Afters
(Formerly Afterssential)
@ Subway City
Livery Street
Birmingham
Sunday mornings from 4am
£7/£9. Membership: £3 |
If you like the Sundissential
crowd, sometimes a bit messy, then this is the place for you. |
- Afters started as Afterssential at Subway in July 2002, as Sundissential's
weekly after-party, for those who just can't stop, and ran as
Afterssential until the Autumn of 2003.
Starting at 4am it runs through to 10am, and reflects the fact
that Sundissential finishes at
4am.
The music was variable over the first few weeks with a mix of
interesting good hard DJs along with some rather ropey unimaginative
ones. One week saw the "warm-up" DJ turn deVit's "The
Dawn" into something resembling a pneumatic drill - the breakdown
just flashed by, blink and you missed it... you get the idea...
and this was the START! God only knows where the tempo was supposed
to go from there - gabba anyone?
Later months saw things develop well though, with some of the
Sundissential residents like Strange Dave playing
regularly along with the usual hard dance circuit suspects like
Paul Glazby, Ian
M etc. The atmosphere is very friendly, and reminds
me of the old Pulse days, though that crowd have now long disappeared
from the Sundissential scene.
The backroom playing some good funky tunes is popular.
It's like joining near the end of someone else's party... which,
I suppose, is exactly what it is.
Below are some photos taken early in Feb 2003.
- After an extensive discussion on the Sundissential discussion
board and threats from clubbers that they would raise the matter
of the lack of free drinking water at
Subway City with the licensing authorities,
a water fountain was installed.
|
| Update Autumn 2003 |
Well the club has been renamed
as "Afters". This follows the end of the financial
arrangement between Sundissential and Subway City during the
Summer of 2003, amid some acrimony.
Afterssential is to move to new premises at a bar on Broad Street
as of New Year's day 2004. In the meantime Subway now runs its
own after-party, for Sundissential clubbers and others. As they
had largely done this anyway, there's nothing particularly new
here other than the change of name, and a lack of SS logos,
as well as the not insignificant fact that Subway no longer
pays Sundissential for the use of the Afterssential name.
Once Afterssential opens on Broad Street, (or should that be
"if"?) there will be some competition, but these two
after-parties are likely to be somewhat different beasts. Afters
offers full club facilities, and is about the same distance
from Sundissential at Cobarna as Afterssential will be at 9
Bar, (the old "Stoodibakers"). Afterssential will
be in a bar, albeit a nicely furnished one, but one with less
in the way of either dance floor or chill-out area. Whether
the market is large enough for both to survive is debatable.
Certainly some of the SS crowd were not keen on Subway either
because it looks scruffy or because there were gay guys there
which some people complained about on the SS web board. Those
folks should enjoy the more clearly heterosexual and nicely
appointed 9 Bar, though whether there's enough of them to sustain
Afterssential there for long is another matter. Come the New
Year and we shall no doubt find out.
In the meantime Afters continues to offer an excellent after-party,
playing both hard and funky dance music with some top-rated
DJs in its lineups. |
|
New victims of my photographic forays:
Debbie & Gary
30.03.03 |
| |
Jason, Bro' and Mate
|
Tom |
Michael & Carl
(Ikon it's NOT!)
|
Tom |
Now this pic on the right is unique
in my experience. Afters has a resident masseur, Wally,
whose services are much in demand and very useful too -
he sorted Michael's (see pic above) knotted calf muscle
out a treat one week. Well the pic on the right shows Alex,
the promoter of Afters, giving Wally, the masseur, a massage!
There's not many places I know of, (in fact up to now this
is the only one), where the promoter is good enough to massage
the masseur, and decent enough to do so. Alex... RESPECT!...
well, let's make that just "respect!" after you've
tried to use a water fountain to justify increased prices!
:o)
|
|
Strange Dave |
Fairy Tale Tattoo
(No, it's not your eyes; it's a bit out of focus - sorry)
|
|
|
