farewell to Mercat

Good work Tim and Jane
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

The Mercat closed its doors on Saturday with the biggest Technoir yet. I'm still not 100% clear on why they had to close, but it looks like they weren't making enough money to keep the place afloat. They were trying up until the last minute, so only publicly announced the closure on Friday, So I spent a large part of the day in a stupor, wondering what was going to happen to my weekends, and what was going to happen to my favourite parties.
Tim and Jane from the Mercat have done so much for the Melbourne party scene, helping so many promoters and musicians to bring their party dreams to reality, and in the process creating an environment that all sorts of people can come along to and just have fun without feeling threatened or unwelcome. I know the parties will survive the move to another venue, they all had a decent following and will be strong enough to take it, but the fact is they are extremely unlikely to end up at the same venue, and with that something will be lost.

Lectro, Technoir, aLive, Dancehall and Nutshell all threw great parties here, and I was looking forward to Schpunk, Interview and Plus:One that were coming up.

This last Technoir party was really fantastic, not much in the way of Decor, as they weren't sure if they were going to make it happen at all so they didn't do much prep, so instead they blew the decor budget on a kick ass laser that really gave it something special. All the guys playing, all Technoir regulars, pulled out all the stops and played their best tracks and their favourite tracks and the crowd really responded.
Overall it was a bittersweet moment, a party that I would prefer not to have happened in many ways, but that I wouldn't have missed for anything.