A Review of the Clubs I have been to in Bristol.

A list of all the clubs I have had the fortune, or misfortune, to enter, and my honest opinions on them all. Enjoy!

Gravity 4/10:

Admittedly, I spent the vast majority of my first weeks in Bristol going to this club: BED Mondays, Fishies Wednesdays, Free Rave Fridays, Luxe Saturdays, the whole lot— I was a dedicated Gravity Goer! Despite this, I think this may be one of the most overrated clubs in the whole of Bristol. The tunes are sub-par, there is absolutely no space to do any form of dancing that doesn’t include sexily swaying your hips and waving your hands in the air ‘like you just don’t care!’. Furthermore, the only actually physically appealing place in the whole club, the smoking area— where I end up spending over half of my time escaping the sordid and stinky interior of the club— is an absolute minefield. After you push past your twentieth-hundred person to find your friend, and finally source your lighter, lo and behold, you get a rank two-day-old chicken nugget thrown at your head by some over-eager rep (sorry, Sammy, but it’s true). I can safely say, I will never go into this club and have an enjoyable night, and my record time here is two hours. Which, is pretty shit, especially considering only a handful of people who are going on nights out here roll their eyes as they answer the classic Stoke Bishop acquaintances question, “you going out tonight, then?”.

Lizard Lounge 6/10:

To be honest, this is objectively a shit club. The prices are crap, the layout is crap, and the music is crap. In saying that, however, I like how it owns all of this. The music is somewhat more “throwback” than your classic ‘club classics’ club and I will somehow never forget fleeing up those narrow stairs after a long night out there to the sound of Grease’s “Summer Nights” ending. The toilets are quite lovely, the people there are ok, and I like how it doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s a fine club for bloody hilarious nights as there is not a single way to enjoy this club if you haven’t had at least 6 shots.

Lola Lo’s 5/10:

Similar to Lizard Lounge, Lola’s has an objectively horrible layout. Why the clubs on the Triangle insist on utilising an already very narrow, low-ceilinged, space in the worst way possible, is completely beyond me. However, I quite like the plethora of ABBA and other 80s songs they play and I think there is something quite endearing about the woman with £3 jager bombs enticing everyone to pay up the whole of their student loan. It’s a classic “we haven’t planned anything but want to go out” club and I do find, despite the complete lack of space to dance and utter sweatiness that surrounds me, that I have many a good night there. Prices are a joke though— why on Earth would they force students to pay a tenner on a Thursday night for an objectively dingey club?

Mbargos 2/10:

I went in here to pee once during Brass Pig night. They knew what we were doing and that the only reason people were entering their doors was to use their utilities as the bathroom was slightly nicer than a street corner, and they didn’t care. 2 points for this, I think it’s an affection-inspiring quality. I also got recognised in the toilets by a girl on my course who said she always wanted to speak to me but never had the courage, which is actually super nice and inflated my ego ten-fold.

Brass Pig 8/10:

Brass Pig, to me, is the equivalent of those lessons in school where you got to spend time with people you wouldn’t usually make plans with or were in your immediate friendship circle but would spend hours cackling because you got on so well with them. Brass Pig forces people together with horrible songs, a very pretty smoking area, and great student deals. I have very few complaints but one of them is that I see my ex-boyfriend here literally every Monday and have to undergo a very painful conversation to be polite. Also, the genuinely harrowing experience that is standing in line for the toilet. You have to start queuing as soon as you feel the slightest quiver in your bladder, otherwise, you will end up peeing yourself.

Motion 6.5/10:

I’m not quite sure how I feel about motion. I have good nights here, but they are hardly ever a shockingly out-of-this-world experience. I will say, though, Motion, ‘the concert space’, is much better than Motion, ‘the club’. I saw Rex Orange Country here and surprisingly it was amazing. Pretty much only because we snuck in with some year 13 Bristolians who had been waiting in the queue for hours but wanted to be our friends. Otherwise, we would have been pushed to the back, unable to see any of the artists we came to see. The queues are too long, it is too far away and, tickets and drinks are far too expensive to justify coming here regularly, or having it as your favourite club.

OMG 7/10:

It's fun, it's cheesy and I like that there is an accessible LGBTQ club in Bristol. The toilets are nice, the bar is absolutely lovely and the immense thrill you have when finally able to enter that random cage they have off the side of the dance room is great. It never gets disgustingly sweaty (at least not when I have been there) and I genuinely think the competitions they hold every Wednesday are such a fun and unique asset to the club. If there wasn't such a horrendously long queue I'd be down to go significantly more than I do now, especially on student night.

Lakota 4/10:

I will put it out there with my chest. I do not like Lakota. I think the music is pretty average, I think it’s far too busy, the queues are far too long and the fact that I can barely move around without sticking my head into someone else’s very sweaty armpits is shambolic. I also am terrified of the security and feel uncomfortable in their presence.

Basement 45 5/10:

Cold, dark, small and empty. I have not much to say about this place other than the music was quite nice and it was only filled with people from F block, which I have no complaints with. It's a fun club and I would go again if pushed, but I would never buy tickets in advance and count the days until I could "finally enter that depressing basement again!"

Take 5 Cafe 7/10:

I have only had good nights here, but I have also only ever been incredibly wankered here. I quite like the cafe on top, I think it allows you to have quite a nice and calm escape from the havoc that is happening downstairs. However, the smoking area is literally the size of my single bed, the toilets are so poorly managed that it’s impossible to pee, and the only time my childhood claustrophobia has been evoked in Bristol (or in the past 7 years, for that matter) is in here. The two exits to the smoking area and toilets are the most poorly planned layout I have ever seen— the flow of traffic is, therefore, two ways and just creates this overflowing swell inside the tiny basement from which the music plays. The walls are lined with nails, which is just so confusing to me. All in all, barring the amazing music that I love every time, Take 5 Cafe reminds me more of a year 10 house party than any sort of club.

Loco Klub 6/10:

I actually quite enjoyed this place, surprisingly. I liked the concept, I liked that the ceiling was high and there was a difference between the bar space, the smoking area, the dancing area and the toilets. The toilets, speaking of, were very well managed and I did not have to wait in a queue once which is hands down the worst part of any club night. Would go again.

Old Crown Courts 9/10:

I was lucky enough to enjoy a night out at Old Crown Courts three times before it closed. I adored the music immensely, and I think the concept was pretty creative. I never once had a bad night out there and it is the first club I was been able to stay in until closing time (shout out to Hannah and George). I am docking marks because number one, the toilets were maybe the most horrendous things I had the misfortune to enter. For example, they had one unisex toilet and one male toilet. In what world does this seem like a good idea? Women notoriously need longer in the toilet and also notoriously go with their friends lest they be left in a strange club, filled with men who have indulged in too many vices, alone. This was perhaps one of the most frustrating things about the whole place: their lack of toilet planning. On that note, the toilets were somewhat impossible to find (my other criticism of the place). I have never, in my life, been somewhere that was so confusing to navigate, especially as the venue and music type often dragged in people who didn’t so much like drinking and liked other things. I am attaching some pictures Eden and I sent each other when we went clubbing by ourselves there and somehow lost one another. I did not see her the rest of the night despite us calling each other frantically every few minutes and I had to find solace in the house of a second-year. Poor me.

Black Swan 10/10:

There is not one bad word I could say about this club. The music: fantastic! The capacity number: perfect! The security: you can fill your pockets with whatever you want and unless you’re Anton, you will never have an issue! The fit DJs: impeccable! The people there: the best type! Safe to say, I bring out all my classic dance moves including the ‘sprinkler’, the ‘raise the roof’, the (affectionately named by Tom) ‘Mamacita hands’, whilst my, usually male friends, crack out their intense and hilariously dramatic skanking that they have absolutely spent time perfecting in their mirrors before they go to pres. It is always air-conned and not filling to the brim, and that smaller skinny room with the ‘wackier’ music is the most fun little “other-world” I can imagine. The smoking area, is also fantastic; it is very cleanly laid out, has plenty of seats and heaters and it is almost impossible to get lost in. I cannot even fault the bar queue as I am never there. I often judge a club based on my ability to enjoy it without a large group of people. I can safely say that going with 10+ people was just as good as going with only one person. It is the most perfect place and I will certainly continue to go with the biggest grin on my face.

Revolution 0/10:

I think that this is one of the worst clubs for a Bristol University student. It is small, it is sticky, it is basically just a glorified bar, it requires quite a long walk to get to from Queen’s Avenue and it is populated by overprivileged males with mullets and ‘University of Bristol’ Quarter-Zip fleeces. We know you go to UOB, there is literally no other sane person who would willingly go to Revolution on a Wednesday or Saturday, and your ostentatious flaunting of this fact, IN A SWEATY “CLUB” nevertheless, is perhaps one of the most off-putting qualities in any person.

Thekla 0.5/10: I will give Thekla a generous 0.5 points solely as I think the location is somewhat creative (however a boat club in Bristol, is it really that creative?), as well as the fact that some random second year I met in a pub in London, said it was “the BEST club [he] had ever been to”. Nevertheless, despite having walked the treacherous journey down Park Street towards the harbour multiple times, I have never made it into the club. I have spent far too many hours of my life queuing in that bloody line, as a large group of us weigh up whether the ‘1-in-1-out’ policy after eleven PM is really worth it. Spoiler alert: it has never been worth it, How exciting can ‘Pop Confessionals’ in a poorly lit, narrow wooden boat truly be? No thank you, my time is worth more than you, Thekla.

The Lanes 0/10:

Maybe it was House Party Project, maybe it was the fact that the drinks were £9 and I only had a fiver in my bank account. But I think I had perhaps one of my worst nights out here. It was sweaty, I was sober and the whole concept of the Lanes confused me greatly. I fled with a friend an hour after getting there and I will say, the hour and a half walk back to Halls filled me with much greater joy than a club night here ever would. I would literally shove my head down the Hiatt Baker Catered toilets than go again.

The Crofter's Rights 8/10:

Crofters, I love you immensely and profoundly. You were the first club I stepped into where I thought to myself, "yes, this is my type of music", after spending far too many nights at Gravity. It's low-key, it's fun, it's packed but not too much so and you bump into your old Badock block-mates every Wednesday! I have stolen many a cup and I will steal many more in my lifetime. My only criticism is the fact that the toilets are maybe the most rancid places in the whole universe and smell like several million rats have died and are decaying in the walls. Also, that tiny staircase leading to said toilets is bloody terrifying. Especially if you're a bit wonky. I literally see my life flash by me every time I have to traipse up or down them.

Dare To Club 7/10:

Despite the scary sex club connotations (which for the record are a real thing but not every night), I had an amazing time here. The smoking area was lovely, the toilets were quite nice, and, after getting a bit more fucked, I enjoyed the trance in the basement downstairs. Which, although having absolutely no clue how to dance to it, grew on me fondly. The staff and owner were some of the friendliest and "best vibes" (kill me now) people I have ever met. They quite obviously wanted everyone to have a great and safe time, which led to my friends being kicked out of the club and us having to follow them out-- which, for the record was a shame because I was actually having so much fun. Nevertheless, I did feel slightly uncomfortable there, which was all-in-all probably due more to the fact I was out with a group of complete strangers barring two girls (I was out with their friends) so didn't really live it to my full, uncaring potential. Therefore, I am desperate to go again and give it a fairer shot.