New clubnights pop up at a breakneck speed and when I heard
about Once Upon a Time… at the Fairground, I thought it sounded perfect fodder
for my Meetup group. It was also being
held at the Bussey building (over all floors) which is a cool venue so I took
the group along to check it out.
As you can imagine from the title it was a bit of a mish
mash of circus and fairground. Dressing up for either theme was optional, some
people did but I think most people didn’t.
We went for a pre-drink at the coolest bar in this part of
town – Bar Story. We sat outside next to their firepit so I didn’t see much of
the inside but it was your general, stripped back, railway arch kind of bar,
serving fashionable cocktails such as penicillins and negronis at the kinds of
prices you’d expect to pay in South London - £7 or so. The cocktail was good
but considering I live in East London it’s not the sort of place I would schlep
over to Peckham solely for.
We traipsed over to the club at about 11 where it still felt
like the party was warming up. On the bottom floor a pretty good ska-punk band
was playing, while upstairs they had the fairground games and photobooth. There
was almost no one on this floor so we bypassed this for the very top where the
Freakshow and Musical Bingo were taking place. Musical Bingo put on one of
their most fun shows I have been to – not only did we get the great music to
dance to and cross off our bingo cards, but we were treated to little
performances that roughly matched the songs. Of course they had chosen
fairground/circus themed songs to play and Ditzy Ritzy was dressed as a bearded
lady. Ride a white horse saw our host getting piggybacked by an assistant, and
we had people doing synchronized acrobatics and all sorts. After this I was
well up for a party. But they had more! The ‘freakshow’ part of the show –
where we had the ever naughty Dot Cotton perform her unique clownery, and we
also had Sir Leopold Alexsander performing his Strong Man act, as well as just
a random performance involving a woman with a lot of balloons bouncing around
and popping them. It was at the point when a rather lacklustre magician came on
that I chose to explore the other floors.
The second floor was again mostly empty and rather devoid of
atmosphere so I went to the ground floor and that’s where I stayed. I must
admit, it was a little strange. They were playing hip hop, grime, RnB, drum n
bass and I think a lot of the crowd were normal clubbers who expected this kind
of thing from a club on a Friday night. Certainly a good portion of the crowd
seemed surprised when the music changed tack and suddenly a woman with a big
snake came on stage and started stripping! Her show was pretty good but I
didn’t think this mix worked so well – the acts felt like interruptions to the
dancing (or vice versa for some people), and while I love that kind of music, I
don’t think it’s necessarily what people who came to this event for its
‘alternative’ side expected. It was definitely a departure from the live band
earlier – I had thought there would be more of this. Unless of course I missed
it all when I was upstairs playing bingo.
Whenever I went through the second floor it was empty and so
I thought they had been a little overambitious by hiring the whole venue. The
fairground games were almost hidden away and when I went no one was playing
them.
I did enjoy that there was a bit of walkabout performance
going on – we were greeted by stilt walkers, and there was what can only be
described as a drunk clown who appeared all over the place with his balloons.
Overall I had a really fun night and I will be interested to see what they have
lined up next, apparently it is Once Upon a Time – at Sin City. Sounds
interesting…
