Stars, cowboys, village kids and drag queens – they all flock to La Churascaia, the bullring-like nightspot in the Camargue marshes. As it notches up 60 years of freewheeling hedonism, we celebrate an unstoppable rollercoaster
H
idden in a copse of pine trees, in the southern French region of Camargue near Arles, sits the legendary nightclub La Churascaia. For 60 years, nothing has stopped this nightlife institution partying till dawn – not even a power cut. When a storm knocked out the electricity one night in the mid-1970s, the French news presenter Yves Mourousi simply drove his car into the venue, and the dancing continued to the sound of its stereo.
La Chu, as it’s known, opened in June 1965, making it one of the longest surviving discotheques in the world – behind Los Angeles’s Whisky-a-Go-Go, Paris’s Chez Castel and Rome’s Piper Club. It’ll be celebrating this feat of nightclub stamina on 29 June with a huge shindig at this most unlikely of venues smack-bang in the middle of the Camargue marshes. With 4,000 guests expected, the event will unite the three or four generations who’ve passed through its hallowed doors.
Once one of France’s coolest nightspots, La Chu’s rustic setting gave it a uniquely eclectic clientele: callused cowboys from the Camargue’s bull-ranches, village kids hopped up on the rock’n’roll infiltrating Europe, local gay men and women finally able to express themselves and Parisians on the hunt for something more authentic and wild (mosquitoes included) than the typical big-city spots. Frisky club-goers who have wandered outside for a roll in the hay have been known to have their ardour dampened after straying into a field of bulls.
