The last rave in the Rotterdam free port POING: ‘I came here for the family vibe’

A cyclist points to the long line in front of the Rotterdam Club POING on the Schiekade and says to his friend: “This is the Berlin of here, you know.” The techno club is only two years old, but – just like the German capital – it is known as a home for fans of experimental electronic music, as a place for free spirits, for diversity and the LGBTQIA+ community.

On Friday night, February 23, the line will be there for POING’s last party: a completely sold-out one rave of forty hours. The club will then close its doors permanently. Before visitors are allowed to enter, the cameras on their phones are covered, as is also done in well-known Berlin clubs. What happens inside, stays inside.

In the club, an alternative universe unfolds full of night people dressed in S&M outfits or outrageous fashion from the 2000s with countless stones and beads. Faces are made up in a fairytale style, decorated with colorful eyeliner or hidden behind sunglasses. POING is not only a techno club for experimental electronic music, but also, above all, a safe place for the LGBTQIA+ community. Other alternative places in Rotterdam, such as the Weelde entertainment area and Club BIT, had to close earlier. POING’s neighbors with a modest dance floor, Time is the new space, are also closing temporarily, in their case due to problems with permits.

What does this mean for these alternative young people? Where else can they go for a party?

Misty cellar

A sea of ​​people in their twenties and thirties flow through the club, from the industrial foyer deep into the misty basement. The two friends Gio (22) and Ellie (23), whose full names are known to the editors, will party until the end on Monday morning at five past eight, going home in between to take a shower and eat . Gio says that POING is an important part of her life: “I came to the Netherlands because of the war in Ukraine and settled here. I met all my friends there, who all became my family. I feel at home here. If it closes, it will be the end of that chapter in my life and in the lives of everyone around me.” Ellie adds that a loving bond has developed between visitors to POING, as they have all been marginalized in some way in their lives due to their sexuality or culture, but are finally celebrated at POING. Ellie: “You realize that you are not alone. Someone who walked in here for the first time a year ago has completely blossomed since then. The events that happened here stay with you.”

The last party attracts around a thousand visitors every day, founders Mark van Gogh and Eef de Wit say, double what the club can normally handle. The part of the building where arcade machines used to be has been transformed into a dance floor for the occasion.

Milou (24) I occasionally take some speed or cocaine. It’s not like I have five pills in my mouth

Although the visitor numbers were good, the owner of POING, Kristian de Leeuw, decided to pull the plug. During the corona pandemic, money had to be borrowed to bridge the lockdowns. When Van Gogh and De Wit started as operators of POING, there were already debts. Sales at the bar were disappointing, because the young crowd drinks little. Eef de Wit says that it can be seen in the bar turnover. “Due to the bizarre inflation, drink prices for our target group are very high, unfortunately we – like many other entrepreneurs – can do little about this. We are faced with high purchasing costs. Drugs, on the other hand, are relatively cheap. Drug use among young people has increased and this is also noticeable in the alcohol sales,” says De Wit.

Recent figures confirm this, both nationally and globally. The Trimbos Institute reported in February that research has shown that in the Netherlands the use of ecstasy, cocaine and 3-MMC among nightlife crowds has increased compared to 2020. In June last year, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) announced that the number of drug users worldwide in ten years increased by a quarter. It was estimated that there would be 295 million in 2021 and 240 million in 2011. This increase is partly the result of the growing world population, but the number of drug users has also increased in percentage terms: from 5.2 to 5.8 percent.

Broken ties

24-year-old Milou has worked all day and is definitely going to party all night. When asked how she will maintain that, she answers with a laugh: “We all know that, right? Alcohol alone won’t keep you awake. Then there are some drugs involved.” But certainly not too much, she says. “Because I want to be there all evening and be able to talk to friends. I occasionally use some speed or cocaine. But it’s not like I have five pills in my mouth.”

POING also serves as an accessible training school for many young music talents, such as Himera (21, that/their), stage name of Daniil Masterov. He regularly comes to parties and has been inspired to make music himself. Masterov was even allowed to perform twice. “In the end, I stayed because of the many friends I made here and the Rotterdam company,” he says.

Masterov is chatting with other DJs backstage. They teasingly refer to DJ Shahmaran, whose real name is Arjîn Elgersma (24, hen/their), as “furniture” of POING. Elgersma plays there regularly and heaves a sigh when he thinks about the closure of the club. “It doesn’t really feel like I’m coming here for a performance, but rather for the people who give this place a family vibe. The fact that it has to close means that those ties are broken.”

According to Elgersma, POING is one of the few places where electronic music and queerness come together in Rotterdam. DJ Shahmaran, who has a Kurdish background, played at the Acid Hamam parties, organized for the Middle Eastern diaspora interested in experimental electronic music. Creative people and like-minded people from the Middle East could meet each other there and become friends. Elgersma: “That is very special, because we also feel like outsiders in our own queer community.”

Chinese New Year celebration

There are plenty of other places in Rotterdam where you can go for electronic music, but few are as experimental as POING, says Kimmah, pseudonym of Kim Nguyen (26). She is the house DJ. She organized a Chinese New Year party with thirteen Asian artists and heard from artists and visitors that they had never experienced this before in Rotterdam. Nguyen: “It makes me think: you’ve been going out in the electronic music scene for ten or twenty years and you’ve never seen an all-Asian lineup? What the fuck!”

Kimmah had the opportunity to make a home for this group of minorities among minorities, namely Asians in the queer scene. Now that POING is closing, it is done with Rotterdam. She goes to Asia to discover the queer scene there. “There is so much more to see outside Rotterdam. I will be shooting in Taiwan, China, Vietnam and Indonesia.”

On Sundays the floors are sticky and it smells of sweat. Most young people hang out on the furniture

When NRC returns to the on Sunday rave, Gio is sitting in the garden with friends, but without Ellie. He went home for a while and will come back later. She herself has not left since Friday and is now swinging her legs relaxed in the afternoon sun. New decorative stones glitter around her eyes – she had a different look on Friday. She did fix herself up. The past few days have been crazy, she says. She gestures with her fingers that it was pico bello, excellent. She’s not alone; the garden is full of people who were also there on Friday. But the atmosphere is different. Inside it smells of cigarettes and sweat and the floors are sticky. The dance floors are half full and most young people are hanging out on chairs and couches.

Max Wurth (25) has been on site almost every day for a week now, to help build, sell merchandise and of course to party. “I don’t want to think about the end yet, but it is coming,” he says. His friend, Ian Bode (21), previously came up with the idea of ​​creating a WhatsApp group of 150 or 200 people with whom they had often partied and hung out. This way they can find each other and keep each other informed. “I really think that will happen,” says Wurth firmly. “There are wonderful, passionate people here and new places like POING will certainly come if they give us space.”

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