the streets to protest, and celebrities like Mr. Polanski lent their names to a local newspaper ad denouncing “the construction madness, which threatens to turn this beautiful island into a concrete jungle.”

To many, Ibiza is a rare gem that needs to be appreciated, not developed. The island was a sleepy peasant farming community for hundreds of years before the hippies showed up en masse in the 1960’s. Draft resisters, Vietnam veterans, rock stars and dropouts came for the low cost of living, natural beauty and tolerant local population. Even today, in keeping with the island’s countercultural heritage, there are few luxury-brand chain stores.

The hippies formed a roaming international tribe back then that spent summers in Ibiza and pushed off in the cooler months for places like Goa and Katmandu and Kabul. (Many say that Goa’s trance parties grew out of Ibiza’s full-moon celebrations.) In the 1970’s, at the height of Ibiza’s hippie-chic notoriety, the designer Yves Saint Laurent based an entire collection on the island. (Anyone who wants a glimpse of Ibiza at that time should rent Orson Welles’s “F for Fake.” Filmed partly on the island in the early 70’s, it features footage of sidewalk cafes filled with sun-kissed foreigners puffing on cigarettes and wearing chunky leather belts and ascots.)

But the decadent club culture took a different turn in the 1980’s, when D.J.’s and drugs like Ecstasy began to trickle over from Europe. “The height of the wrong crowd was in the late 90’s,” said Danny Whittle, the British-born brand director for Pacha, the nightclub chain, who has been coming to Ibiza for 20 years. Planeloads of drunk and drug-addled teenagers took over, especially in the touristy west end of Sant Antoni.

Eventually, though, the tour companies moved on to places like Greece. And within the last few years, a more affluent crowd began to trickle in. “Now it’s an older and richer crowd,” said Mr. Whittle. “But they still want to be decadent and have a good time. They rent a great villa, and at 5 a.m. they head to the V.I.P. section of a nightclub.”

Photogenic boutique hotels like Cas Gasi and Atzaró have begun popping up in restored fincas, complete with oversize fireplaces, sleek swimming pools and organic gardens, charging upward of $400 a night. Compared with the beaches of Las Salinas and Playa d’en Bossa with their spring-break scene, the middle of the island became more fashionable, in villages like Santa Gertrudis de Fruitera — known for its 17th-century church, old Spanish women wrapped in black scarves and outdoor cafes that serve fresh salads. (A cheaper alternative for style-conscious visitors is to stay in one of the tepees or guesthouses that many refugees from the fashion industry rent out on their property.)

The idea that Ibiza is a giant 18-by-12-mile nightclub is a misconception. In truth, clubs like Amnesia, Space and Privilege — the latter, with a capacity of 10,000 people, is billed as the “largest club in the world” — are clustered in the south. This is where tens of thousands of clubgoers spill out into the midday sun, shielded by bug-eyed sunglasses and cowboy hats, after a long night of partying.

Among the oldest but still popular clubs is Pacha, opened in 1973 by a Spanish hippie. The kitchen of the old finca still serves as the entrance to the V.I.P. rooms, which in August are wall-to-wall with rock stars like Mick Jagger and Bono, European aristocrats and Arab princes. When the action peaks around 5 a.m., it feels like a supersized Studio 54.

But the northern part of the island, where the hippies and bohemian fashion types hide out, has rolling farmlands covered with whitewashed houses, citrus trees and a few grazing sheep. At Benirras, a beach lined with tall pines, there are still drum circles at sunset.

Narrow dirt roads lead to rocky coves and secluded beaches. My favorite was Aguas Blancas, a beach of soft sand tucked into shade-throwing cliffs. It felt like the jet set’s lost tribe, with young East Berliners sporting perfectly styled mullet-hawks, lounging on towels alongside nude and tanned sunbathers. At a nearby shack, beachgoers sat under thatched umbrellas while the Uruguayan owner, Oscar, served up panini, carrot cake and fresh lime caipirinhas. It was subversively off-the-radar, a noncommercial refuge from the built-up Mediterranean beaches.

Likewise, sunset at the Sunset Ashram, a bar overlooking the sea on the west side of the island, suggested a 1960’s Peter Sellers hippie-exploitation movie. The owner, a former male model who used to dwell in a cave, was wearing a floor-length caftan and, after a few glasses of sangria, ordered the Indian cook to come out and perform a didgeridoo solo. Around midnight, the crowd moved to Las Dalias, the mother lode of the neo-hippie scene. The sprawling “chakra garden” looked like an upscale version of Goa with red streamers and trees wrapped in pink fabric. A few hundred people had gathered on colorful floor cushions, sipping chai tea and an anise liqueur, as flute players and bongo drummers performed a hypnotic tune.

It was so over the top and hokey that it was somehow cool. After all, where else can stylists, fashion designers and celebrities get in touch with their inner hippie, with a sort of unironic naïveté? Vintage Ibiza, it turns out, is still alive and well.

 

[McRackin]

After the Party: A Tranquil Ibiza

By ANTHONY GRANT
October 30, 2006
nysun

The Spanish island of Ibiza is — like a few other islands I can think of — as much a state of mind as an actual destination and its reputation precedes it. It is utterly Mediterranean, of mythical status almost by default. A lot of Ibiza's allure is in the name, which sounds like baby prattle spiked with a soupçon of something savage. And how apt that is, because with hardly any effort on your part, Ibiza will tease your senses and transform ordinary sensibilities into something altogether more hedonistic.

In the 1960s, this southernmost of the three main Balearic Islands was a global hippie magnet. The seventies brought the jet-set and exuberant nightlife (think Studio 54 by the sea), and by the mid-nineties — as DJs such as Paul Oakenfold and Fatboy Slim became international celebrities and touched down on the island — there was no disputing Ibiza's status as the world capital of clubbing. A perennial hot spot that is open all year long, Pacha, is filled on any given night with stunning, wealthy, and often "loaded" Europeans who can't stop dancing because the DJs spin set after perfect, thumping set.

But to talk only of nightclubs in Ibiza would not do it justice because there is much more to discover. Beyond the sometimes frightfully overdeveloped southern coast are rocky landscapes baked by the sun and marked by gentle pine-clad foothills. Ibizan soil is very often red which, in concert with gnarled olive trees and a cobalt blue sky, makes for a visual feast. If you want to get to a feel for this terrain — and it's worth getting to know — you will need to rent a car (reserve well ahead of time if you only drive automatic). The winding road north from Ibiza Town (the largest and most atmospheric town on the island) eventually deposits near Atzaro, a bastion of flash in the hinterland. The luxury hotel features an indoor–outdoor restaurant dotted with Buddha statues and such, a posh spa set in the middle of an orange grove, and villastyle accommodations. They grow their own fruits and vegetables here; if you want, you can pick a pomegranate from a tree and eat it.

In the island's western backcountry, dirt roads and a security gate serve to deter paparazzi from an Ibizan farmhouse-style hideaway property, the finca-like Hotel Cas Gasi, which is favored by actors such as Richard Gere and others among the rich and famous. Above all, the place is quiet, a quality you'd be hard pressed to ascribe to Eivissa (as native Catalan speakers refer to the island), or Ibiza Town. There, Dalt Vila, a medieval citadel with ancient Roman origins, forms the uppermost part of town. It was built long ago with walled fortifications to keep pirates and other marauders at bay. The fortress walls seem to slink halfway up to the moon.

Just beyond Dalt Vila is the neighborhood of Sa Penya. Its serpentine streets and whitewashed buildings are reminiscent of Mykonos. The main drag is Calle de la Virgen, but if you go looking for a virgin on this little thoroughfare you could be in for a very long night. On the other hand, you'll have no problem at all finding bars, discos, and pubs catering to whatever kind of crowd strikes your fancy. Like Dome next door to it, Soap boasts a nice terrace right below the ramparts. Up from that is — what else — Soap Up, the club's gay counterpart. Wherever you alight, above the music you'll hear not just Spanish spoken, but English, French, German, Italian, and Russian. It doesn't get much more international than this. And if world peace ever breaks out, chances are greater it will happen in a place like this than a UN corridor.

If you want to stay in a place of understated chic that's near Ibiza Town and less than 100 euros a night, the Casa Alexio in the Talamanca neighborhood is a good bet. It attracts a largely male clientele and has also been known to harbor refugees from upscale Ibiza properties fleeing the serenity-shattering shrieks of overly pampered young guests. The breakfast buffet is served from a civilized 10 a.m.–1 p.m., and leaves nothing to be desired. The owner, Xosé, takes your picture before you leave. The place has a special vibe, and I'm not telling you how to find it. I've already said too much.

Ibiza's other big town, San Antonio, is on the northwest side of the island, and is essentially a summer colony for inebriated British youths, many of whom could make you fear for the future of Britain. The reason to go is to savor a sunset drink on the terrace of Café del Mar, a spot that has become such an Ibiza institution it churns out its own CDs.

Ibiza's beaches range from entirely "touristy"— the concrete-fringed Playa d'en Bossa, for one — to drop-dead gorgeous. The best example of the latter is Es Cavallet, accessible either by car or by public bus from Ibiza Town. It's a magnificent stretch of white sand that seems to have no end. Here, you can choose your scene: The first part of the beach attracts young families. The center veers into a sort of hamlet for European honeymooners, before it reaches its apotheosis in the gay section beyond. Each zone has its own beachside café and is clothing optional (remember it's Ibiza with a "Z"). Beyond the blue-green waters, huddled like a flapjack over the sea, is the smaller, flatter island of Formentera, which has some fantastic beaches of its own. It's one of the least developed islands in the Mediterranean, but probably not for long. Designer Philippe Starck has a place there, and nothing in these parts stays off the tourist radar for very long.

If opportunities for hedonism are grand in Ibiza, the island itself is balm enough for stressed-out souls. I can still remember hiking on my 30th birthday to a vantage point called es Torrent, which affords a spellbinding view of an islet called Es Vedra — local dialect for the Dragon. It is a thick mass of wind-sculpted limestone that shoots up more than a thousand feet from the sea like a primitive skyscraper, or a mute sea monster, and is said to be enchanted. And don't you disbelieve it. As sunset approached on that terrible day when youth disappeared forever, streaks of brilliant pink light danced across the dark blue sea and, almost as if propelled by the thyme-scented breeze, rippled right up to the base of the dragon's rocky claw. No nightclub could be as spectacular.

 

[icebaer69]

...Then, by a stroke of luck, the strange Bhagwan Rajneesh cult operating in Sant Joan was broken up by the US government for tax evasion.
The cult used 3,4-methylenedioxy methamphetamine, or MDMA, in its brainwashing rituals and once its founder had been jailed bemused cultists wandered the island with pockets full of the stuff.
It took about five minutes for clubbers and cultists to meet, and before long Alfredo was playing to packed houses of joyous e-munching dancers who loved his mix of obscure US house music, old disco, Prince tracks and even reggae 12-inches.
From there, the tentacles of what came to be known as acid house spread around the world and Ibiza became the good time grail for thousands of young Europeans keen to wave bottles of water and gurn like Worzel Gummidge.
...

great story

but - is it true
are there pictures from bhagwan @ ibiza

 

[icebaer69]

...clubs like Amnesia, Space and Privilege — the latter, with a capacity of 10,000 people, is billed as the “largest club in the world” — are clustered in the south.
This is where tens of thousands of clubgoers spill out into the midday sun, shielded by bug-eyed sunglasses and cowboy hats, after a long night of partying.
...

"...midday sun..." -
so the author didn´t know the new laws

maximum sun the (night)clubber gets now is (early) morning sun