If I Ruled The World (or at least a small section of it)

[juliet]

Slightly irritating night at Plastic People last night reminded me of the following list of Things I Would Change In Clubs If I Could:

1. No smoking on the dancefloor (hurrah! Obviously this is now TRUE & is a major improvement in terms of avoiding injury of self/clothing courtesy of idiots with no control of their fag).

2. No sloshy-type liquids on the dancefloor (bottles with tops are OK, I suppose). (I dislike dancing in a big puddle. Although succeeded fine at Glasto/Glade... I also dislike getting beer sloshed on me, especially nasty beer which it invariably is.)

3. Proper beer to be served, kthx. Also tap water.

4. Obnoxiously drunk/otherwise fvcked people to be evicted. Obnoxiousness including but not limited to: throwing up in a corner[0], cannoning into people, groping people (actually this hasn't happened to me for ages, thankfully), talking at the top of your voice in the Ladies about how much cocaine you have taken/want to take[1], generally being a bloody nuisance. (Drunkness/fvckedness is not in & of itself a problem, I hasten to add; although I have occasionally considered .)

5. Reduce capacity of ALL CLUBS EVER by about 10%. Possibly 20% in some cases.

6. If the dancefloor is pitch black (which in itself is arguably a Bad Thing), people who insist on repeatedly firing off their sodding camera flashes to be evicted with extreme prejudice.[2]

7. Ditto people who insist on keeping their ginormo-rucksack on their back whilst dancing (see also: tubes).

8. Ditto people who are incapable of making their way across the dancefloor in a polite & minimally disruptive fashion. It's not that bloody difficult. Unless you're drunk. See 4.

I am sure there were some more things. Hello, I am OLD & GRUMPY & I HATE FUN[3].

I do actually have one proper serious thing which I wish clubs would do: you know how they always confiscate yr water bottle on the way in? Thus forcing you to buy another one in there. This is kind of fair enough (you only have to buy one, after all, & then can refill, & they are there to make money). But it makes me sad for plastic-conserving reasons. So why not introduce a charge for taking yr own water bottle in? I'd happily pay a couple of quid for the privilege. Club makes money, I don't waste plastic, everyone is happy.


[0] marnameow & dogrando have witnessed someone doing this, & not only was he not chucked out, but they later saw him BEING SERVED MORE BEER. Shoreditch there, marvellous.

[1] Shoreditch again.

[2] Last night. Contributed directly to my leaving early due to having acquired stinking headache from aforementioned camera flashes. Also Gui Boratto was being rub.

[3] Actually I love fun. Hurrah for fun! Irritating things are not fun.

Comments

[catsgomiaow.livejournal.com]

AGREED on ALL of that (clearly I hate fun too except I don't, I just hate irritating things too!) The water bottle thing is a GOOD IDEA! Esp since I had to queue for over 10 minutes at the bar (with Shoreditch TOSSERS barging into me the whole time and barking out their orders over my head to the UTTERLY INCOMPETENT barman, grrr) for 2 pints of tap water. Except he didn't even give me pints, just small glasses. Which got mainly spilled on the way back to where we were, as chicken-dancing IDIOTS kept barging into me.

Errr yes anyway, rant over. Was that actually Mr G Boratto playing when we left? The one making all the jungle noises into the mic? I thought he was a bit rub :(:(:(

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

I think it was the Gui mang, because he was the only person playing live (all the rest were dj sets) and that was def. a live set.

[juliet]

At the Water Rats, when BMovie was still running there, they used to leave a stack of glasses & big jugs of water at one end of the bar, for people to help themselves. This was a Good Thing.

Apparently not GB after all. Good, cos he was rub :-(

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Patently because their water bottles are invariably full of vodka. Still, one of the perks of DJing is that if people are behaving in annoying ways, I have discovered I can ask the bouncers to throw them out, and they do!

20% below capacity and we fail to break even, annoyingly. Well, I'm sure the club doesn't fail, and it makes few odds to me either way, but the body corporate fails.

[lovelybug.livejournal.com]

You could insist that people with bottles empty them, but allow them to keep the actual bottle? Clubs should have to allow you as much free tap water as you want anyway (I don't think this is currently the case)

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

ISTR that pubs (and other hostelries catering to passing trade) are supposed to be able to provide a glass of water. Nightclubs, and other venues that charge you for entry, do not need to provide free water. That was definitely the case while I was at uni - several clubs had a clipping of a relevant legal requirement on the wall behind the bar, to deal with smart-alecs.

[lovelybug.livejournal.com]

What about the providing food one? I remember being told that places that serve alcohol have to serve food, and have never known if that's true (well, I assume it isn't, as afaia Slimelight, for example, doesn't have a kitchen. In fact, the very idea of what would come out of it is a bit scary...)

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

I remember being told that places that serve alcohol have to serve food
I'm pretty sure that's not true, unless crisps count! After all, many pubs don't serve food (or at least, didn't - maybe why they're now closed), and most clubs don't either.

There used to be something about places with seats and tables offering the use of toilets to customers - which resulted in a couple of squatting mates using the local kebab shop's loos as a place for a wash and shave - until they cottoned on and got rid of their tables ...

[juliet]

Yeah, taking it in empty would be fine.

Clubs aren't obliged to provide tap water; but they *are* IIRC obliged to have the water on in the loos (there was a while during the late 80s/early 90s when some clubs turned the taps off to stop people from refilling water bottles. Either Westminster or Camden council brought a bylaw in to deal with this, & other councils followed suit.). Which is my solution these days - buy one bottle, then refill (bottle easier to manage on dancefloor than glass, as well).

[lovelybug.livejournal.com]

People used to be sick in the corners of Rios *all* the time and didn't get chucked out. Ick.

God, I can't wait to go to my first post ban gig. No fags in the mosh pit! Hurrah!

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

Rucksacks on dancefloors (and also moshpits) are Teh Wrong. Although there was the fine moment when someone's rucksack came apart during a Killing Joke gig. The contents spilled across the floor of the Astoria. While a hundred maniac wardanced over it. I may have been less than sympathetic.

It's a good idea about the bottles, but I suppose from the club's point of view, they don't know what you've got in your bottle ...

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Agreed on the bottle front. Sealed or empty would probably work?

Hmm, it sounds like I made the right decision last night, anyway. :-/

[juliet]

Yeah - I'm glad I went out, as I did get a bit of dancing in, but it wasn't great :-/

[jhg.livejournal.com]

Clubs are crap!!!

The first time I ever went out dancing was aged 15, on holiday abroad: the 'disco' was out on the beach, under the stars, with flaming torches around the dance floor.

Clubbing in the UK has thus been an enormous letdown my whole life.

[dogrando.livejournal.com]

throwing up in a corner ... marnameow & dogrando have witnessed someone doing this...

It would be possible to read this as claiming that this happened in Plastic People. I should point out that it didn't, it happened in The Ditch Bar, which is the secret heart of Shoreditch.

Also, he wasn't it a corner, he was just sitting at a table.

Also Gui Boratto was being rub.

While nit-picking factwise, it emerges that the annoying singing man was probably Matias Aguayo (so I'm guessing that Gui would have been on 1–2: an odd choice for a Wednesday, but there you go).

No smoking on the dancefloor

The only thing is, now you can smell all the bad body smells. Ewww. Deep Down and Dirty (which was horribly sweaty) reeked, for example. I kept smelling chips at Plastic People, I can only guess that the intake for the aircon was next to a chippie or something.

[juliet]

Also, he wasn't it a corner, he was just sitting at a table.

That's worse! Ewwww!

I haven't noticed bad smells particularly, but then I've only been out to one club since the ban came in (blimey, how rubbish of me). I didn't notice the chips at PP; maybe my nose is not working or something.