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Barcelona

No Shoes, No Shirts, No Problems

jon azpiri

“look at where we are!” Patrick shouted to me incredulously as we sat on a patio on Las Ramblas in Barcelona. It didn’t matter to him that we were on the patio of McDonald’s, the only restaurant we could afford, or that we were sipping on gazpacho that tasted like watered-down V8 juice. He just couldn’t believe he was in Spain, away from his home in Sydney for the first time in his life. It wasn’t the first time he had said this to me. He did it so often, he’d named his trip “Patrick’s Look At Where We Are Tour 2000.”

I had met Patrick on Las Ramblas, not long after I had arrived. He’d spotted me trudging along with my backpack and asked me if I needed a room. He had an extra bed at his place, and I’d failed to get in at the overly popular Kabul Hostel, so I quickly agreed.

Patrick was a burly, hard-drinking Australian who had taken a year off to travel the world. Once you got past his rough edges, however, you’d find a contagious, childlike optimism. Although he often missed the main tourist sites in a city, he would catch the smallest things. Children playing in a plaza, a brightly lit water fountain, the fact that you could buy a litre of wine at the grocery store for less than a dollar—these things filled Patrick with wonder. And he would inevitably exclaim, “Look at where we are!”

Patrick’s open-minded approach to life often led us to new people. Men seemed to like him because he was always willing to buy a drink, and women were drawn to his rugged good looks and impish charm. Even though he couldn’t speak a word of Spanish, he managed to beguile several local girls. I, on the other hand, was too reserved to chat up women, despite the fact that I was nearly fluent in Spanish, and even knew a few words of Catalan.

Over the next five days, a pattern emerged. Unlike Patrick, who seemed to revel in small moments, I insisted on seeing all the big sights. I would get up early and visit places like Parc Güell, La Sagrada Familia and the Picasso Museum, taking photos and writing in my journal, as if my trip were some sort of homework project, while Patrick spent the day sleeping off his hangover from the night before. Each night around 9, we would meet in our room, head out for dinner, then hit the town.

Our final night in “Barca,” Patrick wanted to go out on a high note. We asked some locals what was the best nightclub in town, and they told us about La Terrazza, a giant monastery-turned-nightclub that was supposed to be the biggest party in Spain outside of Ibiza. Patrick’s eyes lit up, and our plans were set. He invited some of the local girls he had met the night before. “This is going to be brilliant,” he assured me.

We arrived at the club at ten o’clock, obscenely early by Spanish standards. Still, a line snaked its way around the entire Poble Español. I tried to persuade Patrick to go elsewhere, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He wanted to experience the best nightclub in Barcelona.

Behind us in the endless queue was a group of Americans who were visiting Spain during their summer break from studying in England. They were wearing crisp dress shirts and freshly pressed khakis, and they shared Patrick’s enthusiasm about the club. One of them, Derek, was studying economics, and the hour-plus we waited in line gave him plenty of time to explain the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes and John Kenneth Galbraith.

As we finally approached the front of the line, the doorman waved Patrick into the club. I followed as Patrick swaggered through the front door, but the squat, long-haired doorman stopped me.

“Excuse me, do you have an invitation?” he said.

“No. What invitation?” I replied.

“Tonight is invitation only. If you don’t have one, you’ll have to go.”

“Wait a minute. You just let my friend in, and I know he doesn’t have an invitation.”

“Go away!” he said, shoving me aside.

As I scanned the rest of the crowd in line, it was pretty clear that I didn’t get in because I didn’t fit in. The club appealed to a techno/rave crowd, with women wearing mini-skirts, feathered boas and platform heels, and men wearing leather pants and spiked dog collars. Apparently, Patrick’s shaggy hair, vintage cowboy shirt and motorcycle boots blended in with the crowd, and my V-neck sweater from The Gap didn’t.

We were close to admitting defeat, but Scott was on a mission. “We’re getting in there. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”

The smartly dressed Americans met the same hassle. They soon joined me on the street corner, sulking. We were close to admitting defeat, but Scott, Derek’s friend from California, was on a mission. “We’re getting in there. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”

While Scott scampered off, I considered leaving, but the Americans insisted that I wait. “Don’t worry,” Derek said. “Scott will get us in. I don’t know how, but he’ll get us in. He’s gotten into a lot tougher places than this. He never fails.”

I decided to stick around to see if Scott could work his magic. Ten minutes later, he came back with four tickets. He’d sweet-talked some local girls into giving him their V.I.P. passes. Since the girls had some friends who worked in the club, they knew they could get in anytime without them.

So we sauntered past the main lineup and, not five feet from where we had been rejected, walked in through the V.I.P. entrance. I took off my V-neck sweater; my plain gray T-shirt seemed to do the trick. Inside La Terrazza, crowds of Barcelona’s most beautiful people bounced to the sound of bland techno music on a dance floor in an open courtyard. I finally found Patrick. He had been wondering where I was, while trying to score some Ecstasy.

Since I spoke Spanish, he wanted me to ask the locals where to find the Ecstasy. Apparently he thought it wasn’t called “E”, but “É” with one of those funny accents on it, and he needed my help. I was hesitant. I figured if I was ever going to be arrested, I didn’t want it to be for translating a drug deal. Besides, I told him, the Spanish word for Ecstasy is “Ecstasy.” It shouldn’t be hard to explain.

Patrick scampered off, as did the Americans, and I found myself alone. A light rain sprinkled the dance floor. After the ordeal of getting into the club, the cool water on my face helped me relax. I began dancing, and I finally started to enjoy my last night in Barcelona.

As I danced, I would occasionally scan the area, looking for Patrick. That’s when I spotted the squat doorman who wouldn’t let me in. Apparently he was on a break from watching the door, walking through the crowd with a girl on each of his tattooed arms. We locked eyes; he immediately lunged onto the dance floor and grabbed me.

But the doorman wasn’t that big. I was at least 6 inches taller and outweighed him by 20 pounds. He started shoving me, and I didn’t budge. This was all new to me. Back home in Canada, where doormen tended to be the size of mini-vans, I never got into fights with bouncers, let alone won one.

Two other doormen quickly jumped in to subdue me. One of them got me in a headlock and escorted me out of the club. As I stood outside on the sidewalk, where I had already spent much of the night, I rubbed my wrenched neck and realized that I’d just been a victim of Fashion Police brutality.

I pleaded with the other doormen to let me back in to find my friend, but they’d have none of it. The doormen were curious, however, about what I had done to get expelled. I told them I hadn’t bothered anyone. Heck, I hadn’t had a drink all night. “Well, there’s your problem,” joked one of the doormen. “You were probably the only sober guy in there.”

The doormen continued chatting. At one point, a confused young British girl came out of the club and asked the doormen for help, and I stepped in to translate. From there, the conversation started to flow.

Before, I had needed Patrick to meet new people, but now I felt strangely liberated.

I started chatting with some of the other outcasts, people who had been thrown out because they were too drunk, or who were not allowed in because they weren’t cool enough. There was a drunken Australian girl who was ejected but had to wait for her friend, because she didn’t know how to get back to their hotel. There were two local guys who weren’t allowed in even though their girlfriends were already in the club. They openly worried about all the guys in there hitting on their girlfriends, and I tried to comfort them by saying that the only guy approaching their girls was likely a burly Australian asking them for Ecstasy.

We club rejects spent the rest of the night telling stories, asking questions about each other and talking about where we were from. It was fun and interesting and, as a bonus, no one hassled me about my V-neck sweater from The Gap. Before I knew it, an hour or two had passed. I was enjoying myself more outside the club than I had inside it.

The sun was rising, and the club was closing up for the night. I finally reconnected with Patrick, who never managed to find any Ecstasy—or those local girls he had met the night before. “What happened to you?” he asked.

“I got thrown out.”

“You?” he asked in a way that was almost insulting.

“How is that possible?”

I told him about my altercation with the doorman. Patrick went into a rage. “Let’s get ’em,” he said, heading back into the club to look for the doorman. I had known Patrick all of five days, and here he was willing to beat the hell out of a total stranger on my behalf. I grabbed him and told him it wasn’t worth it.

“But he ruined your last night in Barcelona,” he said.

“No, he didn’t,” I replied. We were standing on a nondescript corner outside the club, and I was thinking of the outcast friends I had met that night. “Look at where we are!”

JON AZPIRI is a writer and editor based in Vancouver, Canada. Being of Basque heritage, his favorite part of Spain, by far, is the Basque Country, where no one judges him on his penchant for V-neck sweaters.