Publication: About Time
This was an anonymous nightclub column
Summer 1991
I’m not really a nightclub person; my feet catch on each other, I spill other people’s drinks and my funky stuff resolutely refuses to strut. I don’t like not having space to move and I don’t like having to shout. Maybe that makes me a boring sod. I don’t care.
You’ll see me around next time you’re in one of the clubs I go to; I’m the one who looks like his mother’s sent him to pick up his kid sister and he’s had to come in to find her. I wander around vaguely, dance for a while, then potter off again, looking for someone, anyone, I recognise.
The only club I really feel at home in is upstairs at Peppermint Park on a Monday night. I don’t have the stamina or the energy to dance for long but that doesn’t matter – it’s dark and alive and the bassline rises up inside you, triggering off something within you that you can’t let out on the streets.
I don’t like the downstairs that much – too many students in worlds of their own, partying on down to Dexy’s Midnight Runners. (The fact that I used to be one of them probably explains why I don’t like it.) Ritzy’s is another one I have problems with. I’m always expecting to see Micheala Strachan and Pete Waterman looming in front of me. I keep getting spirited down there by friends, and end up having a whale of a time, but I always leave not quite sure why I did.
I used to go down to the Carribean, as it then was, once upon a time. It was a bit tacky, but still fun and the music was good. I keep telling myself I’ll have a look at it now that it’s The Loft, but the closest I ever get is sitting downstairs in Domino’s, waiting for a mushroom, pineapple and sweetcorn deep pan with my Beloved Other Half.
Hy’s has bittersweet memories, and I haven’t gone there since. People keep telling me I ought to try the Jacquard, that I’ll find it a home from home if I do. Maybe so, but when all is said and done, I’m not really an nightclub person; maybe that makes me a boring sod, but that won’t stop me being out there again next Saturday night.