Physiologically Disco Heaven was of an age to die. We had to part with the grand lady of the rock. Perched on its promontory overlooking the waves, the prime balcony seat of this theatre called Hydra, Disco Heaven has proudly braved the northern winds, the mad revellers of the sixties, seventies, eighties etc.. , the hungry local police officers, the old age accompanied by all sorts of crippling retribution. 
Beautiful young people wouldn’t go up to it anymore for it was too much of a strain on today’s tender muscles, the fashion was changing and the lady was wrinkled to the point of abhorrence, patched with plastic bandages. Disco Heaven could not face daylight any longer. The drinks were less than orthodox. She was a loud and not very gracious old lady.
Let the young and beautiful change scene and have something of their own, not daddy’s favourite night club. Could give them a complex.
We won’t cry, but parting is indeed such sweet sorrow that I feel compelled to write the obituary of this pile of styleless crumbling stones blessed by the most breathtaking view in the Aegean.
Location, location, location. The axiom of a good real estate purchase. Let us congratulate the new owner. With five heavy bars of gold he abducted the old lady.
It seems to be a constant trait of recognition and success in Greece to want to buy “The nightclub of my Youth”. It is interesting to notice that the competition ie.the nightclub facing it on the other side of the port: the original Cavos Disco was sold sometime ago to the owner of a successful chain of supermarkets. Not really the top of the basket but nevertheless a Francophile enterprise since the popular Prisunic bucket shops made the fortune of the owner and elevated it from a shabby pharmacy in Omonia square to a respectable chain of stores allover the country.

In the mid sixties-seventies live music was played up there, nobody complained for the noise. Everybody was young, even the old people. 
The club owners of a cabaret-striptease joint the Copacabana of Syntagma Sqare came to Hydra and bought the Archontiko Restaurant on the port, ran it for a while. It was a flop. They also got involved in the Disco Heaven.
The Disco thrived but remained relatively innocent. Dancing, drinking was heavy. Drug intake was light, emulating habits of J.F. Kennedy and the rest of the Western World on the steps of Aldous Huxley’s quest for artificial paradises. It was Eleusis! People fed on mushrooms, read Castaneda's Teaching of Don Juan, listened to Marianne and other sad litanies of Leonard Cohen who sat, lamenting in Kaminia. Some of my girl friends tried to fly off the balcony into heaven, into the deep blue sea below. Crazy? …Not so much, then.

It was just the years of re-evaluation and revelation. Pop stars from the States were sitting at Tassos café, at Disco Heaven, exploring, experiencing one another.
A time of revelations.
Revelation that you had a body and were free to do what you wanted with it. 
Revelation of sounds of music unheard of. 
Revelation of sung poetry. 
Revelation that you could stop a war by protesting in the street; that you could change “The System” in May if you were young and foolish.

 Needless to say that if we now have a weak liver Disco Heaven shares the responsibility.

It is a rare funeral because behind the hearse walk all sorts of Hydra lovers from seventeen to seventy years old. Few months ago, my son twenty-seven had a marvelous time up there with the girl friend of the month. One of the other kids told me that Disco Heaven was being sold to one of an insider of the present regime, which of course I discounted as flippant verbiage of a student full of self-importance. Little did I know. It sold! To him, the insider.

Yesterday I called my friend in Geneva who has shunned Hydra for the last couple of years because having bought a house on the opposite side of the port, she never managed (despite double glazed windows) to have a decent night’s sleep. The noisy old lady of the rock was overwhelming. 

We therefore will rejoice in peace regained and cry over souvenirs of sunrises at the terrace of the Disco Heaven when the scotch was receding with the night, the morning breeze fooling up your hair, the rosy fingers of dawn lighting up her face.
You couldn’t really tell why there was a shiver.

Amen

A. Laloumzoglou

 © Electronic Publishing Corporation