Money For Nothing

Best laid plans and all of that. I didn’t have any plan or desire to come to Ibiza, Ibitha, Ibisa, or however its spelled. My timing was off to see my friends on the neighboring island of Mallorca so I had to adjust. Mallorca is expensive

Ibiza is off season cheap. So here I sit in an off-strip Ibiza hotel filled with off season German tourists.

Truth be told, it doesn’t suck. OK the off-season German and English tourists suck a little bit but for the most part I can deal.

The infamous club life hasn’t come close to kicking off yet so it has been just long walks on the beach and sunsets at the famous electronic music bar Café Del Mar. Pretty romantic stuff if that’s your thing.

So, Ibiza. To me it brings to mind the electronic music that is playing in the background at hipster bars and restaurants. Kind of Muzak for hipsters who hate Muzak. Personally, I have a love/hate thing going on with it. Very little of it has any soul or staying power, something to grab and hang onto through ages. Definitely not Motown or Yacht Rock. Its saving grace is that it isn’t Smooth Jazz either.

That being said, it does draw the party. It is early evening here in mid-May and there are people out in the bars right now warming up for the evening. Lining up the Red Bull, vodka and whatever they bought from the African sunglass salesman on the beach this afternoon. It is pretty mellow compared to two weeks from now when all hell breaks loose, there won’t be enough Red Bull and Ecstasy in Europe to supply the 24 hour party that will kickoff and roll through September.

Last night, I went over to the Café Del Mar. Arguably the epicenter for the start of this trance music, or at least the first ones to get it on CD. The Café is on the west side of the island and has a front row seat to every Mediterranean Sunset. The tourist books say that this music started here as a celebration of the sunset.  I don’t generally need a sound track for Sunsets but the good thing about this music is that it blends into the background.

Once the sun goes down though, the DJ turns up the thump, the Red Bull kicks in and pe

ople start dancing around. DJ’s are treated like Rock Stars. In Peak season, people pay $50 and up to jump up and down with a throng of other hot, sweaty and stoned people just to listen to the results of what is essentially a guy putting a needle on a record.  Beyond looking busy, what DJ’s are doing with all of the button pushing and dial turning is about, I can’t say. I don’t hear any difference. For I know, it is just the same record being played back and forth all night.

But enough grousing about these kids today and the crappy music they are saddled with. My nightlife days are behind me and try to live by the philosophy that nothing good happens after 10pm, just stupid ideas, embarrassing consequences and YouTube infamy. This rule has reduced the number of pictures and videos of me with a glassy eyed stare, dancing to shit music with my hands higher than my shoulders to ZERO.

Ibiza is a nightlife town and my nightlife pretty much begins and ends with sunset. Since I can’t just sit around and bask in the sunset all day. Because 1, that is kind of boring and 2, it only happens for a few minutes a day. I think people spend their days recovering on the beach from the previous night’s party or warming up for the next one. That’s seems reasonable but since I wasn’t in recovery or prep mode, I was a bit bored. Old town Ibiza is small. It is interesting but it doesn’t take long before you have seen it all before. The beach is a nice long walk especially when you are serpentining back and forth to dodge the sunglass sellers/slash drug dealers. I took some advice and caught a ferry over to the neighboring Island of Formentera and rented a scooter to tour around on it.

It quieter over there than Ibiza. The scooters are handed off already started so that you know you are getting a working model. That left me with a gap in knowledge on how to start the thing. I was off the beaten path before I stopped the bike to check out the views. 10 minutes later I finally figured out that I needed to turn the ignition key while pulling the brake lever in to get the bike going again. I also learned that even though scooters get pretty good gas mileage, they have tiny gas tanks. The gas gauge also sits at 1/2 for a very long time before it plummets to E. Formentera Island is long and thin and there a 2 gas stations near the scooter rental office. Exactly on the wrong end of the island from where you going to really need at least one of them. The island’s saving grace is that the far end is the high side. The fuel gauge hit E half way up the hill and I was able to sputter back to the last chance Texaco I had passed a couple of miles back through judicious use of the throttle and a lot of gravity. I was happy to have made it without being that tourist pushing the scooter along the side of the road.

That was the last day before I headed on to Mallorca. In retrospect, I am really glad I went to Ibiza. Maybe my low expectations made the reality an easy place to like. I don’t think I’ll ever go there in high party season though. I can go to the neighborhood Home Depot and hit my head with a hammer to get the same affect.