Already an institution in Barcelona, ElRow is an experience to chuck on your bucket list. The Barcelona club Row 14 is both an indoor and outdoor affair, its wild and wonderful parties continuing long past the wee hours without a single body pausing for breath. In what seems like a perfectly natural progression, ElRow has vacuum-packed the confetti and moved to Ibiza – exploding itself over the newly re-designed Vista Club in Privilege.
It's a party in the strictest sense of the word – every aspect designed to maximize collective Fun. Short of buying everyone drinks (just putting the idea out there), the organizers of ElRow have gone all out in providing the tools for a really good time, with dance-inducing beats, stilt walkers, inflatable pool toys and lots of colourful things falling from the ceiling all the time and landing in your drink (surprise!). It's your seventh birthday all over again but this time your parents stayed at home.
The mostly Spanish crowd was an incredibly joyous and outrageous group of people, inclusive in every way. Forgot to wear your clown suit today? No problem – here's a box of novelty hats. Confetti in your drink? Don't worry – have some of mine. Don't know what to say to that cute girl over there? Here's a bunch of coloured stickers, go put one on her face.
Musically, I was engaged, without being enraptured. There were a lot of tracks I didn't recognize, from DJs I hadn't known until tonight – but the ElRow regulars (I managed to catch Oscar Aguilera, De La Swing and Paco Osuna) were obviously doing something very right because it was impossible not to keep shimmying to the bouncing tech house; each and every body in there was on the hop.
ElRow has catapulted a quintessentially Spanish party from its home in Barcelona across the waves to Ibiza - and it couldn't possibly suit the island more.
