This Gabber Meet-Up Will Restore Your Faith in Humanity
All photos by Basile Rabaey

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Music

This Gabber Meet-Up Will Restore Your Faith in Humanity

Twice a year, about a hundred of the world's most passionate hardcore techno fans meet to catch up and celebrate.

This article originally appeared on VICE Netherlands and VICE Belgium

There isn't too much to know about the Belgian city of Kortrijk. It has a nice little shopping street, Saturday nights are about Grey Goose and dancing, and any time a local square gets renovated it's all anyone ever talks about for a month.

But twice a year, this relative calm is brutally disrupted when flocks of young and old gabbers in Thunderdome-branded tops and joggers walk out of the Kortrijk train station and head straight to DC's Special – one of the last brick-and-mortar shops dedicated to gabber.

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The shop's owner, Dimitri Christiaens, 36, has been organising these bi-annual meet-ups since 1999. What started out as just ten friends having a beer has grown into a sizeable get-together of passionate gabbers from all over Europe, who come to Kortrijk to share memories of the glory days.

Gabber fans outside DC's Specials.

As a teenager in Kortrijk, this annual procession of shaved heads freaked me out, but later my fear turned into fascination. What makes this tiny store so special that people from as far as Japan come to pay homage?

Last month, I decided to head down to the latest gathering to speak to some of the world's most committed gabbers about how they're keeping their subculture alive.

The front of DC's Special is hidden behind a pillar in the corner of the square. The crowd is a mix of men and women, most of them wearing shiny pairs of Nike Air Max, bright pink tops and suspenders. I see pit bulls of all shapes and sizes lurking around, while gabber parents pushing strollers excitedly greet their old rave buddies.

Off to the side, a few guys are doing gabber's iconic hakken dance in the sun, their tongues hanging out of their mouths. I hear people speaking French and Dutch, and occasionally someone will shout something in English, like "Once hardcore, always hardcore!"

The person here who seems most in her element is Antilla, a mum who brought her seven sons with her. She's such a raver, she tells me, who once danced so hard she tore her Achilles tendon.

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While proudly stroking her 17-year-old son's hair, she tells me, "I almost cried this morning when I shaved the sides of his head for the first time. They grow up so fast." Her youngest is still a toddler, but Antilla shows me a video on her phone of him pumping his fist up and down to a beat. "You see, it's in their genes."

"Only die-hard gabbers who were there in the early days come here," a man who drove three hours from France to be here tells me. "Some only come once a year, while others are here every week. It doesn't matter if you're in a group or you're on your own. The beauty of our scene is that as long as you're a gabber, you're never really alone. We're one big family, for life."

Left: Antilla proudly poses with one of her sevens sons. Right: Her eldest son shows off his new haircut.

When discussing their favourite memories from raves together, they all recall the same details that made the whole package so special to them. They chat about chants, worn out sneakers and mind-blowing sets from years ago. Conversations are only briefly interrupted when the DJ plays a classic, or when an old friend walks past – a friend like the universally loved Bjorn. He's a Belgian who proudly refers to himself as "rolstoelgabbertje" (wheelchair gabber).

"I was 12 years old when I went to my first rave, in 1997 – Thunderdome in Antwerp," Bjorn tells me. "I still see people here that I met on that day. It's like we're all coming back to a place we never really left."

Bjorn has partied at most of the major raves of the past 20 years, in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. At events, he and his wheelchair are often lifted up in the air, and DJs invite him on stage. Everyone in the scene knows him.

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"The friendship, love and acceptance in this scene will get you through anything," he tells me, before describing how, at 19, he contracted a virus that left him in a wheelchair. "This is the only place where people didn't suddenly start to treat me differently. I remained a part of it."

Bjorn in his wheelchair.

Shop-owner Dimitri was 13 and camping in the Dutch province of Zeeland when he was first introduced to gabber music. After falling in love with it, he started attending as many raves as he could, before opening DC's Specials when he turned 18. Back then, his collection consisted of only a couple of racks with a few caps, shoes and tracksuits, but today it's a true celebration of gabber culture.

"If there's a big festival happening in Belgium or the Netherlands, like Dominator or Defcon, people will fly well out of their way just to come here," Dimitri tells me. "We get visitors from all over the world – Switzerland, Chile, Japan, Australia."

Bjorn and Dimitri inside DC's Specials

Dimitri's success came partially from being one of the first to work with big brands to produce merchandise specifically for women. But the shop also reached cult status thanks to what's plastered on its walls – his personal collection of flyers and posters from legendary raves, like Thunderdome in 1998, and Mysteryland that same year. Some of the memorabilia, Dimitri tells me, is now worth thousands. "Collectors go crazy when they come here," he adds.

Of course there's a flyer from Dimitri's first rave: Global Hardcore Nation in Antwerpen in 1997. "Twenty-thousand heads bouncing up and down," he remembers. "Every now and then they'd open the stadium roof to give us some air so we could breath properly." And he still has the bomber jacket he wore that night, a "collector's item that's now worth €700".

Left: Dimitri as a teenager on his way back from a rave. Right: Dimitri today.

Almost all of the other gabber shops that were around when he first opened DC's Specials have shifted to an online-only model. Dimitri could make a lot more profit by doing the same, he explains, but the shop means too much to too many people, so he's working as hard as he can to keep its doors open.

"When the new collections come out, we organise a fashion show and broadcast it live on Facebook," he says. "We invite DJs like Noisekick and Bass to come and play at the store, while we keep a collection of Nike Air Max BW that are so unique, people come here just to take pictures with them. And, of course, we continue to organise these meet-ups. A shop like this is an important part of the culture – I'll do everything I can to make sure it lasts."