The text that follows is a given, that it will awaken memories. From a time when everything was different. Happier, brighter… more samatadzidika and definitely more innocent. It is a text that PASOK would appreciate. The old one. The orthodox.
It is from the time when Greece sighed on its tracks nightclubs. A time when the thirst for self-promotion and waste of (those who τα had) money prevailed. Then the one who had them took care to open more champagnes and mainly to break more dishes than the gentleman with the white sock, the scorpion and the lame jacket on the opposite table.
It is the time that is so brilliantly presented in the emblematic, now, film of Pantelis Voulgaris "Everything is a road" where the shocking George Armenis shouts "Elias throw" for that bouzouki shop whose plates had been broken from the plates to the και tiles and items hygiene.
The season around breaking dishes (which even the junta of torture and exile islands could not defeat) an entire industry had been set up to support thousands of families! Yes. There is nothing wrong or excessive in the previous sentence and you will understand it below…
If one wants to find the roots of this… highly Greek "custom" one must go back many decades. It was in the early 1930s, when then the paralyzed and mostly drunken nightclubs were throwing knives at the singers' feet.
As it is easily understood, this "custom" caused a lot of injuries and literally stained the runways with blood, so a little bit by the artists themselves, a little bit by the shopkeepers, they gradually managed to put the brakes on before it was too late and mourn nothing dead from… much fun.
Alternatively, it was considered that it would be preferable and definitely safer to break dishes or glasses. Initially, this new trend was not embraced by all the revelers. Gradually, however, and since they could not do anything else, they accepted it.
In terms of breaking dishes, it flourished in two different periods. First it was that of the 1960s and after a slight decline it experienced its absolute glory in that of 1980 but also in the first years of the next decade.
The period of decline was marked by the period of the junta where, in fact, there is a story starring the dictator Papadopoulos. According to this story, he had gone to have fun one night at the "Fairy". Everything was going well until a cheerleader breaks some dishes. Others follow and a little later there is a small loss.
Enraged, the dictator leaves the store and the next day issues a decree according to which breaking dishes in nightclubs becomes a private offense punishable by up to five years in prison.
At first the people of the night were "numb" and under the fear of the junta the breaking of the dishes became something like Theodorakis' records. It was done in secret and since everyone was sure that there was no Security secret among them.
All this, however, changed when one night the legend wants Aristotle Onassis to go to "Neraida" to have fun. At some point, then, the party has ignited Onassis asks to break dishes. The owner explains that the situation is now and the rich Greek decides to make his own uprising. Like another… George Armenis asks the owner to break inside the store, anything that can be broken.
That's it. From that moment on, the number of offenders is increasing, the prosecutors "pull" various petty offenders but do not dare to touch names like Onassis. The junta is retreating because now the problems created by this ban are more than what it solves and somehow the "custom" erupts again.
According to reports at the time, the breaking of dishes was the reason for the establishment of an entire industry. It is said that the Greeks broke the dictatorship or during the period of seven years bouzouki about 100.000 dishes every month! Inconceivable number.
At exactly the same time but also post-dictatorship, now, about 50 handicrafts were created that employed about 1000 staff in total, to cover all the orders of plasterboard which had replaced the porcelain for reasons of cost and safety of those on the track as well, as is perfectly normal, the injuries had increased dangerously.
After the end of the dictatorship and until the beginning of the 1990s, the "custom" hit red. It is rumored that in a well-known nightclub of the capital, 2.400 dishes were broken in just one night, with their weight exceeding 200 kilos in total! Millions of dishes broken all these years. Countless money spent. Many jobs were opened by this "custom".
Every night (season photos taken from a relevant Facebook page) the big tracks looked like a battlefield. Such was the rage of the spectators to break dishes and do their που damage that there were so many minor injuries of singers, musicians and people who just wanted to dance in the wrong place at the wrong time.
What the junta and its nickname failed to do, however, the artists themselves did. When the situation was out of control and the breaking of the dishes was not something that was happening in the chakir fun but the songs and dances just came in… inoculated somewhere between the breaking of the dishes, big names of the Greek pentagram took the situation into their own hands their.
The beginning was made by Marinella who made the proposal in the shop where she was singing at that time, to replace the dishes with cloves.
Naturally, this proposal initially surprised many, but gradually, and given that many singers who were silent until then, asked for the same to be done otherwise they would not go out to sing, it began to be applied in almost all nightclubs.
Within a few years (and even today) the breaking of dishes was limited to a few, measured, night shops and without having the form it once had. Because of course we are in Greece, the country of exaggeration, now the pistes are transformed into carnation nurseries. But at least the singers were no longer in danger of being slaughtered by a flying saucer.