It was a starry Friday night in the middle of August. Unwilling to spend it at home, we ventured out to Hydropark, a huge beach complex in the middle of Kyiv that has many entertainment options for rich and poor.
It was a starry Friday night in the middle of August. Unwilling to spend it at home, we ventured out to Hydropark, a huge beach complex in the middle of Kyiv that has many entertainment options for rich and poor.
We picked Olmeca Plage nightclub eager to sample Kyiv’s roaring parties.
As we hit Olmeca, I was astonished by its pompous and beautiful features. The club – the size of roughly three tennis courts – was a mixture of outdoor bars and beach huts on the sandy bank of the Dnipro River.
Reflections of people, sipping their drinks, gleamed in a large swimming pool in the center. A couple of yachts were parked nearby.
This club may have been anywhere in the world. There was nothing really Ukrainian about it, apart from the prices. To get a table, one had to pay between Hr 4,500 and 10,000, depending on location and the size of the seating area.
Where else would you have to pay that much? The money doesn’t go to waste though, as you can eat and drink until this scandalous payment runs out.
To be fair, it was not a regular party at Olmeca. Ukrainian singer Tina Karol was on the menu that night so her numerous fans attended the gig.
But it was still hard for me to grasp the concept of a $1,000 table, which I am told is an ordinary price in Kyiv’s most glamorous clubs.
Resentful of what seemed like another ripoff, I asked a bartender if there’s any other way we can watch the concert. He let us sit at the bar behind the stage.
The first people started to arrive around midnight. They were not well-off businessmen or foreign ambassadors who were more likely to afford the bill, but hip teenagers dressed as Hollywood stars.
Young women – many looking anorexic – fashioned their perfect noses, legs, breasts and short dresses. Some of them were escorted by men who attempted Justin Timberlake’s fashion looks, while others were followed by a contingent of elderly men.
Photographers couldn’t get enough sleazy shots and outrageous wardrobes.
“Golden youth,” my Ukrainian friend told me, “they seem less harmful than those in Moscow.” Well, only until they get behind the wheel, I remarked, thinking about dozens of cases that involved the children of the rich who caused lethal car accidents.
Watching them party was eye-opening.
My interest started to fade when I asked for a coke. It cost me some Hr 70. The concert didn’t begin until 2 a.m.
It cheered me up a little, but still, everywhere I looked I saw a young woman in a dress revealing her Lolita-like figure, hand-in-hand with a 50-year-old foreigner with a beer belly. I was not impressed.
I would only visit Olmeca again if I were assigned on a story about the rich youths wasting their money away or the sex tourism sector in Ukraine.
The beach gazebos and groomed sand, however, are very good in the daytime.
The same type of crowd seems to frequent the beach, but they don’t stand out from happy sunbathers all wearing bikinis and splashing in the water.
Kyiv Post staff writer Rina Soloveitchik can be reached at [email protected]
