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Melkweg at night, green neon on the brick gable, a glass hall to the left, canal houses and bicycles along the water.
Melkweg, Lijnbaansgracht, 1 December 2009. DigiDaan / CC BY-SA 4.0. Club Annie is the address across the street, Lijnbaansgracht 238.

A ROOM

Across the Street

Melkweg soft-opened Club Annie in the old Sugarfactory. The pilot is two years, the ADE weekender is thirty hours, and the phone rule is a test.

format
Scene Report
date
Oct 17, 2026
author
CJ Archer
places
Amsterdam
words
706 words · 3 min
photo
Photo: DigiDaan

Club Annie got a month to book thirty hours, in a city whose lineups were short on women.

The room is Lijnbaansgracht 238, the building that used to be Sugarfactory and then Lovelee. Melkweg, green neon on the brick, sits on the other side of the water. The soft open was Saturday 3 October. On 17 September Melkweg had already said October would bring a club and a concert room at that address. Managing director Laura Vogelsang talked about space. Annie exists so new makers can build an audience, “especially now, when space for experimentation is under pressure.” The building had been empty for about a year when Melkweg got another chance at it. Grolsch is part of how the door got paid for. Fridays and Saturdays are the club, under the name Annie. The other nights are concerts, under the name ANN. Tiffany Day, Chrissy Chlapecka and Politie Warnsveld were among the first shows confirmed.

The public open is Annie’s ADE weekender: Friday 23 October at 23:59 through Sunday 25 October at 6 in the morning. Thirty hours. Programmer Milou Zoer had only just been given the green light to do the opening during ADE, which left her about a month to book it. “We got the word that we have 30 hours for our ADE weekender, which is the programmer’s dream,” she said. She had been looking at the rest of the city’s lineups, and what she noticed was how many of them were short on women. Annie’s first ADE, she said, would have predominantly female headliners, long sets, back-to-backs, two DJs sharing the decks, surprise guests, and sounds put next to each other on purpose. “I want it to be a weekend full of wonder. That element of surprise is what the club is.”

The hours are posted in three blocks from Friday night to Sunday morning, the English page matching the Dutch, with a blank left where a surprise guest would go. The bill can still change after you are inside.

Annie is a two-year pilot, a trial run, and Zoer calls it a makers’ house, a home for the collectives building the nights. Young collectives get at least three editions to develop a night, with Melkweg’s production, tickets and crew behind them. A quiet edition leaves the residency standing, so a thin night does not end the run. “Everyone gets the chance to grow,” she said. “Because of the high costs and the big risks of organizing, there’s very little room to really find a home somewhere and grow. Here, we do offer that part of the deal.” LIEVER LESBIES and PAARDENRAVE were among the first club nights, with the weekender.

She wanted the room to feel less like the clubs she already knew. “Clubs are often quite linear and masculine,” she said, and she described the missing thing as softer, more sensual, more playful. The name has several possible aunts. Annie Sprinkle, Annie Oakley, Annie M.G. Schmidt, or a hairdresser, or the woman opposite you on the tram. Creative director Davy de Lepper’s word for it is “very campy.” The phone policy is undecided. They are testing it, and if it works, it stays.

Melkweg was one of three nighttime venues at the first ADE, in 1996, with Paradiso and Escape. De Lepper calls a night there “total theatre”: the faces, the social life, the clothes and the music. How the building joined that first year is gone, even inside the organisation. Zoer was twelve the first time she came, and she says Melkweg is always looking for the edges.

Any promoter can stretch a poster until morning. Three editions with the crew already paid are harder to copy, and a thin night does not end the residency. Zoer said Melkweg offers that part of the deal. Lijnbaansgracht 238 is where you can watch whether she meant it: Fridays and Saturdays as Annie, the other nights as ANN, a blank on the bill where the surprise guest goes.

Sources

Thirty Years on the Calendar All Night, One Name Archive

CJ Archer