vip the morning after
“why bow to the seemingly inevitable when an iron resolve can show the way?”
The twilight zone In the post-club hunt for a late-night boozer, things can get a bit weird…
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e’ve all been there. The DJ’s killed the last song with a shudder, the lights are up and there’s a British Bulldog line of bouncers ushering everyone towards the exits. Everyone is squirming into the cloakroom or slumped in the stairwell and you’re left defending that last-minute power-round of lagers, shots and Jägerbombs like Michael Caine in Zulu. But how can it be over when you’ve just got started? I mean, if I’d wanted to perfect the art of stopping, I’d have become a train driver, right? And when booze and tunes have conspired to let my inner freak come out, why the hell would I contemplate beddybyes? With no afterparty lined up, but a strong collective urge for a few more rounds, it’s time to enter that strange, postclub period that involves scouring the streets for the most truly horrible late night drinking dens that your city, town or megalopolis has to offer. Welcome to The Twilight Zone. It’s time for strength. Time to round up [[1L]] june 2011
your last remaining allies and set forth on a voyage of discovery. Time to canvass vastly uninterested bar staff and security people about “Where else is still open, anywhere good?”, only to be be fobbed off with vague directions that to lead to neighbourhoods you wouldn’t normally venture into without armoured personnel carriers and air support. Or into the nearest taxi, if you’re anything like my mates (less military precision, more pissed up Fraggle Rock). Commandeering the first available black chariot and brandishing cigarettes, small change and smuggled beer bottles, we urge the driver onwards, chasing the moon to the closest possible drinking hole. Via sandwiches. Oh, and a cash point, yeah mate? You see, being born hardcore involves a number of very serious responsibilities: foremost, to never finish a night out on a high, when things could get incrementally more desperate and ridiculous. This might start when you realise the aforementioned cabbie knows nothing about anywhere, causing you to repeat the process until
phil dudman
...is a regular contributor to Mixmag. He’s expected home around Sunday teatime.
you’ve spent £15 going up and down the same road three times and end up in a curry joint drinking antique cans of 1664 while being pestered to dance by a middle-aged man with a pencil moustache. But then sometimes you get lucky. Without the strange and desperate urge to keep the party going I would never have discovered a crazy-golf-cum-Pat-Sharpe’sFun-House party in Budapest with a DJ in a Baywatch tower where we knee-jived to Haddaway ’til well past dawn. Discovering an ‘all night’ alcohol establishment while you’re still strong enough to enjoy it is a process that separates the truly hardcore from the assorted sloth-walkers, bus-bandits and gutter-pukers who litter your paths to glory. The sheer joy of finding one of these hallowed places, fabled by passing door staff, locals and clubbers-in-arms, can send you upon a whirlwind mission of complimenting crappy DJs, spilling pints and losing personal belongings that continues until long after sunrise. And whatever the standard of your chosen post-club watering hole, they all seem to have one thing in common: attracting the kind of Billy Bullshitter who can keep you amused for hours. Recently I’ve met ‘Ray Winstone’s vocal coach’, an ‘active member of an IRA cell’ who looked like the lovechild of Shrek and Joey Barton and talked in a Dick van Dyke-style cockernee accent, and another chap who confessed to running almost every great club night I’d ever been to, even those where I knew the promoters personally. In The Twilight Zone, reality is something to be faced tomorrow. So take it from me, when the lights go up in the club and the first pale fingers of dawn start to stir the inky skies, why bow to the seemingly inevitable when faith in three mumbling taxi drivers and a cast iron resolve for self-destruction can show you the way? Besides, it’ll pay for itself. No need to spend a further wedge on a taxi home when just a few more hours of strawberry vodka and substance abuse will have powered your urban auto-pilot to guide you home from any recognisable landmark within a five-mile radius. Heck, you can even try the failsafe technique of ‘pinball walking’, perfected by my good friend Beta, where we set out with enough momentum to ricochet off parked cars, chicken shops and lamp posts ’til we’re both safely home, staring desolately into our fridges looking for hope, milk and Ricicles. It ain’t over ’til it’s over... ILLUSTRATION BY GRAHAM SAMUELS