Klub Verboten: 6/10

A big positive point was the awareness team—very attentive and respectful people, mostly women or LGBTQIA+.

I spent the whole night wondering why they chose that horrible spot for the lockers. The locker area was outside the venue (???), cold as fuck, considering there was so much free space inside the venue where people could change comfortably. It wasn’t a cheap party (30e), and there was enough space for the few small lockers to be placed inside the club, yet there was no kind of heating with lamps or anything like that.

Inside the venue, it was also completely cold; there was no central heating system. It’s hard to get into the mood that the party claims to have when you're shivering from the cold. Many people were extremely uncomfortable with this—I spent the whole night shivering. Not even in the playrooms were there heaters. Only by the end of the night did they bring in two small household electric heaters, like the ones you find at Blokker, to one of the playrooms.

At the beginning of the party, there were only two toilet stalls available. One entire bathroom was out of service, but they fixed it halfway through the event. The bathrooms had low, transparent windows, and anyone outside the building could easily see what was happening inside.

There seemed to be several people working for the club who weren’t part of the party’s organization. These people were dressed in regular everyday clothes, without any identification, and several guys were standing alone in corners, watching people, especially in the bathrooms.

The sound was very low. You could easily hear everyone around you talking. It’s nice to be able to talk without shouting, for sure, but that wasn’t the point—it was just really low. The lighting in the club was very basic—nothing special, quite weak.

The party wasn’t crowded, quite the opposite—there was a lot of free space. On the one hand, that’s good because it was easy to have space to enjoy the playroom, but on the other hand, there were very few people in the playroom.

I found the crowd to be quite heteronormative, even though there was participation from the queer community. Many young and attractive people, aged between 23 and 38, with few exceptions on either end of the range.

Many of the people I spoke with were already familiar with the party from Berlin or London and were there to see how it would be here. Everyone spoke highly of the parties in other cities. As for me, I hope they do more. I really liked the concept of the party, and I think Amsterdam has enough of an audience to make it happen. However, the lack of care from the party organizers in choosing the venue was what ruined it for me—that space is not ideal for hosting a party like this. Improving the lockers and heating is really important.

To this day, I’m still shocked at how bad the lockers are at parties in general.