RIP Southport Pontins: The holiday park turned rave asylum that was the fuzziest place on earth

This Friday, the Bang Face Weekender will welcome the Hard Crew to its brand-spanking new location (a holiday park opened in 1936) Butlin's Skegness Resort with likes of Hudson Mohawke, SHERELLE, Helena Hauff, Djrum and more joining in across October 4-7. The annual four-day extravaganza has become a leader in unhinged amateur broadcasting, Lord of The Rings-themed DJ sets and donk-induced Achilles tendon injuries.

Fantastic news. Phenomenal. Not least because Bang Face holds an indisputable significance to its adoring fans, many of whom return every single year — but also the community it fosters within genres such as breakcore, gabber, happy hardcore, donk and more.

For the 2020 edition, mere days before lockdown, the Bang Face faithful struggled to mask their underlying anxieties around what would happen if they were to lose the event due to a pandemic-induced cancellation — to the point where many risked anger from friends and family at home, scorn from social media onlookers (remember Bang Face Weekender as the Princess Cruise of the UK? I do) and, last but not least, infection from a flourishing novel coronavirus we now refer to as COVID-19. All to ensure Bang Face would survive.

As Planet Fun's Peggy explained to me at the time: “This festival is all we have for our genre. It's not like if they cancel Dekmantel you can just head to Dimensions the month afterwards, we felt a responsibility to make sure Bang Face went ahead so it would survive, for our scene."

Read this next: Bang Face has announced a new date and location for this year’s Weekender

Those anxieties resurfaced on January 2 this year. The location of many-a-raver's most cherished and, albeit, fuzziest memories Pontins announced the closure of its Southport resort with immediate effect, joining the recent shuttering of the operator's other sites: the North Wales-based Prestatyn Site, and East Sussex's Camber Sands.

Bang Face was quick to reassure those same supporters, writing: “We are looking at how this might affect the 2024 Weekender and will provide an update as soon as possible. As always, our priority is the Bang Face Hard Crew and we thank you all for your amazing support."

And thank god they did it. As someone who has spent some of my most treasured moments on this earth being buried under a sea of inflatables, among pieces of torn-off white placards with jokes about poo in impact font on them strewn about the floor, half a sip of lemon VK held perilously skewed above my head — I am extremely grateful that Bang Face the festival has pulled it out of the bag. Though there is a tiny - minuscule really - voice inside my head that is still mourning its now-former Merseyside home.

I can't speak for the Southport lifers, those who have been making the trip to the Sefton shores for years, with the seaside town having played host to everything from IDEAL, the Southport Weekender (now held in Butlin's Bognor Regis), Sounds Sounds, EURODANCE, retro fest and more. But I can speak for those who have thrown themselves head-first into the delights of Southport Pontins for Bang Face.

I can acknowledge my own biases as to why I have such a lingering soft spot that little diamond on the North Sea. The obvious reason for this could be that I have only experienced the Bang Face Weekender there, though I have gone to other Bang Face events which I feel still manage to hold onto their Bang Face-ness despite the absence of Croc Crew Insignia. I am also from Merseyside, and not only do I enjoy being able to nip home for a roast and reel off facts about Southport to my 100% interested, definitely friends — but I also went to Southport Pointins when I was a kid; let me tell you, tripping while listening to a donk edit of wheels on the bus go round and round as a 27-year-old on the same spot you once begged your mam for a quid to have a go on the air hockey table is an experience.

But even with my blue, yellow and fuchsia-tinted glasses, Southport Pontins was very clearly on its final lap. Some of the site's chalets had become derelict — with fittings, furnishings and even the electronics suffering from being years (or decades) overdue for renovation. Bang Face having surged in popularity after the pandemic - probably due to the post-lockdown appetite for silly, hard and fast dance music - had already outgrown the 700 chalets available on-site, opting to put up overflow guests in a nearby hotel for last year's event.

Read this next: "Silly music": Anti-establishment artists are reclaiming dance music's funny side

And even when everything was running correctly, I can't exactly claim the site reminded me of a night in The Ritz... or even a Travelodge — am I going to pretend I didn't growl in frustration every time the electricity meter went off while I was in the middle of getting ready? Or that my spirit wasn't slowly chipped away across the weekend as I yearned for a functional, hot shower? Or that by Sunday I wouldn't be fighting the urge to cry knowing I would be laying my head on the camp bed once more?

But in its imperfections, annoyances even, Southport Pontins gave Bang Face its nihilistic charm. What other festival would have you shaking with excitement to spend three nights in a cold, concrete Soviet-resembling complex as the cutting wind billows through your steamed-up, single-glazed windows in the middle of March? Risking torrential rain, sleet and snow (2018 I'm looking at you) that is typical of the Merseyside seafront? Guffawing laughter as you come up with different names for the expansive puddle that has formed on the green area between your accommodation, before watching someone dressed as a snail jump in for a dip?

In a physical sense, Southport Pontins' oppressive outward appearance combined with the cartoonish fittings typical of a low-budget seaside holiday park was so undeniably Bang Face. The way the carpets in the venues were coming away from the floor at the edges, windows with cigarette burns at their corners beneath Pontins-branded signs urging attendees not to smoke, the auditory overload as the doors from the stages opened to a symphony of arcade machine jingles clashing and bashing together over a myriad of contrasting genres. I'm getting tears in my eyes just thinking about it.

Read this next: We went to Bangface, the final rave before the world stopped dancing

But it's also in a spiritual sense. I can't think of a more Bang Face energy than the North West skies hanging above the crisp packet-laden dunes, the elegantly uniform way the bottles of Buckfast lined the shelves of the resort shop, the way the scouse security guards would call each other over to encourage your latest hair-brained scheme in the early hours.

I am sure that this weekend's Bang Face Weekender in Skegness will bring it all back, it will be just as silly, just as Bang, and just as Face. But there will always be a place in my heart for Southport Pontins, I will miss its charm, its scruffiness, its inconvenience and flawlessness. While its role in popularising the weekender in the '90s/'00s should rightfully ensure it is remembered in dance music history, I will remember the bits of sand at the bottom of my chalet shower, the way my friends all huddled together on the dancefloor in an embrace as we realised we wouldn't be able to see each other for a long time, and the adoring way the bar staff would roll their eyes as you attempted to make a pun out of combining Smirnoff Ice and 2 Bad Mice. We will never forget you Southport Pontins, the fuzziest place on Earth.

Megan Townsend is Mixmag's Deputy Editor, follow her on Twitter