Ooft. He certainly didn’t hold back on Russ there!!
Good luck to man power, seems a thoroughly decent human being
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100% agree. Seems very very genuine
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I think it may relate to an incident involving Alfredo, but I’m only reading between the lines of other things he has said and don’t know for certain. I like TSD, he is thoughtful and from everything I’ve ever heard a decent and kind bloke. I admire his willingness to call out wankers and chancers, which has not always happened enough in this thing of ours. Some of it maybe driven by personal beef as Joe says. But he’s certainty walked the walk and served his dues so he can speak with experience and some authority about bad practice and bad people.
The comments section is quite illuminating too.
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His comments about Balearic DJ dads! I feel personally attacked! 
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Yes, made me chuckle.
Wow. Not sure what to say about that as I really don’t know the details.
Thought Russ/Dribbler was supposed to be one of the good guys? Or maybe not.
Can someone copy and paste it. I refuse to use Facebook even though I use instagram 
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“Under New Management”
Ibiza was always busy, as a city and as an entire island it creaks at the seams every year. This manifests most of all on the roads and under them. Every summer we have torrential, if not brief storms that flood the port area with actual human effluence. Literally and metaphorically. The drains and streets are medieval in design and the Ibicencos themselves genetically small folk used to narrow streets and pavements approximately half the width anyone else might be used to. Nothing here was built for millions of huge Northern Europeans. Nothing. And every summer there are more and more and more convoys of hire cars. You can’t miss a convoy, always one person per car, all driving erratically trying to follow each other to the next party. The concept of sharing seemingly being beyond folk these days. There is no part of island infrastructure that doesn’t suffer from oversubscription. The only thing we appear to be short on is consideration for this fact.
The two monster events that held the local records for attendance were always Manumission at Privilege and ‘Circo Loco’ at Dc10. Ironically both on a Monday although for many years Dc10 was daytimes and Manumission the night. Sunday and Monday are always the big events days here, tourists generally arriving on Saturdays. Privilege is literally the world’s biggest club according to the Guinness Book of Records. Only Manumission ever truly filled it regularly. And fill it they did. The 10,000 capacity was easily reached every week but due to the cavernous size of its aircraft hanger-like space it never felt as palpably scary as Dc10. Dc10 would proudly publish their yearly battles with the local council as if to cement their street credibility but it was simply frightening how many people they would cram in. Believe it or not drugs has a lot to do with the flow of crowds. There was a famous study of rats that had a tracker attached and given various types of drugs and at the end of the experiment a sort of map of squiggles emerged for each type of drug related to movement around the cage. They were unsurprising results really - but the experiment never accounted for the sudden popularity of ketamine. Nothing makes a chaotic system of people in motion stop dead in its tracks like a powerful sedative meant for horses. What used to be a flow of sorts in discos ground to a halt in Dc10 to a point where no one was even really dancing. Just literally crammed like sardines shoulder to shoulder, staring at the booth. To such an uncomfortable point where you’d think twice about going to the toilet, it being an epic olympian even that could take well over 30 mins. Brits would often wonder perhaps if it was an Italian thing? Dc10 being run by Italians, who seem to thrive in close groups and crowds. The one redeeming factor in the early years of overcrowding is the buildings were so primitive that a fire was unlikely to take hold in places that were basically some low walls and not much in the way of a roof. However later these buildings would all be required to change that for acoustic reasons, and suddenly it became much more frightening.
The nature of overcrowding isn’t just about fire risks. It’s about any kind of incident. Any large group in a confined space is a powder keg for all types of mishaps. Drug overdoses are common, not in the sense merely of requiring hospitalisation but in the fairly mundane sense of people having overdone it a bit and needing some space and air. In places like Ministry of Sound there is a ‘Sin Bin’ where security take folks who are looking wobbly to cool down and chill out until they find their feet again. You don’t even need to be on drugs to get overwhelmed in the ever-increasing heat and humidity of Ibiza. With global warming we’ve been seeing regular temperatures north of 35 degrees and sometimes as much as 40. Where water is not just absurdly expensive but difficult to reach, the risks of overcrowding are greatly increasing. So far there’s been no major fires, only floods, but small stampedes do happen when there is a scuffle, it’s literally ‘when’ not ‘if’ a major stampede takes place. On a personal note a friend of mine who, granted, was very elderly died in Dc10 some years ago and I personally never went again after that, my personal belief being that overcrowding possibly led to his death and hindered any timely assistance.
His name was Siegfried but everyone called him Ziggy, but he spelt it ZGY and called himself ‘Ohm’. Many of these events I speak of happened before the internet really took off.
https://www.reddit.com/…/1dydli6/dc10_is_a_death_trap/
Unsurprisingly the general issues of overcrowding ebb and flow every 4 years depending on whether the Spanish ‘PP’ Conservative party are in power or not. In Ibiza this manifests as a ‘bonfire of red tape’ the minute they get in which effects the island almost instantly in terms of chasing more flights, more cruise ships, less regulation, more environmental impact, more cars - generally a green light is given on lots more of everything. Yeah, you guessed it - The Right Wing again. There is no escaping politics no matter how much you stick your fingers in your ears like a kid going LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU.
So while the triangle of Dc10, Privilege and Amnesia were leading the charge of overcrowding between the late 90s and perhaps until 2018, it wasn’t really until COVID that it all took such a dark turn.
There was a general ‘reshuffle’ of Ibiza clubs in the couple of years running up to the outbreak of COVID and this saw already crazy spots like Dc10 expanding and building and becoming more ‘legitimate’, installing roofs and soundproofing and venues closing and reopening and generally changing hands. When COVID hit not only did this close down the entire global industry, it did it at a time for Ibiza when the island club owners really needed to recoup on their recent expansions, purchases and renovations.
I personally first got COVID at DC10 on New Years Day 2019 into 2020. I was sharing cigarettes with Chinese folks (Ibiza sees visitors from every corner of the globe at all times) and packed like a sardine amongst Italians. Ibiza, its clubs and particularly its DJs were superspreader events for years. There was no test back then and few had heard of it but I was the sickest I’d ever been in my life for the entire months of Jan and Feb 2020 and since had it 5 times in total, the second time stopping my heart and putting me in a coma. I know what it feels like. And I had it very early. Looking back on this article below I wrote for Mixmag is painful as to how wrong some of my info was, for example it was written before we had a full lockdown (indoors at all times) and at the time people were not told to mask so they were were wearing sometimes hilarious versions they’d cobbled-together themselves, and no one knew how long or how bad it was going to get -
https://mixmag.net/…/secret-dj-coronavirus-covid-19-ibiza
Interestingly what happened when COVID hit us was that Spain, being run by adults, declared all the clubs, bars and restaurants had to close, naturally, and were to be supported by state assistance, but as usual it seemed the Brits were the sole nationality in Ibiza ignoring the crisis. Not just British immigrant businesses but entirely as a nationality, in the early days of Spanish lockdown the Guarda Civil would have to round-up Brits by the hundreds, who when told to stay indoors simply started having parties and barbecues on beaches. No other nationality. Just the British. I can only assume as so few of them speak Spanish and tend only to read British tabloids and watch British TV, they were merely following what they saw in England. It certainly was confusing seeing folk in the UK going to parks and congregating on beaches and driving to Barnard castle while Ibiza had roadblocks with machine guns. Then again, we flattened the curve in a matter of months, being an island. And how hard can it be to isolate an island? Eh Boris? HOW HARD CAN IT BE??
But this is when the sinister stuff started, and it seemed to be limited entirely to British enterprises here. I met one young British promoter in the street as lockdown eased here, he was very easy to recognise as he was the only one without a mask, and he literally told me of his plans to be ‘the only club open in Ibiza’ as if it were some sort of triumphant masterplan. I just looked at him as if he was deranged. Which perhaps he was after lockdown. The fact all the borders were closed and nothing was open bar some supermarkets seemed lost on him. But this is when I discovered a handful of places were actually open and trading. One was the notorious ‘Ocean Beach’, co-run by celebrity sex pest Wayne (dark brother of Gary) Linker (google him, he married a 17 year old) and was told to shut by police several times until eventually they complied -
https://www.thesun.co.uk/…/wayne-lineker-empire-fraud…/
Lineker then embarked on a series of ‘sad face’ photos which frankly, most people found hilarious, matched only in hilarity when they eventually reopened with social distancing - which meant the lifeblood of sinister Lineker, selfies with the least famous Lineker in the world, became ridiculous.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/…/wayne-lineker-seen-slumped…
But so far, everything makes sense right? Global Pandemic, people dying, shut down human contact? Right? Not Andy McKay. Not Ibiza Rocks and Pikes. Now we get to by far the worst offender.
Manumission, undisputed kings of overcrowding in the 90s and 00s was run by two brothers - Mike and Andy McKay. Mike - the good looking former model, did the creative and fronted it - Andy was the money man, counting the piles of cash in the back. And it was piles - imagine 15,000+ people paying 30 and later 50 euros to get in, and getting a slice of the vast bars.
At some point (sorry, don’t know the precise date) the brothers fall out dramatically, Manumission shuts, and Andy McKay takes his vast Manumission proceeds and opens ‘Ibiza Rocks’ a lowest common denominator cheap hotel that surrounds an outdoor space aimed at British kids in the chaos zone of San Antonio’s ‘West End’ - the epicentre of ‘Ibiza Uncovered’ type of bad behaviour. Since the ‘Manumission Motel’ McKay has been acutely aware that hotels in Spain, compared to discos, have almost carte blanche in terms of what can happen on the premises. He then buys out the legendary Tony Pike who is elderly and ailing and Andy and his then wife Dawn become the new owners of Pikes - former hotel to a handful of celebrities and location for Wham’s cheesy ‘Club Tropicana’ video.
Having crushed the pandemic curve within a few months due to an actual, proper lockdown happening, Ibiza started to again consider tourist income under huge pressure from the islands many vested interests. Naturally nightclubs and cruise ships would be impossible - but hotels got an early pass to open. And you could practically hear McKay’s hands rubbing together being the owner of two ‘hotels’ that were essentially nightclubs. Around this time McKay popped up regularly with his friend and local Conservative party (PP) candidate in the area, Martin Makepeace. Together they pushed a campaign that appeared very clearly to have professional paid PR involvement declaring that ‘Ibiza Is Open’ (McKay spends large on PR, but in the UK only). Yes he was really shouting ‘Ibiza is open’ during by far the worst part of the pandemic - as so much more was to come. McKay placed himself very much as the go-to guy for anyone who wanted to ignore the pandemic. Indeed he very much presented himself as an actual ‘saviour’.
https://www.musicweek.com/…/ibiza-rocks-boss…/080251
McKay was flying DJs in and out of Ibiza and having them mingle with guests who’d equally come from all corners almost without pause during all of the COVID years and to this day. Nowhere else was open in this manner in Ibiza, only Ibiza Rocks and Pikes. There was a certified death at Ibiza Rocks -
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/…/British-mother-23-dead…
It’s a place that targets and encourages the worst British behaviour and has done for some time -
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/…/Shocking-moment-tourist…
But when McKay, not long after shafting his own brother for a fortune then turned on his own wife and performed a coup at Pikes - things took a dark turn for the worse there too.
Andy’s wife, Dawn Hindle, and the husband and wife promoting team of Mark and Sarah Broadbent had always carefully, meticulously, curated Pikes to be a special place and were always very mindful of how many people was a comfortable number - few in the know would dispute that in modern terms - Peak Pikes was the time Andy was in the shadows - and the Broadbents ran the show for Dawn. Suddenly they all (and other key staff) woke up one day in Dec 2023 to discover they were no longer managing the place and McKay had taken over completely, having only been in the background previously. By Jan ’24 they were all edged out - told that the venue was to go in a new direction, and then promptly found it was not going in a new direction at all and all the people they had employed, given breaks to and generally encouraged were staying behind without them and most of the acts the previous management team had been booking for years merrily continued to do so. Nothing changed other than an aggressive takeover, aided from the inside by a particularly loathsome and ambitious DJ - brand new to the island of course, no one known here would try anything so brazen - appropriately named ‘DJ Dribbler’ who was eventually so universally disliked he ended up having to change his name to the hilarious ‘For Mankind’. Someone best avoided at all costs.
Then in the summer of ’24 the promised changes started to manifest - as a complete and unbridled ignoring of all safety features. First, McKay alledgedly bought all the houses that surround the property, using them to house convenient folks/acts and most crucially, often hosting the local mayor of the district. So without anyone to raise objections or bear witness he then grandly announced, as if inventing it, that there would be no phone cameras allowed.
https://djmag.com/…/pikes-ibiza-introduces-no-phones…
This was a feint, under the guise of pretending to be cool, it was simply to deny there being any evidence of the crush he was about to engineer. Pikes is a boutique hotel with a license that explicitly allows it to entertain its guests only. A number somewhere around a maximum 40 people - seeing as it only has about 20 rooms. Suddenly Pikes started to allow thousands in. Bear in mind none of this is legal. And who cares when the mayor is staying for free nearby? The ‘disco’ part of Pikes is just a large former bedroom as far as the license is concerned.
McKay then engineered a ‘holding area’, in fact the tennis court, so he could make money from people as they waited to enter the crush. You might get in that night, you might not, but he certainly was going to make money out of you regardless. At this point there started to be a palpable wave of complaints and objections to the new management from customers. McKay was notorious in the industry for not paying people, or paying them as little as humanly possible, so DJs and professionals in the game were always aware of his nature, but for the first time the customers were starting to see.
Constant paid PR, horrific cringy self-aggrandising blogs and bragging on the various Pikes socials could no longer hide the truth. McKay will do anything to squeeze cash out of people, including putting their lives at risk.
Which brings us to the 2,500 tickets sold for a 40 capacity hotel for Halloween. People flying in from all corners with new and old variants of COVID and Flu and not the slightest consideration or mitigations in place. But unchecked and unobserved this is merely the endgame of what this guy has been doing for decades - cramming them in up to the rafters. All the cool folks long gone, a mockery of the former glory is there now - a theme park of fake ‘balearic’ of desperate DJ Dads and ‘Deep House’ kids as spillover from Ibiza Rocks. And you know what - you are allowed to have had a good time there. And no one is stopping you doing what you want. Secret DJ Project is about telling you the truth and the goings-on behind the curtain. It’s up to you to care or not.
For the sake of the staff and the DJs and the many people who love it - I genuinely hope Pikes survives somehow.
Watch this space.
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Thanks Oli x
Wow. That’s quite a read. I mean he seems to have some valid points. Is that true about the tennis court? You pay then wait there?
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admission is free but you have to pre-book guestie. it got out of hand last year with people standing around forever in the tennis court. somebody installed a makeshift bar… conveniently
I think Pikes is too much iconic fun to be hit hard by bad press. Most people don’t really care about this stuff, but I think there has been a shift to Akasha. Heidi L, Paramida, Roman Flugel are all playing there this summer. San Carlos is more of a shlep from SA so am guessing it gets a more committed party crowd. Hopef over circa Sept 26 so will report back!
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I always feel like he is in a really bad place when I read his stuff. Nothing stays the same does it.
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the stuff about RF was corroborated separately by someone else I know/trust yesterday. He’s bad news and has treated a few people really shittily
Yeah thats what I was trying to get at. I do like his writing though, and there’s no doubting he raises some valid issues.
I have been in DC10 when its been dangerously overcrowded and its pretty scary.
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First day and the weather has been perfect but looks like rain tomorrow and good then rest the week 
off to la torre this evening, weeks line up looks good…
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Is that the famous tennis court? Or an entirely different venue?
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(Grand)slamming beats and pumping baselines.
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Different venue I think. I’ve lost track with Pikes drama now. Is it still the evil Manumission guy in charge or has he moved it on?
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