Double Denim, 29th August

If you’re a bar/restaurant and want to start putting on clubnights, then you should ensure that you’re set up to handle it. At 9:30 on a Friday night, you probably shouldn’t have queues of people at the doors, telling them it’s one-in, one-out, only for them to enter and find the place sparsely populated. It creates a resistance to enjoyment and a bad impression. So much so among my group of about 20 that I tweeted at Far Rockaway that I wasn’t impressed. They replied to say they had reached capacity for the number of door staff they had (and not just tried to create an impression of busyness as everyone suspected), but even this is a poor explanation. You want the kind of night that has dancing? Hire another person! So that wasn’t a great start and it didn’t get much better – not for a while at least.

Double Denim was supposed to be a 90s night – all the staff dressed in Converse, cocktails made with the drinks you drank growing up (Um Bongo and Panda pops) and all sorts of 90s bangers from acid house to indie. What they actually did was play mainly R n B from that era before abandoning any attempt to stick to the 90s whatsoever. My group were a little disappointed to say the least! I didn’t mind so much – I like 90s RnB, but to be fair, there are better places to dance to that stuff. I had been looking forward to all the other stuff just as much as everyone else. we sat in a corner and waited to see what would happen with the music but gradually almost everyone gave up and left.

Apart from myself and an intrepid few. in the end we found that the dance floor had been created around the corner from where we were, where the diners had been, those of us left made sure to join the dance floor. Again, I liked the music – some drum n bass went down a treat, but it just wasn’t what was billed. And I don’t think you could call the place busy at any point of the night. Not in a clubnight sense. I am sure I will return to Far Rockaway, but only for their pizza, not for their nightlife.