Hey! This is my first entry into this blog; Diary of a London Student. I'm a second year at Cass Business School studying Banking and International Finance - despite the boring sounding course, I love going out to different clubs and bars all around London with my friends. Follow me and my friends' London student life here with reviews and insights of all the nightlife places we go to and read about our experiences.
First up was Fabric! To be honest, Ive only ever been to fabric twice before and both times were within the last two weeks. Im a Fabric newbie/groupie but Im kind of loving it. Im actually surprised Im not bored of it yet; I get bored of places quite easily. But all the events Ive been to at Fabric have been freshers' which I guess means that it will always be a good night. Im not actually sure if this night was a freshers event, I think it was just a student party with UNION, who actually organise a lot of student nights around London, so I thought I'd go check that out because they always offer up some lovely drinks deals!
Fabric Nightclub Exterior
So...pre-drinks are an essential part of our student nights out; if your night goes badly, theres always the pre-drinks that you can look back on and be like yeah, was a pretty awesome night. We actually didnt go out pre-drinking this time, we just stayed in, bought a few bottles and sat in my living room playing drinking games. There were actually only four of us (the other guy was going to join us later). Its quite hard to play drinking games with just four people but we went for the never have I ever, f*** the bus and some game where you had to make a diamond and try to choose cards from one end to the other without getting a face card, and if you did, you had to drink two fingers and start again. Sounds easy, but my friend actually ended up owing 26 fingers (which he never finished).
The event on at Fabric featured a Pendulum DJ set, Ms Dynamite and Doorly. Im not actually a fan of Pendulum, but one of my friends is, and he managed to convince us to go (we only really said yes because his girlfriend just moved to Durham and hes all mopey). Ms Dynamite was more like grime and dirty kinda stuff you grind to which is great because Im totally up for that after Ive had a few cheeky drinks. Not sure where Doorly was because I have no idea when his music came on or if it even came on at all! Oops!
Fabric is near Farringdon/Angel, and Angel is actually the more convenient stop for us, so going out to pre-drink before Fabric will usually lead us in the direction of a very lovely Wetherspoons called The Angel. Its literally a 2 minute walk from the station and it seats quite a lot of people. Obviously, because its a Wetherspoons, the drink prices are pretty cheap. If any of you are Jager bomb fans (which if youre not, Id suggest converting ASAP), Wetherspoons has a new deal on! 2 Jagerbombs for £5.99, oh wait, theres actually a twist¦. Its not just Jager bombs, theyve actually got other bomby type things like CherryBombs, GlitterBombs, Skittlebombs etc. Skittlebombs are actually worth a try, I think its just with a shot of Cointreau instead of Jager and it t tastes just like juice, which is handy when youre downing about 6-10 in the space of half an hour!
Packed dancefloor at Fabric
Aaaanyway, so there were four of us; Stuart (the mopey one with the girlfriend in Durham), Pierre (who Id never seen drunk before¦until tonight) and Mac (the good looking Polish dude who never gets drunk and loves all this techno music stuff). We hopped on the tube about 9.20 because they were adamant about being there at 10 (lord knows why, I dont think Ive ever really left my house before ten to go to a club). We got to Angel and then took a black cab over to the club because walking it is frankly just unacceptable when its gotten cold and all you want to do is dance. We met our friend Barry (Ive met him three times, all of which were on Fabric nights)!
We got there and the queue was pretty short so we were all Yeah! Cool! No queue! We got inside and no-one was queuing up to give their tickets or put their coats away, so again, we were pretty hyped (we get really happy about these things). We stumbled downstairs and then located more stairs that takes you to the upstairs floor with the balcony and quite a big bar. There are seats everywhere too which is helpful after 3 hours of dancing. Unfortunately, the only people dancing were 2 girls, which most people would find cringe, but on other nights, I tend to be one of those two girls, smashing it out on the dance floor even if its too early and everyone is looking at me funnily. My friends tell me I have no shame, but whatever. Anyway my friends were pretty bummed that the dancefloor wasn't busy yet, but did I care? No. Barry and I, who by this point, was drunk and ready to dance, decided to head out onto the dancefloor and start dancing regardless of the emptiness. Stuart, Mac and Pierre decided to go get more drinks.
The balcony at Fabric
The drinks prices were cheap; £2.00 for a double, £3.00 for a Jager bomb (my favourite) which is good because I actually dont like drinking Vodka Redbull, which seems to be everyones drink on a night out, but I hate holding a drink while dancing, especially when its packed out, nine times out of ten throwing it over yourself rather than down your throat! Jager bomb is quick and does the job!
After an hour or so (probably around 11ish), while the dancefloor began to pack out and it started to get really hot I decided it was time for some fresh air; the smoking area was big and they have metal barricades to separate the people coming in from the people going out of the smoking area, which I really like as its really annoying trying to squeeze through crowds while being worried that someones going to burn you (which actually happened to me the next night and I have a small scar).
One of the best things about Fabric (for a girl) is that the toilets are really clean. I hate it when Im on a night out and Ive already broken "the seal" and there is a really gross bathroom and youre not sure whether peeing outside in the smoking area would be more hygienic! It's not the thing you want to be thinking about on a night out. The bar queues were also relatively fast-moving considering the amount of people wanting drinks. Not only that, but the building is actually really interesting. The balcony by the bar upstairs over-looked the dance floor and the DJ stage. The view from there is amazing; I recommend you head up there for a few drinks during the night.
This Fabric experience ended at 3am as Mac was supposed to have uni the next day (which he obviously didnt turn up for). There were 5 of us in the cab (they were all staying at mine) back to North London. Pierre was a complete mess, never seen him drunk and that was just ridiculous. He pretty much had every part of his body sprawled, drooped or passed out on an area in the cab. Stuart was quite drunk, I hadnt actually noticed before but I should have twigged when I saw him dancing at the front of the stage on his own for most of Pendulums set. Mac and I had sobered up a little by that time so we were just taking pictures and videos of Pierre!
Pendulum DJ'ing at the former Matter Club in the O2
The only downer was that the tickets cost £15! Not only that, my friends and I booked them online which added on an extra charge of over £2; not cool. But I suppose you have to pay for the super clubs with quality line-ups and it was definitely worth it. I enjoyed the whole Fabric night and will definitely be back regularly on their student nights. I would also look up Ms Dynamite for those of you who arent familiar, she was amazing live.
