December 14, 2017
The legendary Slovenian club Ambasada Gavioli will close its doors for the last time on January 2, 2018, following a farewell party that starts 23:00 January 1, after the venue’s new owner ordered the club to be emptied by January 15, closed for entertainment, and applied instead for industrial use.
Two more parties are expected to happen in Gavioli before its farewell, celebrating the club’s last Christmas and New Year’s Eve on December 24 and 31, respectively.
Ambasada, where the biggest names in electronic music have performed over the years, including Richie Hawtin, Sven Väth, Carl Cox, Fatboy Slim, Jeff Mills, Westbam and Umek, to name a few on the decks, played a crucial role in consolidating the nascent dance scene that started to develop across the country in the early 1990s.
Although Gavioli wasn’t the only club that served the techno scene in those years, it was the largest, with the capacity of 2,500 visitors, and at the same time the only one on the coast that managed to survive to the present day, for 22 years, or approximately 15 generations of club kids.
Located in a small coastal town of Izola (Isola in Italian), Ambasada Gavioli represented an international meeting point for ravers from (at least) three countries flocking in to their weekly dance rituals. The manner of arrival was often referred to as of a “one-way ticket,” since nobody seemed to plan ahead on how to get back home after the party was over.
During the peak years one could see people hitchhiking all along the inbound routes and petrol stations, counting on their partners in dance to give them a ride, which they always did, in an avant-pop revolution that hadn’t been seen since perhaps the late sixties hippy gatherings, which were, in themselves, rather few and far between in Tito’s Yugoslavia.
More on its early days, here (click CC for Subs):
In the increasingly weakened clubbing scene Ambasada Gavioli is already being missed, and some of its fans have started the “save Ambasada Gavioli” petition. Perhaps now it’s already too late to save this legendary venue, but one can still join the last party before it all comes to an end.
