Old haunts now spirited away
IT’S weird how you become a stranger in your own town. A few years back, I found myself booked to do comedy shows at “Liquid” nightclub in Newcastle. Scarily, as a middleaged gadgie, I had no idea where that was. Was it new?
I felt as with it as Betamax video and Dixie air horns.
It’s hard when your “Oot on the hoy” map of Newcastle stops in 1989 and still has places that have long been pulled down or have had a daft name change (aye – we won’t forget Mr Ashley).
It’s crazy that some bars and clubs have gone through more regenerations than Dr Who, yet nobody is fooled as the place with the sticky carpet and prison gym clientele is still there.
Completely confused, I ring the venue and speak to a person that I have trousers older than. “Is it up from where the Bacchus used to be?”, I ask the foetus on the phone before his Twitter-type attention span is swamped. “Erm, I’ve never heard of that Mike, and I do all the bars, like”, he replies smugly.
Stupidly, I was about to ask if he knew where “Reflections” used to be, but even I know it stopped being called that shortly after JR was shot.
“Have you got Kuvo on your phone Mike?”, he asks in a tone that suggests that I either hadn’t got it or shouldn’t be allowed it if I had. “No mate”, I reply, growing irritable. To be fair, I thought Kuvo was an evil possessed satanic dog from a Stephen King book and movie. I said: “I use an A to Z.” “Wicked, is that a new app?”, he responds in genuinely impressed ignorance. Defeated, I get a taxi.
It’s tougher for my dad’s generation, for not only have the bars changed, but also a whole industrial landscape has disappeared too.
As a kid I would be blown away as he gave directions to some bloke in a Morris Oxford, using only factories as a guide. “Ye gan clear past Clarkies, drive doon by Davy Roll, hoy right at the Rope works, just passed Parsons, it’s a wee way before Will’s, but if you can see Formica, ye’ve gone past Byker.” Pure poetry!
To make things easier for everybody I reckon that buildings should be called by all the names they’ve been known by since the war. So the nightclub I was looking for would be called “Liquid-Studio-Tiffany’s at the Oxford”, so all ages would be able find their way there.
I must admit I shed a tear when they pulled it down recently – generations must have copped off on that dance floor then sloped off jubilantly with their new beau, upstairs to the snogging section in the alcoves.
The (usual) nights you didn’t get lucky, you would amuse yourself by constantly walking past your more fortunate mates and doing your best to destroy their budding romance: “How pet, ah wouldn’t gan with him, he’s got a mouth fungus and a metal plate in his heed that makes him get naked in taxi queues.”
What about getting back from a night on the Toon? Back in the day it was harder to get a taxi – anybody loudly shouting “Uber” and raising their arm at passing vehicles would have been shunned as a neo-nazi.
To be fair, the journey home from a neet oot will remain the stuff of legends and war stories for every generation – whatever you call the club you were hoyed out of.
Mike is performing his own onehour show at the Stand Comedy Club, Newcastle, on Monday, June 25.