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Introduction

Buzz and Zoom

The lads started to go the Gem on a regular basis in '88 after Bev and Sladey tasted the Manchester club scene. They were sadly disappointed. Still Thursday night was touted as the Alternative Night so we gave it a try. It was then when we realised where the students of Hartlepool Sixth Form College retired to after the Woodcutter called last orders. We were all ready to turn around and go home until Sladey noticed the price of the drinks. They were giving the stuff away. Briscoe would stand around trying to be cool, Sladey would stand around in his Hawaiian shirt trying not to be cool breaking ever now and again to demonstrate the now seminal dance, "The Wank the Giant Carrot". This was later adopted by the rest of the clubbing fraternity when dancing to the as then undiscovered Acid House. Weird by even Thursday night standards, the Saturday night clientele would take exception to these strange phallic motions only to be imitating the master in the coming months.

Somewhere along the line the management must have realised what I noticed the first time that I went through the doors; the place was a dirty hole. After a short interruption and a brief visit by the Julian Clary set designers, the Gemini was transformed into the glorious "Heavens Above" complete with golden angels and cherubs adorning the ceiling and walls. Gloriously tacky it was still business as usual on a Thursday. Thursday night was to become a regular fixture for a number of years for the lads. From one week to the next, everything was exactly the same. The music was the same, the faces were the same and more importantly so was the price of the drinks. The only downside was the blinding hangover which seemed to go hand in hand with the nearest place to heaven.

The years moved on and it was time for yet another renaissance. A reputed million pounds was spent converting the old Heavens Above to the now Buzz and Zoom. After a lengthy period of closure, the Gem was born again and ready to thrust the Hartlepool club scene into the 21st century. With great anticipation I passed through the hallooed gates into the now revitalised club. The downstairs and the upstairs had been separated completely. On a weekend the downstairs is dedicated to 80s music whilst the upstairs kicks out the latest happening tunes. In totty terms, this translates to grab-a-granny downstairs and teenage heaven upstairs. It is a sad indictment of our advancing years that we find ourselves wandering between the two floors. That said, Sladey always gravitated towards the 70s even in his late teens.

In the face of stiff competition from the newly opened Wesley , the Gemini has once gain attempted to consolidate it's position as the king of the clubs by under going yet another facelift. Regulars will have noticed lately that the upstairs has been shut now for quite sometime and last weekend was the grand opening of the Darby and Joan club. No, unfortunately the name is nowhere near as imaginative as that, its called the Club 25. So it was to be after getting tanked up around the town last Saturday night, we managed to get hold of some vouchers to get us in for nowt and made our way  to the Club 25. For a grand opening, we were slightly surprised by the fact that the queue was non existent and the bouncers outnumbered us 2 to 1. Upstairs the story was no different; ghost town. The new decor is conservative (well compared to the angels and cherubs that used to adorn the walls) and you don't stick to the carpet anymore. So we sat around for a while waiting for something to happen....... nothing, no buzz, no vibe. The music was shite but then it always is in there. Every now and again some lost teenagers would drift past but would then disappear back off to the Ibiza Foam Party which was in full swing downstairs. The dance floor  was empty aside from a few people, some of which looked like they had escaped from Stranton House for the night. A few podium dancers were dancing about in a vain effort to fire the place up but to no avail. After pondering for a while I came to the conclusion that although a  lot of the people that go out in the Big H. on a night must be over or near 25, they don't want to admit it and certainly don't want to be grouped. Besides, you are not going to bag a luscious 18 year old on a over 25's night. The monotony was broken by some cheeky lass dropping her pants right in front of us for no real reason at all. Great view but she should have shaved her arse. In search of some action, we headed downstairs in search of the Foam Party that was going off. The dance floor resembled the scene that normally accompanies you trying to have a bath when you are clean out of Matey bubble bath. There were a lot of people standing around looking like drowned rats. Katrina and her girlie friends ventured into the foamy frenzy only to come off 5 minutes later, holding her head in her hands and complaining that the foam had irritated her eyes. In fact it got so bad that she was shipped off to the General Hospital and by the end of the night ended up in the Sunderland Eye Infirmary. Leaving the nightclub, sat on the pavement outside, was a couple of other girls both in some considerable pain due to foam in their eyes. What a shite night.  By means of a post script of this tale of woe, Katrina has since tried to sue the Gem. The Health and Safety Executive are also going to have a pop at them for failing to adhere to HSE guidelines. So, following in the good tradition of all failing HUFC footie managers, the manageress got the boot.

Can you believe it! Just when you get used to the Angels hanging from the rafters, the Gemini is to change again!!!!! Yes Club 25 was a complete flop as I thought it was going to be and they are going to have another go at a refit. Your man on the spot was there the other weekend for the final night as the Gemini as we once knew it. So, being the last night me an the lads decided to go for it. At least they said they would but it ended up with me being palatic. Vague recollections of the night included lots and lots of podium dancing with Watson and a fat lass. It was all going great until they played their "Ska" revival thing and I courted near disaster by almost falling off me podium. I was absolutely ratted and we danced and drank until they chucked us out. I did however manage to remember some of the fine details! The Gemini is to close for about ten weeks and the reopen as Club Uropa! Rumour has it that the upstairs is going to be a pool parlour but fuck only knows how long that is going to last.

Walking back from the nightclub that night, me and Parsons stopped off at the new kebab shop next to Kebab Choice and then we sat down on the corner of our street to scoff it. I can't remember the name of the place but you get tons of food and is well recommended. There we were with bits of lettuce and dead animal hanging out of our mouths, when along stumbles a pissed up bloke with his bewer. Stopping outside the old Tanning shop, the bloke gets his todger out for a wazz up the wall. Nothing unusual there you might say, common occurrence in the Big H. at 3 am on a  Saturday night especially in York Rd., the world's largest open plan toilet. What was unusual was that this bloke couldn't stand up let alone direct his hose pipe which ended up going all over the place until his chick spotted the problem. After a gob full abuse for pissing up her leg, she grabbed his todger from behind, held it while he emptied his bladder, and then gave it a bloody good shake and put it back where it belong. Me and Parsons nearly fell off the wall laughing. I thought I'd seen it all until that ........
 

And Presenting Club Uropa

We stumbled in there  on New Year's Eve last. The whole lot of us were totally rat arsed after trailing around all of the pubs. Even Sladey had his dancing shoes on that night. The inside does'nt really look too much different to what it did before except for this over bearing primer red colour which adorns every vertical surface. The upstairs has been converted to a pool parlour but that is not a great loss since the majority of people seemed to enjoy shoe horning
themselves into the downstairs anyhow. The music still sounded like it was been spun by a demented 7 year old who had just discovered his Dad's Christmas Greatest Hits Album. We danced and drank until Sladeys sister took exception to the decor and inspired by the latest effort to reinvent the place, threatened to redecorate again.
 

The Cotton Club

I'd heard of this place before but up until last weekend, I'd never quite managed to bring myself to go into the place. A bizarre twist of circumstances lead me and the lads to be stood outside the Cotton Club and The Shades at the bottom of Church St. It all started here when the lads realised when we met up for the night in the Park Hotel, that  I'd forgot to put a pair of shoes on. With the only pair of shoes that I have in Hartlepool being a tasty pair of grey slip on shoes circa 1984, all requests to go home and put them on were met with the carefully considered reply, "Fuck Off". It was then when they enlightened me to the fact that there is actually a dress code in some of Hartlepool's drinking establishments nowadays. Well I couldn't fucking believe this and it was only when we were turned away from Yates Wine Lodge that I realised that they were actually serious. Normally at the end of the night we head off to the Gem for a bit of excessive beer consumption and to check out the latest article of clothing that the average Hartlepool lass has decided is surplus to requirements. Rather than risking the chance of us getting knocked back at the Gem, we decided that we need to go to a place with no standards, no taste and no dress code, The Cotton Club. I have to say that things were not looking too good when we rocked up to the entrance. A load of coppers in riot gear were running around looking as if they knew what they were doing. Shortly afterwards, another transit full of coppers arrived and they all piled into the nightclub. Then another transit van appeared. full of a rapid deployment force of trained doorman who promptly disappeared into the nightclub. Stood outside, completely bemused by all of this, I decided to approach one of the bouncers to find out what was going on. The reply "Ugh, We were called out, something about rival drug gangs trying to kill each other". Now if I was sober, perhaps common sense would have prevailed and I would have disappeared with Parsons and Briscoe, who obviously realising the severity the situation, decided that a eating a kebab was a much less dangerous occupation than spending  the next two hours inside this hole. However, since I was shit faced, I handed the doorman me three quid and piled on in.

First off we went upstairs so we could let Watson off the lead. He had just split up with his chick and was in fine mood for checking out potential meaningful short term relationships lasting no longer than 24 hours. The chicks in this place were rougher than a badgers arse but that didn't seem to bother most of the blokes in the place. The drink was disgusting and dead expensive as well so I didn't have too much of the stuff. They don't clean their lines properly and the beer tastes like window cleaner. What I did have resulted in some pretty smart toilet olympics the next morning. So me, Peter and Watson sat around trying to look interested but it wasn't happening. The music was crap for the most part. The whole place seemed to be nothing more than a pulling palace. In fact it must have been a pretty good one because by the time we got round to leaving, there was no bugger left in the place except us sad gits.

So to conclude, if you want to party on, you're tanked up and you've got trainers on, GO HOME and have a cup of Horlicks.
 

The Wesley

Nowadays, the Wesley Chapel, is a rather smart looking building not out of place in the dog shite capital of the NE. No doubt the old Wesleyians might have a thing or two to say about the activities that go one in there nowadays but thats progress eh?

Although the lads had been in the place on a number of occasions, it's took me bloody ages to manage to check it out. So when I was home last and we discovered some tickets on the pavement in Church St. offering free entrance and a drink, it was like waving a pension fund in front of Bob Maxwell. I had heard tales of the place being packed to the rafters with loads of nubile young lasses with not much in the way of clothing so I was quite looking forward to this. However, when we got inside, the place was deserted! Half past eleven on a Friday night, and there must have been fifty people in there. To console myself I decided to get my free drink but the bar man told me I could have anything behind the bar providing it was Strongarm. I decided not to bother as I reckoned the cost of a bottle of Metz would have paid the wages for the staff for a week. So we stood around and tried to look cool. Pretty fucking hard when the nearest person to you is 20 yards away. I was actually very impressed with the layout of the place. The DJ was doing his best considering. The music was okay and he was having drinking competitions (what else could it have been) on the stage. One of the games involved three lads sitting down on the floor, taking their socks off, putting it over the top of their pints, swapping the pint with the lad next to them, and then speed drinking the pint through the sock. Lovely I thought. Still worse was still to come. I fancied a dance but the fact that it would have been a solo effort dissuaded me in the end. Lee, who is like a dog in heat at the moment, had spotted in the distance a piece of loose fanny that had the misfortune of appearing from a dark recess and darted off to try to persuade her that yes, she had met the man of her dreams, and would she like to come back to his new flat so he could check out the inside of her pants.

Feeling the urge to have a leak, I ventured to the toilet where I met the undisputed vomit king of the NE. As I was stood at the urinal, I could hear retching noises coming from a nearby cubicle. Looking down at the floor there was a very impressive pool of orange bile bubbling out from underneath it. Then two lads pulled possible the most palatic person I have ever seen out of the toilet, dragging him through all the orange bile before dumping him in a large puddle of it in front of the urinal. The vomit king was motionless, only intermittently moving to chuck the rest of his guts all down the front of his shirt.

So that was that. To be quite honest I couldn't really say what the Wesley was like. I would imagine that it is quite good when the place is heaving and the drinks are not too expensive. Talking to my mates, it would seem that everybody has started going back to 42nd Street again. Given that the market for night clubs in the town is more or less saturated now, it looks good for tight bastards like me who don't care much for paying two and a half quid for an alco-pops. Perhaps they might start dropping the prices or it will go the same way as the Venue which is now boarded up and for sale.

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