We briefly discussed on the Smoky Drink bar this weekend (Everyone welcome BTW) about how people, regardless of their age, tend to believe that the time they grew up, teens to early twenties, were the best times to grow up
The sixties were mentioned, which prompted me to say how happy I am that I never had to go through the sixties as a young adult, and how lucky I am to have experienced the 90's instead. Hence the discussion about always favouring your own time over the nostalgia of others
I was lucky in more ways than one, too. Not only did I experience the 90's, I did it in Blackburn, and not only did I do it in Blackburn, I did it when Blackburn was at its very best, which seems to have been a short flash in the pan, so very good timing
If you did not see Blackburn in the 90's, but saw it any time from 2008 until the present day (particularly the last decade), you'd wonder what on Earth I was talking about. Not only is it a shit hole, it's the kind of shit hole that makes you think there could never have been anything good there, ever
I picked the years 1992 -2007 for my post title, as 1992 was the year I was finally old enough to get out and experience some serious nightlife, and 2007 was the year the town finally died
Blackburn was a nightlife boom town in the nineties. There were a lot of decent pubs, and there was actually a circuit you would follow, round the town, from one pub to another, finally coming to a head in one of two major nightclubs
I say major nightclubs, because it wasn't just us locals who frequented them for a couple of late drinks, people used to visit Blackburns club scene from all over the north west. Which is another reason I was lucky, being only a £5 taxi ride away from one of the biggest clubs in the area
The death knell for Blackburn came when the then Labour government brought in relaxed drinking hours for pubs in 2005. A policy that was supposed to help the licenced trade actually threw the system into chaos and turned Blackburn into a victim of it's own huge success
The town circled the drain for a couple of years, before finally kicking the bucket in April 2007, when Peppermint Place (and other names) nightclub, the magnet that drew everyone to the town, closed it's doors for the last time
A few months later, the smoking ban came along and pissed on it's corpse
As strange as it may seem, a self imposed system of 'structured fun', is what gave the town it's success. You would get off the bus at the bus station, and go into The Brewers for a pint, as it was right there. Then on to The White Bull on the corner, and over the road to Yates Wine Lodge. Next it was Toffs, then over the multi storey car park and into Blakeys. There was another one right over the road, called FJ Nichols, then one down some stairs and underneath it, whose name escapes me. O'Neills up the road, the Borough round the back, then on to Peppermint Place or Manhattan Heights nightclubs
Depending on how rigidly you stuck to the circuit, it was about eight or nine bars before the club. These bars made about 90% of their total takings during the three hours between eight o'clock and 11 o'clock, Friday and Saturday night (Most of them were open during the week, but at those weekend times, they were incredibly busy)
Towards the latter half of the 90's, other investors could see that pubs in Blackburn were shitting money and they wanted a piece of that action. For a time, every vacant property was being turned into a pub, and a lot of these simply didn't bother trading in the week, they just wanted the weekend action
The circuit became a wandering mess and the punters, happy to have a bit more variety than what they were used to, were split up among the old and the new. With a lot more venues, but no additional punters, the money being spent also got divided further
This went on for some time and started changing the face of the towns nightlife, some pubs started shutting or changing hands, while still others were being opened
And then the relaxed drinking laws came in, and all the pubs started opening until two o'clock in the morning. The available weekend drinking time doubled over night, but the punters and their spending power did not, and facing the option of paying a tenner to attend a club and drink a couple of over priced beers, or stick around the pubs and save a few quid, most chose the pubs
This killed the clubs frighteningly fast, but also, it wasn't enough for the pubs. There were still too many of them, they had doubled their staffing costs and they didn't have the option to charge entrance fees or put up their prices. Pub doors began to shut, the survivors were dotted all over the place, the town began to loose it's appeal, and the smoking ban mopped up what was left
I'm going to say there is not currently a single night time pub open in Blackburn. This is just a guess, I know it was true the last time I checked, a few years ago, and I see no reason why it might have changed
But I was there while it mattered
Peppermint Place was an unusual night club. A plain building that was part of a multi storey car park, and covered on all sides by white ceramic tiles. You wouldn't notice it was there from the outside
Inside were two huge rooms, with a total capacity of 2000 people
It went through a few names during it's time: The Cavendish Club when it opened back in 1968, followed by Romeo and Juliets in 1970, then Peppermint Place in 1983, and Utopia in 1995
It was Peps and Utopia when I used to go there
One side, named 'Kaleidoscope', was home to DJ Gary Gee, who played the underground electronic dance music, while the other side, 'Reflections', played more mainstream and charty stuff
One side, named 'Kaleidoscope', was home to DJ Gary Gee, who played the underground electronic dance music, while the other side, 'Reflections', played more mainstream and charty stuff
Peppermint Place was hugely popular, and it's success was not just good for it's owners and employees, it was also good for the town. Nobody travelled by taxi or coach to go straight to the club, they went round the town first
There was a time when Peps for some reason, decided to do a 70's disco music night on Wednesdays. Suddenly everyone was out in the town on a weeknight and all the pubs that would normally shut early, opened their doors and made an extra killing
It was a strange time, because it contradicts what I've been saying about the number of punters and their spending power not increasing. I went to a couple of these nights, but working 9-5 meant I had to book Thursday morning off, so I could have a few beers. It was clear that everyone in that packed out club had not booked time off work to do so, and had not had pay rises to cover the cost of their pints of Carling, but there they were
There was another large nightclub in the town, which did it's best to rival Peps, but never quite succeeded. It started out as Manhattan Heights, was briefly still called that when I started going, then changed to Northern Lights. Those were it's two most popular incarnations, although it was Millennium for a while, then did a short stint as Club Euro, before shutting it doors and being repeatedly burned down by local yoofs
And we had a few lower capacity clubs to compliment things: Cest La Vie for the rockers, Mr G's and Never Never Land for the dance round your handbag trendies, Jazzy Keks for the alternatives and 'Slutty' Sutties if you fancied a more flying bottle atmosphere
So that's why I consider growing up in the 90's to awesome, because I had a huge pub and club scene right on my front doorstep, right at the time when I could enjoy it. The music of the time was also awesome. Electronic dance music was just coming into it's own, and thrived before it was co-opted by the producers who just wanted to cash in on chart cheese. We call it Old School music now. Back then we just called it music
And we also had an olympic sized ice arena
Not that any of you asked...
