Friday nightlife in Aberdeen changes radically as Vanity Fridays ends relationship with ATIK
By Mireia Jiménez
Photo courtesy of Aaedan Brennan
A split has occurred between two popular Aberdeen nightclubs, ATIK and Vanity.
Sources within Vanity have claimed that ATIK, previously known as Institute, gave them only hours of notice before their event on Friday 10 September, forcing them to move to another venue.
One source also showed The Gaudie screenshots of messages which appear to show how Vanity employees were soon approached with enhanced job offers from ATIK so they would leave Vanity’s team.
Deltic Group owned nightclub ATIK subsequently created their own event “Thirsty Fridays” that same night, while Vanity moved to a new venue in town, Babylon.
Their new venue will offer Hip-Hop and R&B beats as it did before in their previous location.
However, ATIK’s management has strongly denied claims it forced out Vanity, saying that the “working relationship became untenable for numerous reasons.”
Ruth Jones, ATIK’s General Manager said in a statement: “Our business works closely with students and Vanity's short-sighted views were not aligned with our long-term ones, whereby we want to offer our guests the best value and experience."
“We want to be able to offer our student guests the opportunity to work with us for their events, on any night we trade, and this was not possible on Fridays.”
On the issue of creating a new event that night, Jones said: “Vanity were openly discussing their intention to move venues, and so we were left in a position where we had to make a snap decision to remove the night from our venue - this was the best decision, not only for our business but for our guests.”
However, Vanity’s General Manager Damir Rajic described the situation in different terms.
“Being kicked out of our home after 7 loyal years was hard to take, but we fought through adversity and in the process, with our new partners at PB Devco, we will deliver a brand-new clubbing experience for Aberdeen. We couldn’t be prouder of that.”
“Our partners here at PB Devco have been incredibly accommodating. When we identified the issue of capacity with Babylon, we got to talking about College bar. Quickly landing on the idea of extending the College bar license to 3am on weekends and installing a brand-new dancefloor and nightclub lighting rig."
“This means we now have two rooms of music and two incredible options for Vanity customers to enjoy!
ATIK’s Jones added that they “had no intention of getting involved in 'club wars'” while emphasising that there was no truth in claims the club was ‘closed.’
