The clubs of your youth

By expansion of the pubs thread, which clubs did you frequent in your youth? What stories could you tell?

There were a few for me, Millenium in Dudley, the place to go when you were 17 or 18. Horrible place, always fights, crap music, we went every week for a couple of years. it’s now a derelict Chinese buffet.

Or how about The Picture House in Stourbridge? marginally better than Millenium, though no less rough. I actually met my wife in here. Now the Arena apparently.

Then we started to head into Brum, so Snobs, obviously.

And indeed The Que club for music of a slightly harder, electronic nature. Never have I seen such blatant and excessive drug use as in there for Sundissential club nights:

The mighty JB’s in King street Dudley.
The Powerhouse in Brum.
The Eclipse in Coventry.
Shellys in Stoke.
Quest in Wolvs.
Loads of different warehouses around Hockley…

the d(r)ug-out bristol

The Banshee was good.

And The Thunderdome was the Hacienda’s even naughtier little brother.
Possibly the dodgiest place I’ve ever been.

Can’t find any pictures of The Kitchen on Barry Crescent in Hulme, but it was two flats knocked into one and stayed open all night.
Absolute chaos, idiots from all over the city.
Messy.

Wigan Pier. Wednesday night was Alternatve Night. Never missed it.

It’s been pulled down now and the site footprint where the club used to be is amazingly small!

#edit: Ooh! The Banshee in Manchester. Had some great nights in there once cloud 9 closed down. Didn’t recognise it in daylight.

Expo in Kilmarnock.

Good times

Royales in Manchester, Thursday night Student night, 50p a pint.

Coco Savannah in Stockport. Spangly 90’s nightclub at the heart of the brand-spanking Grand Central leisure complex, now knocked down…

Anyone remember the ‘Seafood y’aaaaaaall?’ bloke in Manchester?

Loved him to bits, but I don’t know if he sold many crabstick to wrecked Mancunian youth.
🙂

EDIT – Very, very cool Junky.
We used to split into ‘couples’ to try and sneak big groups in.
😀

Manchester: Mid 80s to early 90s. But not all in the same week.
Monday – The Ritz
Thursday – The Hacienda
Saturday – De Villes, Brickhouse, 42nd Street, 5th Avenue, Banshee, The Granby (!) and that subterranean shit hole on Whitworth Street whose name escapes me.

A couple of away days to Wigan Pier and Shelly’s in Stone too, but I didn’t fit in with the drug culture so packed that in.

We used to split into ‘couples’ to try and sneak big groups in.

I was a member but I at least understand the reference 😉

Bar only sold 2 things, bottles of Bud and lots and lots of bottles of water. Gurners paradise. I’m sort of glad it’s an office block now, or I might get all nostalgic and go back there – it would probably be fatal.

^ pffft 🙄

Kirklevington Country Club, commonly known as ‘The Kirk’,[1] was a club in the village of Kirklevington, Yarm, North Yorkshire, which saw many of the bands of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s appearing on its small stage. These included Eric Clapton (Cream), Jimi Hendrix, Joe Cocker, Rod Stewart, Moody Blues, Spencer Davis Group, Traffic, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, … etc. many of whom went on to superstardom.

🙁

Grew up in K’ford Black Country so it was
Christopher’s American
Eve’s
Summerhill hotel

Then got a job in construction so moved around a bit so it was

Top of the town – Northampton
Forty Bridge Street
Roxy’s
Some hotel club night on a Thursday – Helensburgh
The Garth Hotel
Le Parisienne – Folkestone
Pipers
Mr Smiths – Warrington
Mississippi Showboat – 50p a drink on a Thursday

Thankfully left there for Sheffield and the Leadmill became my second home before Kids came along…

Buffers and ‘the pit’. Not good.

I was all about the Indie nights at Portsmouth Tricorn. Grannies, then Basins.
Oh the girls, the music, the dancing, the cider. The driving home after the cider 😯
There used to be hardly any pics of it on the web, now there are 1000s!

And this 🙁

Floral Hall Rock nights / Manhatten rock nights Southport
Got bored with these so headed out to the ‘pool to sample –
Krazy house Liverpool, mid-nineties saw loads of great metal bands there – Napalm Death, GWAR, Pitchshifter etc. Used to be the dingiest club you ever saw with low level UV lighting and a floor you had to put effort in to unstick each foot every time you moved. Just looked for pics online now and it’s turned into some kind of student club with neon signs everywhere :weeps:
147 snooker club round the corner for a wind down afterwards
Basement of the Royal Court theatre Liverpool for more doom and death metal – Cannibal corpse, Obituary, Anathema, Cradle of filth (where I bought a T shirt that got me thrown out of college).

and that subterranean shit hole on Whitworth Street whose name escapes me.

The Venue?
Yes, it was awful, everyone a bit pissed off they’d not been allowed in the Hac.

I hated the Brickhouse.
The dancefloor was about the size of a disabled bog.
It’s the wrong way up, ffs.

Just found this, City Life, 1984:

Quite a few I’d forgot, tbh.

Clouds Edinburgh Clouds -Coasters

All of yours lunge…. ashamed to say I also went in millennium when it was a strip club (it was that dead/I was that drunk I ended up pole dancing for the strippers who had their coats on ready to go home)

Many more clubs in Brum and Wolves to add, also that one in Halesowen…42’s? For college parties

Enzos at Highpost. Some good DJs back the day.

nd that subterranean shit hole on Whitworth Street whose name escapes me.

Cypress Tavern?? Or if you fancied dodgier there was the Conti, down the alleyway…

Soundshaft near Charing Cross Road. Great little venue that was home to The Drum Club and Sex, Love and Motion…

Before that The Catacomb above the pub at Manor House (no pics to be found, thankfully).

Later Turnmills was my fave regular London venue for a variety of night…

Ah, The Conti.

The fantasy – full of nurses.
The reality – full of firemen looking for the non existent nurses, who seemed to roam around the gay village just up the road.
In packs usually.
Stickiest carpets known to man.

Truly, the last resort of the desperate, apart from the Ritz at weekends, obviously.

We don’t talk about it. It’s the rules.

(eta not my pic)

The International, Roots, Cosmos and in this pic it’s called the Phoenix Club – it burnt/was burnt down, but a “likka peyint” and it reopened a few weeks later smelling somewhat of smoke.

Attracted a friendly crowd of criminals, prostitutes, dealers, locals, a few brave students and the occasional young middle-class lad whose school friends lived round the corner. Music was excellent. Then across the back to Cliff’s blues…

The fantasy – full of nurses.
The reality – full of firemen looking for the non existent nurses, who seemed to roam around the gay village just up the road.

😆 😆 😆 😡

oh shite, the Cypress Tavern – brain bleach needed

The Venue. That’s the one.

I hated it. The smell of sweat, alcopops and stale piss, the fact that the DJ booth needed safety glass, the scaffolding robot thing, the prospect of a hideous death if there was a fire but mostly the disappointment of being there in the first place with a pack of desperate mates who mostly didn’t want to be there either. If you went to The Granby/Cyprus Tavern you had already set your sights low so absolutely everything good that happened was a bonus, same with The Conti. Had some wild nights there 😯

We used to go to The Venue because one of my mates liked shagging but wasn’t fussed about quality or putting in any ground work. 8 cans or Red Stripe and a shag. That was his perfect night out. The easiest place for him to score was The Venue, and we’d go because he’d pull his face and whinge and moan if we went anywhere else. He used to hook up with the same girl, who looked like a midget female Bernard Manning, in there every time we went. To the extent that the place became known to the rest of us as “Little Bernard’s”. If he had asked her out or gone on a regular date with her then fair enough, but he had to drag all of us along and “accidently” bump into her.

I gave up on going out with them and formed a splinter group that used to hang about in Corbieres, dressed in our tweed jackets and black roll neck sweaters. Looking cool.

My mate eventually changed his ways after many, many years of bottom feeding and fell for an absolutely fantastic lady who he is now happily married to. But I’ll never forgive him for the Summer of The Venue, despite it being nearly 30 years ago.

Couldn’t be doing with The Boardwalk either.

Have to admit all my youth clubs were a bit hazy, lots of Emotion, happy care free days driving round the country looking for the all nighter after the club that may not even be there!!
Lived on the Wirral –
Atmosphere in Birkenhead 88-89ish when they had dance nights..Sasha even played there!
Pleasuredrome Birkenhead – good little local dance club late 80s early 90s
The Basement Birkenhead….now that was a health hazard but a great laugh
Moved to Stoke to Uni-
Entropy in Longton (S-on-T), loved the place, the music, the atmosphere
Shellys Stoke – was a great club but just not my cup of tea, not enough females (I always went tro Entropy if possible, bothe Shellys and Entropy within walking/floating distance of our student house.

QUADRANT PARK II……went to Quad Park most Saturday nights….those of you lucky enough to have experienced it on the right pills will realise I’ll never be explain if properly! Was never to fussed on Quad I but quite often it was Quad I straight to Quad II…weekend over!!

oh they were the days!!

“Little Bernard’s”

…causing pain to my bruised ribs 😆

S1 1DJ

itwillalwaysbewithyou

A few more that have sprung to mind:
Liberties. For a while they did a £15 all you can drink night. As you can imagine, carnage ensued.

And of course, the Dome II. Monday nights were student nights, and with the right token it was 50p a beer. Fridays were 70’s night, horrific. Saturdays were dance night, the music was better, the clientele much worse.

And finally, The Canal in Wolvo. Used o go to Miss Moneypenny nights there, cracking night out of memory serves,

For the Brummy’s amoungst us, this article is worth a glance

Hac
Quadrant Park Bootle
Shaboo
Hacketts
Oz
Shellys
Bowlers
Monroes Great harwood
Angles Burnley.
and lots and lots of warehouses around Blackburn / Sett End.

Pik n Mix

Knew one of the three lads who built the Republic, sadly not long after it opened two of them got ousted by the money man behind the project (local scrap dealer) and the rest was history, he ended up back in Ireland driving buses but it was fun whilst it lasted

The Neon Teepee

Youth? That would have to be Hollywoods (as it was then) in Ipswich with Liberty as a fallback if I didn’t fancy the walk out of the centre of town.

Both are closed now thank gods, they were wretched places and I hated having to conform to a dress code.

When I lived in Hull this place when I was about 15:

This place when I was a little older:

The first one was truly awful. The latter is comedically awful; good music, very random drinks.

Sadly, both now long gone.