Bomba Becomes Booom!

After a suspected hi-jacking of the Bomba Ibiza website, the island is alive with speculation and gossip, as to what is going on at the proposed new club for Ibiza. Initially, the blog had reported that a hacker was the main suspect for the bombaibiza.com domain redirecting to the rival Pacha website, but this now looks a red herring as other brand name related issues start to appear. In recent days the Bomba social media platforms, most notably Twitter and Facebook, have all dropped their original Bomba branding, to be replaced by new avatars and the, Booom, address on Facebook. These late changes, along with the website re-direction to Pacha, could point towards a problem with the ownership of the Bomba name. It is not clear who is the registered trademark owner of Bomba and this may be related to the current changes to the Bomba social media platforms and the silence from the club.

The timing of these issues could not have come at a worse time for Bomba, as it was about to announce its much anticipated line-ups and schedules for its 2013 summer season. It had been reported in Vicious Magazine that the club would open this Saturday July 7th, with a statement “I have longed to see the crowded club, good music and wonderful artists.We have put a lot of love into this project and I hope that people feel like us “, from club owner, Giuseppe Cipriani. The report also released line-ups for the Bomba 2013 season, with notable defections from Erick Morillo and Cinemission. Morillo is taking a break from music, but the defection of Mike and Claire’s well touted Cinemission party, has raised eyebrows even further. After news broke yesterday, that Fridays at Bomba would have an in-house production called “Booom” instead of Cinemission, Mike and Claire issued a series of four, spiritual tweets, which included a quote from Shamanist writer Carlos Castaneda “Does this path have heart. If it does, the path is good if it doesn’t it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere but one has heart the other doesnt“. Make of that as you will, but it all sounds de rigeur, for certain circles in Ibiza at present, as new “awareness” techniques are being practised on the island, but that’s a story for another blog.

Original Bomba Logo

For now, where does this all leave Bomba. Not in a good place that is for sure. Only three days away, no official announcement by Bomba about it’s reported opening party this weekend is worrying and casts doubt on the date. It’s very evident that all the problems Bomba are encountering on their path to open the old Heaven club, are more than just bad luck and co-incidence. There are big egos involved and the powers that be in Ibiza, are at play here. As we have alluded to many times on the blog, politics and culture in Ibiza, is a finely balanced, intricate and complex web, that only seasoned veterans or islanders can safely navigate. For the novice or outsider, its easy to get tangled up in its mesh and rarely does it end up in a good result. Both Pacha and Bomba have strenuously denied that there is any bad blood between them, and until one or the other issues a statement to the contrary, we have to take it as the official relationship between the rival clubs. It would appear, that the smoking gun is resting on Pacha’s website as it hosts Bomba’s old .com domain but Pacha have said they are investigating why this has happened. Time will tell and it will all come out in the wash sooner or later, but unfortunately for Bomba, time, along with other forces, seem not to be their friends.

UPDATE 4/7/13 Bomba becomes BOOOM and officially announces July 7th Opening date and 2013 line-ups. Read full press release here