Apropos Nothing

I went out last night to Aquarium [1] in Shoreditch. Aquarium is, as far as I know, the place to go in Shoreditch when everything else is shut. It is called Aquarium because it’s got, would you believe, a swimming pool in it. I saw it myself: a swimming pool, with people wearing swimming costumes, swimming in it. That’s pretty cool really. I can only assume it used to be a gym.

The club has three rooms not counting the pool, which I didn’t go into (there are little windows in the main room looking onto it). There’s a bar with its own music but I’m not sure if any dancing goes on in there. There’s also the main room which is mostly dancefloor, and another smaller room. In the main room were Oxia (good) and Italoboyz (who I’d not heard of before and wasn’t enormously impressed with). In the back room was something very peculiar indeed: Girlcore.

I couldn’t really figure out what was going on and now that I’ve looked at their website, I’m none the wiser really. It wasn’t really interesting enough to attempt to describe in detail. Sort of like a cross between a burlesque show and a teenage girls’ sleepover party but without most of what I would consider the good parts of either. I think I may have appeared in a photo but with any luck I wasn’t looking handsome and flamboyant enough for it to make it onto their website.

I wasn’t actually planning on going out at all but I’d not left the house all day and fancied some human contact [2]. “Going for a walk to Shoreditch” has become my new favourite form of self-delusion. Namely, deciding it’s not really a night for going out, going for a walk and then, lo and behold, someone hands you a flyer and it looks good so you stop by. On your walk.It wasn’t a great night out, possibly because I wasn’t feeling in the best of moods and definitely because I didn’t take any drugs (apart from the standard alcohol of course). I’d had mo dhóthain by 6 but it goes on till 10.

There was something slightly unwelcoming about this club. Some of the security are total knobs, as security seem to be pretty much everywhere except Fabric and The End, where they’re incredibly professional. The crowd, though, were the real problem. The trendier-than-thou Shoreditch crowd.

I’m not well-versed enough in fashion to do justice to describing their physical appearances but rest assured if you got one person like this in a club in Ireland, everyone would be going “Wow, look at that guy/girl”. In Shoreditch, you get an entire club full of such people.

I have no problem with people being more into fashion than I am – especially not the girls, many of whom were very pretty and looked amazing. But as I’ve said before, you don’t want a whole club full of them. They know you’re not one of them and they like to let you feel it. They also don’t like to “get involved” as much as they do in places like The End. Not much whooping and hands in the air and so forth. Perhaps the place isn’t totally fuelled by ecstasy like the places I normally go but I can’t help but think the Shoreditch lot just consider themselves a bit too cool for that sort of thing.

Particularly in the smaller room it really felt like being at a house party where everyone knows everyone and you know no-one. Obviously I did know no-one but it doesn’t always feel that way. A festival is the best example of a place where it doesn’t feel that way at all which is why I love dance music festivals so much. It’s like what London could be like if people would just be a bit nicer to each other.

Earlier in the week I went to see Midnight Juggernauts (with some good support) at the Scala in Kings Cross. I bought two tickets for some unknown reason [3] and then realised I had nobody to take. At the last minute it dawned on me that the next day was actually a bank holiday, Good Friday (see, unemployment strikes again) which meant I could ask cousin Katie. She and Anna kindly came along – neither of them massive fans of dance music, but they enjoyed Midnight Juggernauts. I had a couple of shweets, they got totally hammered and we all had a good night.

Next time I go for a walk I’m going to hang a right in Dalston and go Islington and then on to Holborn. It’s a longer walk but the, um, scenery is a lot better.

[1] It’s worth mentioning that I went here before in search of the AF TA PTY, got there, found it to be closed and went home. I think I wrote about this at the time. I now realise I was looking at Bar Aquarium. Club Aquarium is a few metres further up the road and probably was open.

[2] Note to self: Shoreditch is probably the worst place in town to go if you want human contact.

[3] Well actually I remember the reason. I thought “It’d be nice to go to a gig with someone else for a change, I’ll buy two tickets and give one to someone else”, but didn’t give any thought at the time of purchase as to who (of the few people I know in London) that second person might actually be. Not having any friends is a vicious circle, let me tell you. They say it takes money to make money; I think it’s equally true that it takes friends to make friends. I might sit under the bridge on Old Street like the homeless people do, with a sign around my neck that says “I’m actually quite nice and interesting once you get to know me”.