Ravers Rant
by Tiddlerz

As I write, it is the final days of September and the summer is coming to an end. "It was a shit summer",  I hear them cry, but honestly I could not say what the weather was like, as I was sleeping all day and partying all night. Although I did catch a few wonderful mornings in the sun during that most joyful aspect of raving, falling out of a club (Watergate, 10am, Thursday morning perhaps?) and stumbling home to your bed in the early morning sunshine, when the temperature is just right and not so hot that you might faint and drop dead of exhaustion and dehydration on Warschauer Str.

On one of the final Saturdays in September I awoke early, and I realized that there were two things that I had to do. First was to get my punk-ass out of bed and down to ://about blank for the Homopatik party, and second was to to put some pen to paper and reflect on what has been for me and many others I’m sure, the highlight of summer 2011, the garden at ://about blank.

While Berghain did, in my noble opinion, a great job on their garden renovation, switching it up and creating a cool compact outdoor club, it seems as if the sprawling, ramshackle and more natural environment of the ://about blank garden won over more people's hearts when it came to the outdoor disco dancin’. One of my personal highlights was hearing "hours of lovely, deep shit" (as I described it at the time) from Hunee, then Session Victim, then Quarion at the De:Bug party in July, but the line-ups at the Cotton Wood Garden, Get Deep, and Leaves parties were sometimes so good that they were hottest ticket in town.

However, special mention must go to Homopatik, which I have described on numerous occasions to friends as "the best party in Berlin". What really makes Berlin a special place to be is the fact that gays, straights, and everyone in-between can all hang out and party together without any tension or bad vibes, and this party is a shining example. I simply could not get enough of the amazing cast of characters dancing to resident DJs Mr Ties' day-long sets of the music that truly moves me, the classic sound of US house and garage.

However, we cannot speak about the garden, the parties, and the promoters without speaking about the club itself. ://about blank is not your average club. Here, the ethos is different, and that is immediately apparent. This club is about throwing a serious party without attracting the endless hype and internet forum waffle that afflicts other venues. From the attitude at the door, the almost cheap drink prices, the no-quibble pfand, the 20+ hour parties, and the great booking policy (which is quite an achievement when you consider so many of the hottest artists are tied to the bigger, more established clubs). How I would love to plonk that club right down in the centre of Ibiza (without changing the exterior of course) to say to the whole scene there, "This is how it should be done"!

Anyway, winter is fast approaching, and we are all going to be freezing our bollucks off, so remember kids, as my mother always told us in our poverty-stricken household, "No one ever died from frostbite on the dance floor". Amen/holla to that!

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Taken from SLIM Mag October Issue