Sheffield Nightlife - A Town with a City Tag??

[firecracker]

Originally posted by skyfitsboy

Been out drinking in both Liverpool at Nottingham loads and would have to say at best Liverpool on a level with Sheff, Nottingham though no way better nightlife than Sheffield NO WAY!

I think I have to agree with Damon on this. Whilst I haven't boozed around Liverpool and therefore in no position to compare Sheffield with Liverpool, I have boozed in Nottingham on many occasions, and I have to admit that Nottingham beats Sheffield hands down for quality and quantity of bars, and of course you can't put Sheffield anywhere near Leeds or Manchester with their generous licensing hours quality and number of bars etc, nor compare Sheffield with Leeds, Nottingham or Manchester for vibrancy.

[defstef]

I think I'm gonna have to disagree with the general vibe here.

Sheffield really is a hub of creativity and soul, although it sometimes gets hidden by the hills and shrubbery. Basically, dig deeper and you will be rewarded. The geography of this lil ewok city may stunt its growth, but Shef is on a par with any of the other northern cities, especially considering the limited number of venues available, and is in many ways far ahead of them. I came to Sheffield in 1999 as a student, having mainly gone out clubbing etc. previously in Leeds. In my opinion, nights in the larger cities are generally overblown and watered-down, as there is a greater tendency to appeal to a lowest-common denominator crowd. Shef parties are more grass roots and intimate, and build upon a sense of community. They are also more likely to attract a loyal, faithful crowd with a sense of adventure and fun, and people tend to be a bit more open-minded. I'm thinking here Rough Disko, Do your Thing, Lights Down Low, C90, Rude Movements etc. Other cities have these underground jams but, maybe due to a matter of relative impact, they are less influential. Star remixer Blackbeard said that Lights Down Low was his favourite ever gig, despite playing at larger venues in the other norvern conurbations, essentially because the crowd was so responsive and actually smiling.

 

Another case in point is 7x7, without doubt the most socialist concept in DJing: seven people, be they famous, once-famous or never-likely-to-be-famous, play their favourite seven seven inches. Like Warhol's 15 minutes meets dubplate karaoke, 7x7 is a true communal disco, without boundaries or pretension. It is also the original - other cities, including Leeds have actually copied the idea (the Manc one was actually the same crew...). Crucially, the Leeds version only booked 'REAL' DJs, not the average Joanne with a passion for music, and so completely missed the point.

 

Loads of new bars are opening up anyway, so you can always stand around posing and mingle with vacuous metrosexual hairdressers (no offense to hairdressers -- then again, even Shef hairdressers are nicer people).

[Damon]

I do actually kind of agree with defstef to a point, but I think it illustrates the general drift of this thread. The casual visitor to the city doesn't generally have sufficient intimate city knowledge to discover all the hidden delights, and while that's fine for those in the know on the scene, it does help engender this feeling that Sheffield is not so vibrant.

 

I suppose you might well argue that this doesn't matter, and it's actually the underground currents that have fed Sheffield's love of the off-beat and eccentric from the late seventies till now. I would be sympathetic to that argument too.

 

But in the end, I eventually got right royally chuffed off with the way people wanting to open great venues were treated by the authorities, along with the lack of 'buzz' in town, and I left. And my preference is not for hairdresser bars, but grassroots nights with a bit of grit and passion served in a climate in which you don't have to go home at 11.

[skyfitsboy]

I've not been out drinking in Liverpool this year,kind of over did it abit last year, but unless there has been an explosion of bars and clubs there I wouldn't go as far to say the difference is staggering compared to Sheffield.

 

Certainly the people in Liverpool are just as friendly as in Sheffield, but the city centre feels even less sleepy and smaller than Sheffield's, take away the Liverpool docks/water front and it becomes so obvious how poor their city centre really is for a major city.

 

I do love Liverpool though its the only city other than Sheffield or Leeds I would consider living in mainly because of the friendliness of the people and the natural fresh air feel of the city.

 

Can't say the same about Nottingham, got to be one of my least favourite cities in the country, I just find the place so dull, grim and oppressive, I can never wait to leave the place.

 

I don't think the bars and pubs there are anything to shout, very over-rated IMO and the people there so unfriendly or what?!

 

Things are moving forward in Sheffield with the nightlife, more and more bars applying for late licences and new places do seem to be opening up all the time specially around the Devonshire Quarter, looking forward to the bars and restaurants opening in Leopold Sqaure next year.

[Kthebean]

I like sheffield because it's safe and I feel I can go out at night without an armed guard.

 

No way would I go out in Manchester or Nottingham without a group of lads.

 

Hurray for sheffield!

[Damon]

Originally posted by skyfitsboy

Certainly the people in Liverpool are just as friendly as in Sheffield, but the city centre feels even less sleepy and smaller than Sheffield's, take away the Liverpool docks/water front and it becomes so obvious how poor their city centre really is for a major city.

 

Well, we'll have to agree to disagree skyfitsboy. There are breathtaking buildings round every corner in Liverpool's central district, and as for 'take away the Liverpool docks/water front'...

 

The docks/waterfront are the raison d'etre of Liverpool - how can you consider the city without them?

 

Anyway, I'm probably being too harsh on my ol' homestead. Let's hear it for the great Sheffield nights I've enjoyed in my time - Jive Turkey, Occasions, H2O, DCM, The Steamer, La Videotech (mid-eighties version), Wax Lyrical, Rise, Blech, Sabotage, and so on and so on... <retires gracefully as age begins to show...>

[skyfitsboy]

Yeah I'll agree to disagree:thumbsup:

 

Just a couple of years ago bars with stylish sophisticated interiors like Bai Hoi and Crystal would have been unthinkable in Sheffield, these are great examples of the new face of the cities nightlife emerging, both are great chill-out bars in the daytime but come Fri/Sat nights you can't swing a cat inside them:gag:

 

We need WAY more bars like this to relieve the overload on the few decent ones we have, with loads more cityliving apartments on the way I dont think we will have to wait much longer.

[firecracker]

And back to the original post, Mike's right about the fact that Sheffield and indeed South Yorkshire bars seem to be full of 18 to around 22 year olds, students and chavs alike, but what about the 30 and 40 somethings. There's nothing around. Sheffield needs something like a Tiger Tiger, which caters for 21-plus. In Leeds, people of all ages are seen at weekend nights, and there are bars like Tiger Tiger, The Living Room, Prohibition, Firefly, Babycream, Oracle, a new one has just opened called Epernay, etc - all of which stay open until 2am.

[defstef]

If much of the nightlife in Sheffield is essentially aimed at the 18-22 demographic, then this is often entirely due to short-sighted management, or most often bar managers who think they are DJs (who can blame them, there's at least 60 million DJs in the UK: 57M citizens and 3M illegals)

Let's hope that the new bars around Leopold Sq. and DQ don't succumb to the dark side the way the *wonderful* Bia Hoi and Crystal did...essentially, not naming any names, but I know for a fact that for 3 months last summer Bia Hoi hired a DJ for Fridays who still plays in many other parts of town in the regular joints, playing an ecclectic mix of records with soul and depth (hip-hop, house, disco, funk, reggae, blah blah, etc.) and every week playing to a packed crowd who obviously enjoyed the music, by virtue of them actually expressing this fact, and saying so. The major demographic was 25-35, roughly equal in terms of gender and a very mixed crowd. People actually smiled and had a good time. The management were unhappy that the bar wasn't attracting enough students (who, of course, are gonna spend as much as affluent young professionals with an income...err?), and replaced the handsome young DJ with some buffoon playing bootlegs of like, George Fornby over Tweet or summat. Hopefully, they took less money. I'm not bitter.

I also heard that the SoYo conglomerate that owns Kingdom allegedly also owns Crystal, and that in a vain attempt to boost bar sales (in what, it has to be said, is a beautiful bar) it's gonna somehow shape it into a Kingdom pre-bar (this kind of brilliant idea seems to come easily to bar managers and owners all over Sheffield).

Here's a good idea for prospective and current Shef Bar owners: If you're gonna have a classy bar, with a forward thinking events policy...STICK WITH IT. Or maybe: stop pandering to students and do things because you believe in them. Look at Dulo's. It is the best pub in Sheffield (maybe on an equal footing with the Lezzie), and it doesn't need to have any daft marketing tricks in order to pull it off.

[skyfitsboy]

Originally posted by firecracker

And back to the original post, Mike's right about the fact that Sheffield and indeed South Yorkshire bars seem to be full of 18 to around 22 year olds, students and chavs alike, but what about the 30 and 40 somethings. There's nothing around. Sheffield needs something like a Tiger Tiger, which caters for 21-plus. In Leeds, people of all ages are seen at weekend nights, and there are bars like Tiger Tiger, The Living Room, Prohibition, Firefly, Babycream, Oracle, a new one has just opened called Epernay, etc - all of which stay open until 2am.

 

Sheffield definitely needs to get with it and get some super-cool bars like these in Leeds:

 

Tiger Tiger, Fudge Bar, Prohibition, Babycream, Babylon