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london, music, nightlife
The future is bright, the future is…Dalston?!
Still clutching at straws when it comes to NYE plans? Well that hotbed of hipsters & hoes, creatives & crack-fiends and vagabonds & vagrants that is Dalston has thrown together a seedy mosaic of options for you to air your dubious Christmas wardrobe additions at.
As we said in our article last year on the death of Shoreditch, we anticipated a move away from the environs of Old Street etc and the clubs that now seem less ‘cooler than thou’ and more ‘only marginally cooler than Slough’. We envisaged the hedonista movement branching further into Hackney, Dalston and beyond and the less eccentric crowd heading down towards London Bridge and returning to Islington. Much of this has happened, with the growing clammer to get onto the 149 being testament to Dalston’s rise to prominence amongst the “n’e'r do wells” of the Capital.
Read on for the roadmap of Dalston hangouts.
This review fits kindly into the format of the matrimonial ditty “something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue”. Dalston Jazz Bar is indeed the wise old head of the Dalston scene, having kept the oddities that wish to be out until 6am well lubricated for as long as I can remember. Now for something new. Efes Snooker Hall will be hosting an warehouse-style rave to mark NYE, Florence & The Machine are doing a DJ set, the flyer sound like someone has scatter-gunned the genres from 1970s to now to derive the line-up. My advice would be to wear your best underwear just in case you don’t come out the other side…
Now the first time I went to our next featured bar, I assumed I had stumbled across a 1980s porn reunion. It was wall-to-wall with hairy-lipped Lotharios; bushy ones, long ones, curly ones and clearly some borrowed ones unless I missed a pandemic of excess hair growth amongst hot arty chicks. The Moustache Bar is a tight, basement venue which is popular with a flamboyant crowd, if you’re the cool kid from accounts, maybe give this one a miss.
Finally something blue, well at least I think it’s blue. Something there was definitely blue, either that or I was visually challenged through my exploits in Holloway before heading to this place. Visions Video Bar is another basement bar who’s spiritual possession of this former film stockist just feels kinda right in a kitsch way.
The beauty of Dalston junction is that if you go down Kingsland Road you’re in Shoreditch, if you go up Kingsland Road you’re in good ol’ Stokey…if you go East you’re in Hackney Central and West you’re in Essex Road/Islington. That puts Dalston firmly in the centre of the North East London nightlife compass for me. Also as noted in our earlier piece on ‘free buses’ in London, Dalston and it’s surrounding areas are serviced joyfully by a bevvy of bendy buses for the thrify/risk-seeking amongst you.
Tags: london, nightlife, rated & retarded
[...] we must hat-tip to one of our eagle-eyed readers who has pointed out the similarities between the article we wrote just before the New Year about the ever-rising soiree-stock of Dalston and the recent article along [...]