Nights out always start and end in the same way. I sit at my desk all week, poised like a compressed spring, ready to get out onto the streets. The anticipation builds until finally I’m standing in front of my mirror in a band t-shirt, dark denim jeans and a pair of red sole Doc Martens.
I always begin with pints and move to spirits. There’s no great reason but it feels more respectful to the monks who brewed Leffe, back in the day, to enjoy their work whilst my nerve endings are still intact. After misjudging timings I’ll leg it down the street with a bottle of lager in one hand and a sandwich in the other just in time to board the No 29 to Brighton.
Fast forward 8 hours and I’ll be about as sensitive to an explosion as an anaesthetised patient, bracing myself for every pot hole on the journey in a shared Uber home.
At the end of my most recent outing, I found myself sitting on the kitchen floor listening to The Rest is Politics podcast, gently sipping water and praying my nausea would end. It is humbling to close the night with Rory Stewart discussing education reform whilst you dry retch over a black bin bag.
My journey to the kitchen floor kicks off in The Post and Telegraph Wetherspoons. The establishment offers dangerously cheap alcohol and is a perfect playground appetiser for anyone heading on a night out.
As I walked up the grand sticky stairs I watched as people of all walks of life struggled to make it to the 1st floor while desperately grabbing the banister to avoid slipping on the edge of each step. Upstairs I found my mates. slouched across the three tables they’d colonised, in a heated debate about which club to visit. On one side were the Przym advocates and on the other, Green Door supporters.
For those unfamiliar with the difference, think Tories Vs Labour or Reform Vs Green. The winners of this debate would entirely determine the course of our night out, for better or worse.
Green Door is one of Brighton’s best venues – hidden beneath Brighton Station it offers cobbled floors, indie music and genuine dancing. It’s a wholesome venue where no one will judge you for knowing the entire dance to Jarvis Cocker’s ‘Common People’…
This compares to the gritty alcopop death-zone of Przym. To my horror, the group chose the latter.
Pryzm
So there we are in the Pryzm queue line. I get chatting to a random student and ask her “is this going to be an awful night out?”. She replied: “Well I got spiked here last week but I’ve come back tonight so it must be okay.”
I wasn’t too reassured by her optimism.
Unlike the cheery hello of a ‘camp as Christmas’ doorman at Green Door, here I was met by a selection of beefy bouncers splitting the crowd by gender ready for airport style searching. After my chewing gum packet and lip balm was inspected for contraband, I was ready to head to the dance floor with my mates.
Already it’s hell on earth. The queue for the bar is rammed and I’m starting to become concerningly sober, which is not going to help me tolerate my surroundings.
After 20 mins of attempting a good time, me and a few Green Door voters made a break for the smoking area, leaving behind the Pryzm fans amongst hundreds of skinny jean troopers.
Within seconds of getting to the smoking area we’re trapped in a conversation with a bloke in his 20’s trying to convince me he’s a professional boxer. It was both incredibly tedious and strangely endearing to see a stranger fighting for my attention with such determination.
Back inside the club I watched with bemusement as a fella was dragged out by security whilst throwing up on the floor. Seeking solace I headed to the toilets for a breather and some soapy water after shaking hands with at least five mentalists in the smoking area.
In the gents you’ll find urinals primed with sick, geared up men on booger sugar, vapes floating in the urinals and nicotine snus pouches clogging drains. Pryzm is always predictably tragic. It just feels grim and dirty and the clientele seem more interested in starting fights than having a good time.
Green Door
But the Green Door in the north of Brighton is a safe haven for those less fond of shuffling round a sticky floor clutching a plastic cup.
Every Saturday Green Door hosts an “It Is Still 1985” night in which the 300 capacity venue fills with goths, baggy jeans, Fontaines DC t-shirts and the occasional Radio 6 dad. It’s a place where you can drink a pint on the dance floor and not get ridiculed for your choice of beer.
You can sing Bronksi Beat to your heart’s content and beg to borrow a random’s lighter without even an ounce of suspicion from them. The cobble floors give it character, the clientele make it wholesome and the music is liberating. It’s chalk and cheese to my experience at Pryzm. Oh and whilst we’re on the subject of chalk, I should mention my view of Brighton’s other prominent club, Chalk.
Chalk is like a can of Carlsberg, decent but not something you’d choose unless options were slim. You’ll face constant Katy Perry, Chappel Roan and of course the occasional Taylor Swift song.
Every time I visit a club, other than Green Door, I reach a point in the night where I look up at the ceiling and question what brought me there. How could I be so stupid to be back on the dance floors of Pryzm after countless times swearing I’d never step foot in there again?
These days a night out is a big investment. Drinks are about £7 a go, club entry is usually a tenner and a split cab home will be at least £14 each. To spend so much and not have a good time really does leave you wondering where it all went wrong.
I’m yet to find an answer to the issue of hating clubbing. The pub just isn’t quite far enough but the club seems a step beyond enjoyment and into obscenity.
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