For all its faults, and there are many, London is still unlike any other city in the world when it comes to nightlife. The place is electric, suffused with ideas and talent and the desire to do things differently. It might bleed you dry and suck your soul but at least you'll have fun while that's happening. Seriously, check the listing page of any reputable dance site and you'll see that every weekend, the city plays host to literally hundreds of the best DJs to ever do it. The place hums with everything from dub to minimal to cosmic disco to avant jazz to electroclash to hard house to sino-grime and beyond. Where else can you hop from DJ Bone to Dominik Eulberg to Dixon to DJ EZ to Derrick Carter in the space of a night? We've also got thousands of great pubs to get pissed in before you step foot in one of our unparalleled venues. Nothing else compares to a proper London night out--ill-advised street-meat from the Tottenham Court Road hot dog cart and all.
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10. Actual Club Culture
Outside of Chicago, Detroit, New York and Berlin, the rest of the world feels like a poorly attended birthday party with a Spotify playlist buffering in the background, adverts and all, compared to the rich history of clubbing in our capital. London is a city that promotes diversity, a genuinely multi-cultural melting pot that celebrates otherness. That shines through in its music. Over the course of a weekend, you can get down to raunchy bashment down at Peoples, trashy disco at Dalston Superstore, taut tech-house at Egg, beardy Balearic at the Horse and Groom, and choppy club music over at Stoke Newington's Bar A Bar. The world's your Oyster (card).
Obviously we don't want to condone smoking because everyone knows its the most pointless fucking habit to pick up ever. It makes you look like a twat, and smell worse than death. But every so often, we've all stepped out from the sweaty confines of the main room and bathed in the nicotine glow of a good smoking area. This is where you meet the people you remember nights by. Friendships blossom over dropped filter tips. The three best places to chuff on a fag, you ask? The Oval Space (for pure visual poetry), the Lock Tavern (the heaters are wild) and the rarely-opened den at the back of Canavans, which Kieran used to open on the odd Thursday. These are the smokey secret garden of your dreams.
London's club scene isn't just restricted to a string of top-notch clubs. Look past Fabric and XOYO, and you've got nights that pop up in the most unlikely of places. From tatty old warehouses in the dark depths of far-East London to pool halls in Peckham, there's a vast array of spots being repurposed for nocturnal adventure. As restrictions on actually having fun anywhere after 10 PM get tighter, people are looking beyond the bouncers and subterranean staircases for their jollies. That's a unanimously good thing. Reclaim the streets, fill anywhere free with a few crates of Red Stripe and alright speakers--help make London even better.
Fun isn't always found exclusively in dank pits that stink of sweat and poppers. Sometimes you can have the night of your life in a dank pit that stinks of sweat and Strongbow instead. London hums with the sound of a hundred pubs in full flow every night of the year. They are our therapists' couches and our living room sofas. Oh, and some of them have DJs playing good music at reasonable volumes while you huff down a bag of McCoys. By the way, the best pub in London is the Marquis of Granby in New Cross. It's across the road from the infamous Venue, a club so scary that despite living minutes away from it, I've never donned the necessary jeans and shoes combo to get in. If you're braver than me, please let us know how it is in the comments.
London clubs are a hive of people watching. Imagine it's 2006 and you're an 18-year-old visiting Fabric for the first time. Imagine it's an Ed Banger night, with Busy P throwing vinyls out into the crowd and DJ Mehdi (RIP) sitting in the back, looking effortlessly cool. Imagine watching two generations of Indian tourists losing their shit to electro in the back of Room Three. Bankers splashing Moet over a young girl tripping in the corner of a club. A mum with her backpack discovering DJ Funk mixed with Justice. London, our London.
"Yeah, I know, it's mad, the McDonalds on Tottenham Court Road is open till 5!" (Photo via Flickr)We've got literally every amazing DJ in the world playing here every single weekend. Honestly, walk down Oxford Street on a Friday and you'll probably bump into Richie Hawtin, Ricardo Villalobos, Sven Vath, Seth Troxler, and Luciano standing outside Tezenis peering at knickers.
Stepping out of a nightclub always feels a little weird. There's still a buzz coursing through your system and you're not quite ready for the nightbus yet, so apart from chaining rollies and desperately trying to source a can of Tyskie, what can you do? That's right: drop a fiver on a limp pitta stuffed to the brim with charred faux-chicken, topped with catering-quality garlic sauce and limp lettuce from one of city's two million or so kebab shops. These shining beacons of gluttony and morning-after regret get us through that important hour between the club and the lounge. You can shove your poutine/hawt daaaaawgs up your arse.
Living in London in 2015 is a pretty good way to completely ruin yourself financially really quickly. After you've spunked £600 on a soiled single mattress in a condemned flat in Crayford, dropped another £160 on a travel card to get yourself to a job that barely covers those expenses, and stuffed the last chunk of your miserly wage into Dr Oetker's pockets, you'll probably be absolutely desperate for a night of oblivion to obliterate you out of your misery. Luckily, you can still have potential classic night out this coming Friday for… £15? Scope out one of the few offies that still fills a blue bag with six cans for a fiver and your drinking is sorted. Get a bus to Peckham (£1.50 each way), pay a fiver to get into Zonk Disco at the Bussey Building, and you'll still have change left for a nourishing container of burger sauce-soaked chips and gut-rotting wings for the way home.
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