Super Clubs on School Nights: The Sixth Form Clubbing Experience

I'm stood there, panting lightly having rushed up the stairs into the main room a bit too fast. I'm watching the door I've just burst through, with wide, panicked eyes. Three of my best mates were stood behind me clutching terrible fake IDs and I'm trying to estimate the time it should have taken them to get in, if they've gotten in at all. Surely they'd be through by now. They haven't made it in. That's it. I'm the soldier in Nam who ran across the open field, spitting shots precariously into the ether, only to turn around and notice — slack-jawed — that my entire squadron's already been gunned down. "Monster" by the Automatic thuds brazenly above me. The medicinal tang of energy drinks floods my nostrils. Then, suddenly, the double doors, double doors with porthole windows, fling open. My friends, floating with giddiness, blast into the room. We embrace. We all buy Fosters in plastic cups.

Earlier this week, some news broke that really has very little bearing on "clubbing" as I understand it now. Berghain hasn't burnt down, Robert Hood hasn't retired, and Hyperdub are still putting out records. Yet in many ways, this news had more bearing on my actual, real world, experience of night clubs than any of those things would have done. Bristol's Syndicate is closing its doors for good. Syndicate was, and always will be, the first nightclub I ever went to.

You might not think you've ever been to Syndicate, and unless you grew up in Bristol or the surrounding area, you probably haven't; but trust me when I say that in some spiritual way, you have. You know the sticky carpets, the stainless steel banisters hugging rickety staircases, the constant crowds round the club photographer. This is British clubbing at it's very best. This is who we are and how we are: every different city a different super-club with a team of uniformed bouncers, a row of taxis hovering like seagulls on a picnic, a queue of plumed of cigarette smoke rising above sharp gelled hair.

This, for me, was the sixth form clubbing experience. While the following years of university or employment introduced a shred of personal taste into the process of going out, sixth form was a time when I went out simply because. Because to not have done so would have been to exile myself from a process of social evolution that was continuing all around me. Obviously experiences of growing up differ wherever, and whoever, you are, but for me in Bristol the middle of every week meant the same thing. We'd finish our final classes, disappear home on buses or on foot, only to be reunited eight hours later, bellies full of frothy lager, wearing our best going out shirts, wobbling on heels, flat shoes stuffed into handbags. Syndicate, for better or for worse, was our making.

We're in the heavy metal room. This is a direct result of bad navigation. It's sparse and engulfed by shame, by the kind of shame that can only stem from a fat bloke with a beard and flesh-tunnels farting the tune of "Iron Man". We turn and leave. The main room feels palatial. We step inside and hear it. "Dreaming of You" by the Coral. This is it. Bounding, we race down the stairs, clasping arms over shoulders while scaling them. "Up in my lonely room! When I'm dreaming of you! Oh what can I do? I still need you. But I don't want you." We reach the bottom and the heel of my newly purchased brogue boots catches an empty cup that rolls out underneath me. I slam rigidly down onto the bottom step. A shiver of white pain jolts up my coccyx. A sizeable indie banger in my ears. A shudder of hot embarrassment in my cheeks.

The night that pulled us in, week after week, was called Propaganda. Being the biggest Indie club night in the UK you've probably heard of it. While it started in Bristol it has now spread to every major University town in the country, from Birmingham, to Leeds, to Manchester. The pull for us was obvious. Had we all bundled our way into Syndicate on a weekend we'd have been met by a world we weren't yet ready for. Proper adults. Proper adults getting properly pissed on more alcohol in one night than we'd manage in a month. They'd have swallowed us whole, with their shiny bald heads, cackling laughs, and acidic aftershaves. Propaganda, or Props as we came to call it the more seasoned we became, offered an implicit introduction to the underage drinker. Of course, it was still technically an 18+ night, but with its cartoon flyers and promises of Vampire Weekend, Arctic Monkeys, and a regular but delicately timed dropped of "Mr Brightside" week in week out, it was clubbing without intimidation. A pissy, puerile playground. A safe space that felt suitably dangerous.

That's why, in a strange way, the news that this glossy super-club (that now has no bearing on my life) is closing has left me feeling strangely sad. Moving away from the city you grow up in means every visit back there is a little stranger than the one before. It can feel like every time you turn your back, tiny details are changed. Post offices become coffee shops, Somerfields turn into Co-Ops, strange elderly neighbours die and are replaced by bright blonde-haired families dressed all in Fat Face. This is now the fate of Syndicate. Another detail on the already muddy memory map I've built that will have gone over night.

It's probably not that sad. It's not likely I was going to go to Syndicate again. And even if I did decide to return to that building, there'll be a pretty close equivalent in its place. Another super-club with a similarly, faux-impressive name like Regal, or Clandestine, or Opacity. Yet if I did go inside, the carpets would be different. There would be a different bloke selling aftershave in the toilets. The smoking area might have had patio heaters installed. But this is it. We don't chose our first clubs. We are sucked into them via geography, peer pressure, and drinks deals. Yet, completely by accident, they can become spaces of personal definition. The time I shot luminous sticky vomit into a toilet bowl. The time I got off with the girl I fancied's mate and their other mate came over and had a go at me. The time I slopped six ice cubes, and a swill of Jack Daniels and coke over myself, sticking a newly bought Topman T shirt close to my hairless chest.

So consider this a confused love letter to Syndicate, and school night superclubs all over the country. The in-your-face fun time factories that leave you steaming into A Level History smelling of cheesy chips, glucose and Marlboro Lights. As the last track plays out on their closing party, and hundreds of battered students and inner-city workers pile out into rattling cabs and chicken shops, another chapter of my youth will have flickered and gone out.

Now the four of us are walking home. One is barely awake. Another chattering about a girl he claims he got off with. Myself and the last polishing off a ten deck. It's cold, but we didn't bring jackets because we only had raincoats and we didn't want to look like Bill Oddie. We make it to the middle point between our respective houses and sit for a while, watching the stars, slurring about tomorrow. The beginnings of bird song. The rustle of someone pissing in a bush.

Follow Angus on Twitter.