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Seeing Docklands in that state would be like visiting a desecrated grave.

— Ingemar Johansson[a]

I didn't go to Docklands many times - maybe three or four in total - but it was certainly an experience. Loud techno being blasted from stacks of speakers immersed the several hundred people in the shipyard's old welding hall in laser-lit fog and thundering rhythms.

Docklands opened in 1995.

Then the police noticed an increase in drugged up kids in the city, traced it to Docklands, controversy erupted, and Gudrun Schyman raved.

The police went in heavy handed at the start, but after a while a kind of steady state emerged: the police would occasionally shut down the party, but would also let it run to completion. As Lars Sandgren, narcotics officer, explains:

The great majority of those who partied at Docklands didn't use any substances at all, but a small clique did drugs.

We could go in, six plainclothes officers, turn off the music, turn on the lights, and announce "party's over". And while we were of course booed it was surprisingly calm every time. Thousands of people just packed up and went home.

— Lars Sandgren[b]

Docklands closed in 2002.

Now it's a residential area. The name "Docklands" live on, in a way - in a restaurant and event venue by the water, and in the name of the local homeowner association.