Not if you were the last club on earth: The Sand, Amsterdam
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About a ten minute ride from the centre of the Dam you'll find the Sand in the middle of an industrial park – perfect place for a club I hear you say.
Most of the time The Sand is a beach sport centre where you'd find the likes of the Dutch volleyball team practicing during the week. It gets converted into a 5000-capacity club roughly twice a month. The best way to describe it is the most organised warehouse party you've ever been to with one hell of an amazing lighting rig.
On arrival you’ve gotta go through plenty of metal railings but it’s not a problem getting in. They have hundreds of lockers for you to store away your worldly possessions. One bit of advice, keep your phone on you so you have some light – I learned the hard way at 7am when there were no lights near the lockers and I was looking for no 1267. I ended up with my face glued to the row of lockers, squinting like crazy and tracing out the numbers with my fingers which took a long time, and before you get smart I was like that because there were no lights, not for any other reason.
This place has one massive dance floor that holds most of the crowd. At the back of the dance floor you can head up stairs where there is smaller room that plays tunes maybe 2bpm slower than the main room. The reason to go to all the effort on those stairs are the fans in the room, they are exactly what you need every hour or so for a bit of cool down. There are two raised platforms at either side of the dancefloor which cover up the sand and these I reckon are the best places to homebase for the night.
The one thing I really liked about this place was everyone was there for the tunes. No one was standing around talking, everyone was dancing. Most of the crowd were 25-35 who knew their music and knew what they liked.
Toliets: You have to pay €2 and then you’re given a stamp that entitles you free entry for the rest of the night. Now they are indeed clean but I'm not a fan of having to pay to pee. Its nice little profit for the promoters €2 x 5000 = €10,000
Talent: High tops all the way for guys and girls. No matter how dressed up everyone is they have their trainers on underneath. Plenty of good looking people here but that’s the Dutch for ya.
Goodies: As there is very little chat and just a lot of people dancing the best place to try is the smoking area.
Sounds: It varies depending on the event everything from the minus crew to Armin van Burren to Cocoon nights to Eric Morillo so its best to check before you go.
Icebreaker: Can you show me the northern shuffle?
Jawbeaker: What’s techno?
From Aoife Caulfield
Not if you were the last club on Earth:
[Sankeys - Manchester] (http://www.bodytonicmusic.com/words/2008/oct/17/not-if-you-were-last-club-earth-sankeys-manchester/)
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