Photo courtesy of New Meta Gaming Arena
By Chris Armagon and Ben Tellyn
In a world where three-course meals are now cheaper than a night out dancing, how are young people – especially students – enjoying their evenings? Answer: they are finding more nuanced alternatives to the typical London nightlife.
With just one round of drinks at the pub now soaring to as high as £36 for five people, clubbing is becoming one of the first things to be axed from personal budgets.
Jo Jo and Elisa, a couple in their early twenties, say they have now put impromptu clubbing to rest. “It’s too expensive to go out on a random,” said Elisa, who didn’t want to give her surname.
New thinking
Such thinking epitomizes how young professionals and students are more concerned with budgets than the UK’s once classic drinking culture. Instead of opting for “drinks at home, or hosting dinner parties”, Elisa said she’d rather stay home – and save cash.
Young professionals in an already expensive city just can’t afford to drink on a whim nowadays. But organic community events like home dinner parties offer a way for people to split the costs – and continue to socialize together.
However, the ever-increasing prices haven’t deterred everyone.
Club attendees 21-year-old Loz and 19-year-old Gabby, both students at London Metropolitan University, have found ways around the rising costs, and are able to enjoy the London nightlife. Gabby, who’s moved to London recently from Portsmouth, is beginning to enjoy her nights out.
“Drinking is definitely optional” she says, as being able to negate the high cost of alcohol means people can go out more frequently and still enjoy live music, as well as retaining the chance to meet more new people.
Free parties for all
But it’s not all about clubbing or no clubbing. London’s nocturnal youth are finding other new ways to party, including free parties, which are normally free illegal raves, and all that comes with them.
“I think they’re good in that they bring all sorts of walks of life together cause there’s no financial boundary,” reflects 21-year-old Will Featherstone, an anthropology and archaeology student from London. Will frequently attends free parties for the music and the experience, although he concedes a greater prevalence of illicit activities at such events.
Free parties are not a new inception. In fact, they have been part of the counterculture scene since the New Age illegal festivals of the 1980s. Then came the Criminal Justice Bill denying raves of the 1990s (cue mental images of the Prodigy’s Music for the Jilted Generation album cover).
Modern day Covid-19 defiance and BBC reports of police raids of street parties bring us up to present day. Whatever era, alternative parties hold a mass appeal.
Will thinks that it is a balancing act between “sound system culture” and the tendency for people to “kind of look out” for one another on the one hand and the illegality on the other.
Modern festival movement
Michael Kill, club veteran and head of the Night Time Industries Association, says that the free party culture was the very genesis of the modern festival movement.
“Festivals and events came from free parties or raves,” he told a recent London Met Journalism panel event about London’s nightlife. He adds that the current UK economic situation means that “free parties have come back with force”.
Despite the rebel allure of free parties, some have turned to more sedate nighttime play activities.
According to 21-year-old Vlad of New Meta Gaming Arena, a new community of adult gamers has sprung up in Islington. Contrary to the popular belief that 20-something socials would rather bury their heads in a laptop than venture onto a ’90s revival dancefloor, there is a small movement of nocturnal gamers that drink, play and meet up on a Saturday night.
Clients met staff, and a new community of friends has grown organically around the late-night gaming screen, Vlad said.
New Meta offers beer and video games from 12am to 6am and reports a steady stream of regulars until 3am.
However people are choosing to spend their nights, there are clearly still many affordable options for those who prefer to stay sober – or for the more alcoholically inclined.
Leave a Reply