Disco Dodgeball, 14th March

You all know the motto – Dodge Duck Dip Dive and Disco! Wait. What?

That’s right – disco!! Cos playing just plain ol’ dodgeball wouldn’t be any fun - Disco Dodgeball add dance into the mix! Not to mention animal fancy dress. It’s a tricky combination but in terms of fun that can be had it works a charm.

And so, I found myself in an edgy East London warehouse, a setting that would not feel out of place for illicit bare knuckle boxing, instead playing and watching games of dodgeball. I half expected dodgy bets to be taken in the corner but of course it was all just good silly fun.

I have to confess, we sucked. I had thought I had pulled together three teams of dodging might but serval no-shows left us severely depleted for our third team. Not a problem we though, we’ll just sub in people from our other teams. It was actually working quite well (well, apart from the fact we were losing every game) when all three of our teams were called to play at once, illuminating our lack of players. Somehow we still managed not to be disqualified as two teams were playing each other (4 on each side) so they just let us get away with it.

Ah yes, I mentioned we were losing. I’m totally putting this down to the fact that our teams were fluid entities, meaning we weren’t ever able to come up with a strategy, play to our strengths, or, more importantly, figure out our entrance battle. Where does this figure in dodgeball? Ordinareily it doesn’t. Balls are placed in a line and the two teams dash forward to try and get them, then dash back again to begin play. With disco dodgeball there is a dance off at the beginning of the match and whoever wins gets all the balls! This severely disadvantaged us. Without getting our team together to practice we lost almost every dance off and it was quite hard to avoid being hit when you had no balls. Still, I have to say this didn’t mar my enjoyment one bit. Playing was fun, doing the dance offs was tremendously silly, and watching everyone else’s dance off skills was quite eye-opening. These guys had brought their A game and had some serious moves!

My team (the bears) were the ultimate losers. It was announced that us and one other team had won the wooden spoon prize for being the worst. Or so we thought. I merrily went about changing out of my sneakers into my platforms for the afterparty, and to watch the remaining rounds. Some of my team decided to head home. We let go, grabbed some amazing (and massive) food from White Men Can’t Jerk and enjoyed the bouts which lead to the final. Then all of a sudden, my team was being called to play! We were supposed to do a final head to head with that other team for the wooden spoon prize! But we couldn’t get the team together and had to forfeit. We couldn’t even win the losingest game. Which, I think, makes us the ultimate losers. I’m kinda proud of that.

As if Disco Dodgeball with dance-offs wasn’t silly enough, they had hosts with the mosts in full-on disco gear (Niles Dodgers being the most glam) and our commentators were in full character form. It was all meant to be light-hearted fun and to keep it that way the motto was ‘Don’t be a Dick’. If you were found to be a dick (taking it too seriously, repeatedly not going out when you’re hit) you were forced to wear an inflatable penis. Seems fair. They could also penalize you by rolling out someone in a massive inflatable costume who would basically shield the other team from getting hit and thus put you at a disadvantage.

As I said, there was an afterparty, after – a mini Regression Sessions with ball pit, bouncy castle, space hoppers, absolutely wicked music just like last time, and a round of pass the parcel! I didn’t seem to notice or mind the age of the attendees this time, just had a serious amount of fun. I was kind of gutted that it started to clear out a couple of hours after the dodgeball ended and we decided to head to the bar over the way (Number 90). I had wanted to try this out in my last jaunt to the Wick but it had been shutting whne we got there. I feel I didn’t miss much. For an area that should be effortlessly cool, we all felt Number 90 was trying a bit too hard and wasn’t sure what it was meant to be. Wine bar? Pub? Gig space? It was none of these convincingly.

Here's a good montage of the tournament:

Disco Dodgeball vs Regressions Sessions : Battle of The Beasts

Regression Sessions, 24th August

So the idea behind Regression Sessions is to let you regress back to your childhood while having adult fun and getting your dance on. So as well as rooms of house, techno, drum n bass, hip hop and R n B, they have a ball pit, space hoppers, big cards for card games and - best of all... yes I'm not kidding... a bouncy castle!! They also gave away those incredibly creepy face masks which I must admit I do find hilarious as much as I find them disturbing.

All of this is truly tremendous fun. I've done the ball pit thing before, but the space hoppers and the bouncy castle were the height of finding your inner child and letting it run rampant (and the height of lads perving over all the bouncing boobs).

The problem was, for most of the attendees, their inner child had barely been lost, let alone needed finding again - the whole crowd was so young! I honestly think the average age was 20, and it probably would have been lower if my Meetup group hadn't been there to skew the numbers!

The music was really good - they had at least three rooms and the genres changed between rooms which kept you on your toes and meant you could almost always find something you wanted to dance to. In some ways it was my ideal party - great music and a healthy dose of fun. I just don't know if I can handle a clubnight that reminds me so starkly of my age! We shall see - I may yet be tempted back...