Two strange things about Bedroom Bar in Shoreditch, and about all the Bedroom Bars in all the Shoreditches across the land, and all the Bedroom Bars in all the Shoreditches across all the lands; two things, strangely and puzzlingly at complete odds to one another; two things I haven’t been able to get my head around ever since I set foot in that pokey little ‘nightclub’ in Hadfield as a 17 year old lad, hoping my manly ‘shaved every hour for a week in the hope some would grow’ stubble would stand up to close scrutiny, are the one thing: All men want to do when they go out on the pull, is... talk to girls/boys. And all women want to happen when they go out on the pull, is... a boy/girl to talk to them. And the second thing, at such a complete, opposite end to the first there might as well be a neat pattern of iron filings between the two, is that the place everyone selects so carefully to be the one place where they will do their talking, or their waiting to accept talk... is so cocking loud, that no one within 5 miles can hear an ear-bleeding thing!

Makes not a blind bit of sense to me. Luckily for the owners of Bedroom Bar, sat almost on its lonesome across from the Banksy wallwork, and the block-busting queues of Cargo (it’s opposite number), it makes perfect sense to every other senseless fucker there is. When I think about it, when I really truly think about it, and bother to put things in lists with headings and everything... Bedroom Bar is a star of a venue. The type of star you could metaphorically refer to as a dirty old man. Laid paralyzed in a piss-soaked alley of nothingness, patiently waiting without a murmur, with three broken legs and a severed face, waiting to explode in on itself and suck the skin from your bones, the bones from your innards, and your innards from your spirit, leaving your soul behind to wander the damp street for eternity like a homeless snail. The music: Awful bedroom DJ’d nonsense, played too loud to notice the exact point he turns the tape over. The atmosphere: No lights bar the glow of life spirits leaving bodies for more enlightening experiences from the footstools means... you can’t see the lifeless eyes of Brodie as you struggle to hear him tell you about his band because he wants to get into the all-too-familiars of a nearby female leaning post he assumes you know.

However. Despite these, and other issues detailed in a latter section. The two times I’ve been, I really rather enjoyed it. I don’t know why. It was shit, hot, loud, annoying, expensive, and boring. Perhaps it was because I was with Oli. Who, thanks to his unrelenting enthusiasm, turns everything into a fun, shit, exciting, annoying, unexpected, loud, enjoyable, expensive experience. Or perhaps it’s because it’s only £3/£5 to get in on a Friday/Saturday night, and they NEVER make you queue or turn you away no matter what time you turn up or how mucky your trainers are. Yeah, that’s probably it.

DRINK SELECTION: Cheapest toilet water the landlord can find behind Cargo’s bins that morning. *

COST OF A ROUND: Shitwater booze, sold on for £5 a bottle. Might as well pay a tramp £20 to piss in your mouth. *

STAFF: Nightclub staff think they’re better than you because you work in an office whilst they’re getting experience at University. Then ignore you to talk to the fake-breasted, fake-tanned, fake-girl at the other end of the bar. **

FOOD: None.

SKIRT RATIO: High ratio. But you can’t talk to her, so what you gonna do about it? Only chance of meeting a nice girl is to get one drunk enough to think bringing you home is a good idea, but sober enough for it not to be ‘a grey legal area’, then when you get there, chatting up her sensible flatmate who stayed in to watch something on More4. ***

Overall: The above stats read like a Holiday’s From Hell forum, but seeing as it’s cheap to get in, and just about the only place that is, it’s not really as bad as all that. ***

Bedroom Bar - Shoreditch - Brought to you by James Wormald -