Five Quick and Easy Ways to Make Your Clubbing Life Considerably Less Shit

Listen up you dull fucking hipster, you know it, I know it, we all know it: clubbing's gone to shit. It's the worst thing in the world now. We'd all rather spend our Saturday nights moisturising with sandpaper, getting pissed on the liquid remains of a compost bin and catching up on episodes of BBC News' HARDTalk these days. Apparently. At least that's what the think-pieces are saying.

While it's true that clubbing, as an abstract idea rather than a sweatily concrete reality, might be going through a bit of a damp patch, it's not all so bad. Or at least it doesn't have to be.

Bored of the endless umming and aahing over the death of the nightclub, we've put together five incredibly easy to follow tips that'll have you dancing the weekend away like one of those old dudes you've read about in recent months.

As nice as the idea of things just magically sorting themselves out and everything being fine again all of a sudden is, it doesn't really hold up to any actual scrutiny. In this world you've got to fight for your beliefs, you've got to strive to survive, you've got…sorry, I'll stop there because I've accidentally become a faux-motivational poster advertising reduced rate swimming in a soon-to-close council run pool. The point is, the only way we can write ourselves out of the hoary EVERYTHING'S SHIT narrative is to do things about it. Look for unusual and underused spaces, put parties on, let the tech-house establishment know that we're fucking bored of the same old nights with the same old bills. Power's there to be wrested.

On the other hand, the best bet might be to just roll over and accept the fact that clubbing's just another avenue of expression and (relative) freedom that's been closed off to us by those meddling tories and that the good old days are never coming back and yes, everything really is shit, and the old blokes down the pub are right, those old blokes with their beer-breath and strong ecstasy, those old blokes with their war stories and their Fantazia bomber jackets, those old blokes who won't shut the fuck up for even a minute about nineteen ninety fucking two. Taking this option is pretty much consigning yourself to a life without clubs and clubbing, but hey, think about all those Hungarian surrealist novels you'll not read as you spend your life listlessly masturbating while watching videos on YouTube of blokes from Mansfield who've made their own daleks.

Part of the reason why we think things are pretty shitty in clubland, apart from the fact that you've probably already read eight pieces this week that use the phrase "clubland" when everyone knows "clubland" only really refers to the still-thriving working men's club scene in Northern towns we've come to romanticise for a supposed earthiness that London lacks, is because we keep going to shit nights watching shit boring fucking DJs playing shit boring fucking records, because we've told ourselves that that's all we deserve. We don't. Have a long hard think about the club you're about to step into. Look at the other people in the queue. If they look like morons, they are, and you'll be paying £15 to stand in a room surrounded by people with LDN / HOUSE / TEQUILA / SKREAM / #AFC in their Twitter bio. You don't want that. Do you?

Yeah, sure, picking up the same six tinnies from the same offie at the same time every Saturday night and walking to the same mate's flat to listen to the same ten songs you always do when you're remorselessly banging down three litres of room temperature continental lager before calling the same dealer and getting the same supply in before hopping on the same bus to the same club you always end up at before ambling back to the same afters-approved lounge for yet another bout of bog standard post pinger discourse might seem like a really good idea, but come on, you can do better than that! Go to a club you've not been to before, take a risk on a DJ you've not seen in Ibiza and Croatia and Ipswich. Go to a gabber night or a jersey club one or a country and western one. Go with someone you've never been clubbing with before. Travel to a different part of town. Do anything that keeps it even slightly fresh. You wouldn't eat the same tea every night, would you. Well, you might. But that'd make you an absolutely colossal wrong'un. You'd be worse than The Rt Hon John Whittingdale MP, Secretary of state for Culture, Media and Sport. Or people who eat pizza with their hands in Pizza Hut despite there clearly being cutlery on the table.

It doesn't help. Not really.

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