Places to throw a party!

Every now and then I do some serious research for particular nights - before New Year's Eve I will investigate everywhere I can think of for the night out, and list their features so I can decide which best fits my bill. Most recently I've done it for my birthday. What with running a meetup, I've acquired a fair few friends over the last couple of years and I thought I'd have enough people to hire a private room rather than just booking an area. So I started finding places I liked and I thought I'd share it with you:

Bohemia, Hackney

This is where I ended up choosing. They have a small cafe in the day that you can have completely for yourself for a minimum spend of 550. They can fit up to 60 with tables, up to 100 probably without and you can have full use of their PA system, mics, bring in a DJ and even decorate a bit if you like! I'm not bothering - I think the inside is nice enough as it is. You need to put down a 100 pound deposit in advance.

Dead Dolls House/Dead Dolls Club
The newish Dead Dolls Club at The Arch has a private area that overlooks the rest of the bar so you'd be subject to the same music everyone else is listening to. The Dead Dolls House has various areas you can have completely to yourself, depending on whether you just want drinks or a sit-down meal as well.

Callooh Callay
I love this place, with its quirky decor and cocktails. They have a couple of places you can hire out - through the wardrobe or the upstairs bar. The Upstairs holds 30 people and there's a minimum spend of 1500 pounds though that can be spent on food, drink and the service charge (and the cocktails aren't cheap so you'll probably get through it quicker than you think!). You have to put down a 30% deposit.

The Looking Glass
Another cocktail bar, and this one doesn't even have a minimum spend! Nor a hire charge. All they ask is for a deposit in case of cancellation, and you can get a part of, or even the whole area through the Looking glass depending on how many of you there are.

Mr Buckley's
They have a basement bar that you can again, have either part of, or the whole thing if there are enough of you. There's a minimum spend if you want the whole thing, otherwise there isn't but other people are free to wander down. Didn't get as far as finding out what the minimum spend was.

House of Wolf
I was *this* close to picking House of Wolf because it's such a cool, weird, splendiferous venue. THey have several rooms available - I had my eye on The Apothecary Bar (which also has the secret room) which would have been a 200 pound deposit and 1000 minimum spend before midnight. You would also be able to have your own music playing but after midnight they open it up to everyone and it would play the same music as the rest of the venue. Can take up to 40 people.

Paradise Inn
This can be hired privately but I didn't get as far as to ask for how much or really any other details as I'd pretty much decided on Bohemia by this point.

Tipsy Bar 
See above

The Macbeth
The Macbeth has an upstairs which is available to hire. It can take up to 60 people standing, there's a £1000 minimum spend and it requires a £100 deposit. 

The Star of Bethnal Green
This place has an upstairs that can be hired for £150 though you require at least 40 people to be able to hire it privately. There is then only a £750 minimum spend - not bad! 

The Red Lion, Hoxton
I didn't even think this place would do private hire but I found it on Barchick's list of private hire places. I was tempted by this one because it's a pretty cool, shabby old pub, laid back. You can hire one of the upstairs rooms and get access to its roof terrace. It can take up to 70 people and there's a minimum spend but I didn't end up enquiring about it because, it is such a basic pub - the wine is cheap and the beers aren't extensive. 

Other places to note: Shaker & Co, Pub on the Park, Far Rockaway...

Where have you hired and was it any good? Let me know!

Last Man Standing, 11th October

Last night I competed in a gameshow. No, this one is not televised (and that is probably a good thing) but it was as close as I will ever get to being in a real one. Yes, last night I participated in Last Man Standing, London’s only (as far as I know) interactive gameshow quiz night! It is run by the same lovely folks who run Musical Bingo and offers the same kind of silly, energetic fun you can expect from that night, though in a slightly different guise.

Pick a card, any card... as long as it's true or false

Everyone who attends is a contestant. There are five rounds, a different category for each, and in each round there will be a victor. At the end of the night, these five victors compete against each other to win the grande prize (a bottle of champagne, none too shabby). For each round, the crowd is asked a series of true or false questions, and you have two cards, one saying True and one saying False, from which you have to pick and put one in the air to show your choice. Anyone who gets it wrong is out for the next question and in this way it is whittled down to two or three people who then compete on stage to be the #1 for that round. As with Musical Bingo the winner is decided through various slightly arbitrary games, such as ‘Play your cards right’ or ‘bobbing for sausages’ amongst a) shaving foam, b) chocolate and c) feathers. 

They provide the poncho protection for a messy finale

There are also a few bonus rounds/activities along the way for bonus prizes of shots for your team. One involved creating the tallest structure possible out of the spaghetti and marshmallows on your table (my team hadn’t realised that these were craft ‘supplies’, not treats for us, and, being starving, had tucked into them straight away. I did think it a little odd that they had offered uncooked strands of spaghetti as a snack, but didn’t dwell on it.). 

Yum... uncooked spaghetti

Another was to make a balloon animal out of the balloons they’d given you (the hardest balloons in the world to blow up – our lovely host had to bring round his special balloon inflator to every table to get us started!). I’m happy to say my dog was chosen amongst the finalists, so I made it onto the stage at least, though I wasn’t victorious. It probably goes without saying that I didn’t win any of the other rounds, and neither did my two teammates. Always the bridesmaid and never the bride. Ah well.

My dog. I was robbed!

We had TWO hostesses to help along the proceedings, and keep tabs on who had answered correctly and who hadn’t.  Jo-Jo was reading out the questions, while Gracie had the role of giving out a clue to help us decide which card to go for. Do not be fooled by the clues. While most of the time they led you to the obvious right answer, sometimes they were red herrings! As the night wore on, the hosts were a little less than hawk-eyed when it came to spotting people who had already got a question wrong but were answering the next one anyway. And Gracie was perhaps being a little too generous with her clues to some teams. But hey, the night isn’t an exact science, it’s about having fun, and I’m not complaining if we got a nudge in the right direction every now and again.

This was just the foundation of our tower

They say you can come along on your own, in a couple or with some friends, and I think if you want a better chance of winning then you need to have a few people, so you can play a little tactically and have some chance of sharing the prize. We sort of attempted to do this erratically through the night. Not that it worked. Of course, the more there are of you, the more you’d have to share the prize at the end!

Last Man Standing was held at House of Wolf, a new venue in Angel that is also on my list. I don’t know if I can count last night as having crossed the place off, as it was more about LMS than a general night at House of Wolf. I think I’ll have to go back to see what they normally do – we were constrained to the bottom floor last night when there’s three full floors to explore. I didn’t even get to try their food because, although they promised ‘posh bar snacks’ from House of Wolf’s twitter, the only food we were offered was a venison burger (sorry, venison roll) with chips, for £10. I’m not much of a fan of burgers (though this one did sound nice if you do like them) and didn’t really want to spend a whole tenner on food. And they weren’t serving the chips separately. The kind bartender said he would inquire if they could come on their own and let us know, but he never appeared so we can only presume it wasn’t possible. In its defence, they had only been open since Saturday and obviously hadn’t finalised their bar food menu. I think this was just something put on for the night simply to have some kind of offering and there will be more to choose from in the future.

The night didn’t quite reach the all out party/dancing levels of Musical Bingo but it was still a really fun night, and I’d definitely go back. In the interests of full disclosure, I was invited to come along to this night (although it was on my List already) but considering this isn’t exactly a one-on-one kinda night, I can safely say I don’t think they did anything different or extraspecial on my account for a good review. The fact that I didn’t win at all speaks to that. Otherwise, tickets are a bargainous £5 and nights happen monthly.