I Took a (Chill) Pill in Ibiza

As in, I relaxed on the beach and ate pasta in idyllic alleyways.

We went to Ibiza last weekend, which is a really insane thing to type out. To Ibiza?? For the weekend??? Who am I, the queen? But the flights were cheap, we rented a room in an Airbnb, and we figure we ought to make the most of our limited time in Spain.

The island of Ibiza is probably most famous for its clubbing scene, which isn’t exactly our style. Don’t get me wrong. I love a good beer. I love time with friends, maybe some music and dancing. But I’d rather do it at a brewery or something, where we can hear each other. Or (my personal favorite) at home, so we can hear each other and not have to drive anywhere or pay inflated drink prices.

But we thought we might try going to a club in Ibiza. That’s the thing you do while you’re there? I guess?? Ugh. We looked up some of the most famous clubs, and they weren’t inside the city of Ibiza, which is where we were staying. So, we’d have to pay to take a cab to the club, pay to get into the club, and then pay for drinks in the club. Sounded like something we could figure out later.

The first day, as we wandered around the city and wove up through an idyllic seaside neighborhood to a castle, we ate gelato and marveled at how beautiful everything was. It looked like pictures you see of Greece, with the whitewashed buildings on the hillside. A few apartments were for sale. How could anyone want to move away from this place? It wasn’t long before we figured out why.

There’s one for sale right there on the left! Imagine living here?

We were having dinner at an Italian restaurant, still procrastinating on figuring out how and when we would get to a club, when we began hearing pulsing music in the distance. We went to investigate after we finished eating, and saw there, up on top of the hilly neighborhood, was an enormous, deafening outdoor performance/rave thing.

“That looks like hell,” Jeff said. He paused briefly, then added. “Do you want to go check it out?”

Up we went. There were a lot of people doing the same thing, but there were also a lot of people walking down the hill. We wondered if they’d been turned away from the party, if they’d decided not to go, or if the party was lame so they left. We found someone guarding an entrance, and he told us it was €50 to get in. Fifty euros! We could stay right there on the hillside and bob our heads along to the music and struggle to hear each other for free. No way.

We quickly joined the group of people going back down the hill. Now we understood the “for sale” signs on all the pretty houses.

This was the closest we came to clubbing in Ibiza.

Other than wimping out over going to clubs, and buying a weird sunblock that kept building up on our skin in disconcerting, booger-like ways, our trip to Ibiza was successful and mostly free of misadventures. We even took a ferry to Formentera, where we rode bikes and basically had our own private beach. But I have two other people’s Ibiza misadventures to share with you.

Mike Posner

“I Took a Pill in Ibiza,”¹ was a chart-topper house song back in 2015 that I vaguely remember. I didn’t know the lyrics, but I assumed I got the gist. Someone took a party drug in Ibiza and had a great time, right?

I listened to it while we were there and realized the song is pretty sad. The singer, Mike Posner, wrote it about his experience becoming a famous singer, and then sort of descending into hedonism and loneliness and has-beenness (the state of being a has-been). The lyrics include “You don’t wanna be high like me, never really knowing why like me” and “All I know are sad songs.” Really fun! The original version, which is not the popular one, is moody and acoustic, but then a Norwegian band remixed it and ironically made it into a huge club hit that a bunch of people probably get high to.²

The thumbnail from the music video (below) is supposed to represent how Mike Posner was high out of his mind, I think. But it also represents how I would have felt at a club in Ibiza without any illicit pills: out of place, bewildered, trying to smile even though I just spent $18 on a cocktail.

Queen Bitch

I saw a magnificent sight in the airport bathroom before our flight home. A woman who, in many ways, looked like the epitome of “carefree beachiness.” She had a pink, flowy skirt. She had a white linen shirt. She had blonde hair and tattoos. But then, smack dab in the middle of what would have been an aesthetic, was an element of sheer chaos: a sweatshirt tied around her waist printed with the words “QUEEN BITCH.” I so loved this unhinged aesthetic that I described this woman to Jeff as soon as I got back to our seats.

Later, as we were boarding the plane, there was a woman arguing with the airline staff about her luggage and holding up half the line. Once I made it through the line and waited for Jeff, the woman stomped past me, looked me in the eye, and said, “Jesus Christ on a cracker.”

I smiled dimly, not really on her side. And when she walked ahead of me, I realized it was her! Queen Bitch!!! Making a huge scene about her luggage in true Queen Bitch fashion! As we learned, because we were stuck behind Queen Bitch and she was telling this story multiple times to the people around her, and then to someone on the phone, and then again to the people around her, she had had to pay 60 euros to check her bag. (We were on a budget airline, and you could only have an underseat bag unless you paid for a carryon in advance, which she had not.)

It was Mike Posner who took a pill in Ibiza. It was Queen Bitch who pitched a fit in Ibiza. And it was us who ate gelato in Ibiza. We are the clear winners here.

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Question of the Week: Do you sometimes do activities because you feel like you “should” (e.g., and this is just a random example off the top of my head, but would you go clubbing in Ibiza even if you didn’t like clubbing? Would you go to see the Mona Lisa in Paris even if you don’t like art, or eat a deep-fried Oreo at the county fair even if it doesn’t sound all that good?) If you do, are you usually glad you did those things in the end?

Recommendation of the Week: This week marked 21 years since the U.S. release of Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man,” starring Tobey Maguire (the first in the trilogy of the only superhero movies I care about). In commemoration, please enjoy this two-minute clip from the DVD commentary about the cafeteria scene.

1. also known by its clean title “I Took a Plane to Ibiza” hahaha

2. Spanish tourism officials were “annoyed” by this song for contributing to stereotypes about Ibiza. This is fair, but also, I think this song was the first time I ever heard of Ibiza, so maybe they should be thanking the song?