Picture taken from DesignHome
Lebanon’s legendary club B018 has been located in Karantina since 1998 and still attracts crowds every weekend and on Thursdays mainly when the awesome 80’s night takes place. It was listed on InTheMix‘s top 25 clubs to visit before you die as everything is special about this place; the location, the architecture, the concept, the music, the people and the ambiance.
Here’s my [review] on the 80’s night.
BO18 is perhaps one of the most ambitious and conceptually unique venues worldwide. Located in Karantina (a semi-industrial zone in the northeast of Lebanon’s capital city Beirut), which was the home of a Palestinian refugee camp that housed up to 20,000 evacuees during the Lebanese Civil War, B018 started as a way to use music as a form of therapy to ease the stress of wartime life.
Changing locations over the years, the current home in Karantina was chosen in 1998, and the club was designed in such a way as to reflect its location, paying tribute to those lost in the war. Aside from being sunk into the ground like a communal grave (or more light-heartedly, a bomb shelter), the club also features tables shaped like coffins and war memorabilia all over the walls.
But it’s not all doom-and-gloom: a retractable roof allows for revellers to dance under the starry Beirut night sky, and carefully placed mirrors reflect the city’s lights onto the dancefloor. Add in a top-notch sound-system, a friendly, open-minded and liberal crowd, and high calibre guests such as Hernan Cattaneo, James Zabiela and Troy Pierce, and you have the fiercely unique BO18. As Danny Howells puts it, it’s “one of the absolute best clubs in the world”.
