Yesterday saw the first birthday of one of the island's most glamorous hot spots, Ocean Beach Club. A year on from when its doors first opened, Ocean is one of the newer additions to the island's beach clubs and has clearly made up for lost time, fast becoming infamous with tourists. To celebrate, their line up included the award-winning DJ Tom Crane, Andy Baxter, Jonny Woods and some more great names who all put their best pool garb on and brought along their best tracks to join the party.
By half two, chilled sexy house music was already pumping through the funky orange speakers to a place filled with glamour, tans and oversized sunglasses. Songs such as Layo and Bushwacka's edit of ‘Finally' had everyone in the pool and on the beds dancing, orange Ocean Beach beakers in hand. The beds that sat out on the water looked like floating marshmallows under the huge signature orange Veuve Cliquot umbrellas, and orange balloons decorated the whole venue, tied to anywhere and everywhere possible.
By evening, the vibe of the crowd had changed significantly. The sun-frazzled and part timers of the pool had gone home, and the more hard core sun worshippers were joined by the evening crowd. Maxi dresses and striped shirts were uniform for the evening and even until midnight the pool was occupied with people playing in the water. The music changed to a more edgy house vibe, with DJ Jonny Woods playing songs such as Huxley's ‘Take No More' and Will Monotone's ‘Dem Mai Hoes'. It was great seeing people dancing up on the beds to these tracks, an example of how venues have started mixing things up and not letting themselves be pigeon-holed to one genre anymore. Woods played Tim Green's edit of Cassius ‘1999' and the dance floor was full with people dancing to this synth-pop funk which is a great sound for the summer (and take it from me, definitely the perfect track to listen to whilst drinking a cocktail or three).
Of course, being Ocean Beach and being the first birthday, I expected them to have some tricks up their sleeve and they didn't disappoint. Out of nowhere, at around 11pm, a flame-ridden BMX launched into view, soaring above the crowd and doing tricks in the air, a hybrid of circus act and Hell's Angel. Fire dancers and men in LED-lit skeleton suits had the crowd ‘ooh'ing and ‘ahh'ing as they moved around the pool and stage. At half 11, fireworks filled the sky, loudly and colourfully congratulating this fabulous and successful venue on its first great year.
Although there didn't seem to be any free birthday cake floating around (maybe I was too busy drinking caipirinhas to notice) but the buzzing atmosphere, fantastically eclectic crowd and great funky tunes managed to satisfy me. Happy 1st Birthday Ocean Beach!
Photography: James Chapman
