Today’s cocktails are going to be served in the nightclub of your youth. Tell us where you are, what you were wearing, what you were dancing to, and what you were drinking. And maybe I’ll give you a vodka milkshake in return.
November 22, 2013
Bar’s Open
Lordy.
The town I grew up in (as much as I ever grew up) didn’t have any clubbing opportunities at all. Well, except for beating the shit out of people on a Saturday night, but I suspect that’s not the sort of clubbing to which you refer.
So for me it would’ve been pub/jukebox primarily, which would’ve been the Gloucester Arms in Oxford, drinking K cider (I’m such a pikey) to excess with Led Zep on loud.
Occasionally followed by a visit to The Coven, listening to whatever was on – dancey crap or goth stuff, usually – and drinking vodka’n’whatever.
As a teen teen, Cinderella Rockefella in Guildford. Best glossed over. As a student, we are in the Citrus Club in Edinburgh, a real pit of a place with sweaty walls and nets on the ceiling. We are wearing *very* short skirts, black tights, DM boots. We are dancing to Pulp and the stone roses and the cure and the pixies and the smashing pumpkins and elastica and blur. And creep, before radiohead changed dramatically. We are drinking tap water, having downed at least a bottle of wine before leaving the house.
Tsk, what am I saying. Is this what happens to memory as one gets older? DM boots were long gone by the citrus club days; we were wearing converse, not the high top type. Or some funky Adidas trainers.
I believe I’ve already bored you with my reveries about The Adelphi and Spiders (I would have drunk beer at both venues – oh, how my palate’s matured). Prior to that, there would’ve been begrudging excursions to desperate seaside night haunts Waves and The Floral Hall, where I also drank beer, and was determined for a while to like Whiskey. The ill-conceived cider-years preceded clubbing, I believe.
So, mine’s a pint of Riding, a whiskey and coke chaser. Oh, and maybe just a little tab of acid. Ta.
I didn’t have a particular allegiance to any of Nottingham’s shiny, jacket-and-tie discos of the early 80s, although we probably ended up most often at Babels, drinking lager and dancing to the Human League. But by late 1982/early 1983, I had two regulars: The Asylum (dead cool and trendy, Grace Jones, New Order, The Cure) and La Chic Part 2 (best gay club ever, Hi-NRG all the way). The drink was Holsten Pils, served with an amyl nitrate chaser, as both places stocked Liquid Gold behind the bar. Ooh, drum break! Snort and WHOOSH!
Wasn’t there also a ropy ’80s place called Velvet or something, Dr P? Memory says it was pretty much on a suburban street, and almost could’ve been just a house turned into a club…
Would that be Silhouette?
I grew up way out in the boondocks. Every Friday night after I’d finished sweeping the floors in the Co-op, I’d drive 20 miles to Cheltenham to drink Sol and dance idiotically to the Wonderstuff, Charlatans and Happy Mondays at Cafe Continental, then sleep on the bare floor of my mate’s dad’s office.
Yes, that sounds like Silhouette.
Nightclubs? What are they then?
The only nightclub I’ve ever really gone to was at the Warwick University Student’s Union. I don’t approve of places where you can’t sit down and read a book.
The drink at the union was Smirnoff Ice from memory, or pitchers of purple *shudder*
I didn’t really go to nightclubs when I were a yoof. Nor did I drink.
I did, however, listen to bad heavy metal music and wear a lot of black.
I’d ask for one of the drinks I ordered when I began my drinking career, but honestly, the idea makes me gag. So instead, I’d really just love a mug of baileys, with lots of ice, and a nice sit down.
Silhouette, that’s the knacker.