High and low culture
This is more of a post-nightclub tale, so apologies for the tenuous link to the actual remit.

Back in the late-90s at Teesside University, I was a member of the Cultural Studies Society, which was linked to my course of the same name. We congregated every Tuesday evening, had some talk or slideshow; something vaguely cultural (and we all know how much bollocks can be shoe-horned in under that nebulous term). We would then relocate to a pub and then, without fail, we would end up at an absolute dive of a club named The Belmont along Linthorpe Road.

We tried to stay away from this venue, as it was one of those rough, sweaty little establishments with all the charm of Fritzl’s basement. The proprietor’s idea of atmosphere and ambience being one asthmatic smoke machine, and the clientele looked like an Elizabeth Duke ‘fashion’ show.

However, fuelled by banter and eight pints of black sheep, we would find ourselves lured in by its siren call and shamefacedly paying our £2 in. Towards the end, we convinced ourselves that we were carrying out an anthropological trek every time we went, like an intrepid pack of urban Livingstones. Essentially the same pseudo-intellectual bullshit the makers of Big Brother tried to fob us off with in the beginning.

On one particular occasion, as one evening of alcohol and chav-pointing drew to an end, my friend Scott decided he wanted to, “Go shopping on Granville Road”. This was a small back road pretty much directly next to the club where substances of a recreational nature could be procured. Another friend, Jonesey, a very clever man in his late-50s who could be considered slightly naïve in other matters, didn’t understand what could possibly be purchased at 2.30am. “There isn’t even any shops on Granville Road”.

Still, he tagged along and we stood to one side as Scott carried out his transaction with a particularly shady denizen. It just so happened that Jonesey had given a talk earlier in the evening, which had been the ‘cultural’ part of proceedings. He had then subsequently carried his large, leather briefcase, stuff with various notes and other esoterica, around with him all evening. He was then slightly perturbed to see another member of Middlesbrough’s knuckle-fucker elite sidling up to him a peculiar crab-like fashion.

“Got anything interesting in that bag, mate?” he slurred, reeking of Stella and small-scale malevolence.

Jonesey, bless his innocent cotton socks, replied in all seriousness, “Why yes. I have some Hegelian philosophy.”

While our friend’s neurones collided at the speed of tectonic plates, piecing together information in an attempt to determine whether he was being made to look a prize cunt, we decided it would be an opportune moment to shepherd a still-bemused Jonesey away from the scene.
( Boss Keloid Got your mother's maiden name tattooed on my arm, Fri 10 Apr 2009, 11:20, 3 replies)

Yay!
Scaring the natives with transcendental idealism FTW!

EDIT: Actually, Hegel isn't all that transcendental, is he? Fuck it. I don't know. I once tried to read the Phenomenology. I failed.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 10 Apr 2009, 12:12, closed)

@ Enzyme
I failed miserably with Hegel as well.
( Boss Keloid Got your mother's maiden name tattooed on my arm, Fri 10 Apr 2009, 12:25, closed)

Me too.
Who actually really manages to read Hegel?
(MichaelS wasn't picked again, Fri 10 Apr 2009, 14:42, closed)