The New World
This was a nightclub in my hometown that's now been demolished, apparently just to make the street look a bit tidier. It was in the smallest building possible, so the tiny dancefloor and tiny seating area were connected by a thin corridor alongside which was the bar. There was another small room in the attic. It was notable for three things - it was dirt cheap, anyone could get in (thinking back to my schooldays now) and they had a very laissez-faire approach to smoking the good stuff in there.

This story begins a couple of weeks after I finished university. A couple of my schoolfriends were back in town having just finished their degrees as well, and by luck or misadventure we found ourselves in the New World after the pubs closed. It was a bit crowded, but when you're partying in a corridor that probably means there are ten other people present. After finding a table we got down to the important business of the night - sinking beers and smoking skunk.

We'd been there about an hour when a girl ran in through the back door, crying, and sprinted upstairs to the tiny attic room. Thirty seconds later, about ten guys came barrelling down after her and started punching everyone and everything in sight. It was like a classic brawl from a western, right down to us (only just) ex-students sitting in the middle of it all and moving drinks out of the way of sprawling fighters, ducking to avoid punches and so on. Miraculously, by the time the police arrived (and we'd secreted the weed away again) we were still completely unscathed - though the bouncers, barstaff and most of the other patrons were carried out bleeding into ambulances and police vans.

About a week later I started working there, apparently because I'm insane. I had the arduous task of sitting by the door, taking people's money and looking after their coats. I got through a good many books during that time, and was allowed to go into the club for a spliff break every so often.

I also got on very well with the bouncers, picking up a fair bit of Jamaican patois and some awesome weed along the way. These were guys who showed up to work armed to the teeth and carring enough drugs to hospitalise an elephant. One day I timidly asked them what had happened that night just before I'd started work there.

It turns out that a bouncer from one of the pubs in town had finished his shift and gone to the New World to get leathered. Stumbling across a couple arguing vehemently, he'd tried to take them outside (even though he didn't work at the club) and when they'd inevitably both turned on him, he'd hit the girl. She'd run straight back in the back door and told all their mates that the bouncer just hit her, and they had decided to take revenge on the bouncers at the club, none of whom were involved in hitting the girl at all. One guy was so badly injured that I only saw him six months later and even then he wasn't fit to return to work. The pub bouncer got away scot free that night, but was regarded by the rest of them as a joke anyway as about three weeks later he picked up his eight year-old son who headbutted him in the mouth and knocked out his two front teeth.

I loved that job. I've probably got more stories from the year and a half that I worked at the New World than any other time in my life - the police raid when I had to hide all the bouncers' drugs and weapons, the escaped criminal who wouldn't leave the premises but of course the police didn't have a warrant to come in and get him, the glass collector who stole luxury cars to order, the reggae nights when I was the only white person in the entire building, the enigmatic manager known only as "the Sarge", the stripper nights (for "stripper" read "prostitute"), the weirdo ex-jailbird Christians that hung around outside trying to convert drunks at 3am...not to mention that my band played some of our best gigs there in the attic room.

Ah, memories.
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Wed 15 Apr 2009, 9:51, Reply)