Hello lovelies, my goodness, it'd been a while! I think I need to stop apologising for not posting regularly. I was so excited so sit down with a pot of coffee this morning and open up my laptop to start blogging. Life has been absolutely hectic recently and I want to get back to the basics of blogging feeling enjoyable, rather than a chore or stress. I'm sure a lot of you can relate to that, and I'm going to touch on the nature of blogging these days in a future post.
I won't go into why I've been off the radar recently but you can follow my life on a more daily basis (without that sounding creepy?!) via instagram and twitter - both are @hellorogue. For now, I wanted to share a bit of Glasgow nightlife with you. Our city is so buzzing at the moment, what with the Commonwealth Games being held here. There is such an electric atmosphere! That goes for nightlife too, the clubs and pubs are busier and there's loads of exciting events happening.
A couple of weeks ago I went to a launch party for Cubanisto (a new rum flavoured beer) called House of Mask. This is their hidden party network that will host a series of weird and wonderful secret events across the UK throughout this year. Myself and Ashley were given the address to the location just a few hours before the event, jumped in a taxi and had no idea what the night would hold.
The venue ended up being SWG3, which is a huge and very adaptable warehouse space in Glasgow's West End, which is used for gigs and all sorts of club nights. We entered the venue through a smoke filled tunnel, and had to sign off a confession in exchange for entrance into the club. Then we were given white masks by clinical men in white suits and loaded up into an elevator. This brought us out into a small office room, where two rather creepy looking ladies asked us to sign over our confessions in a robot like voice. In exchange for the confession, we were given a puzzle piece, and entered the club through a hidden door inside what looked like a stationary cupboard. Thoroughly creeped out and excited by this point, we headed straight to the bar!
The idea of the jigsaw was to find two more people in the club who had matching pieces. I thought this was a great idea as an ice breaker in having to go up and chat to complete strangers! I finally found my two missing pieces, and we went up to a booth to hand them in exchange for a key. The key opened up certain boxes placed around the room where prizes could be won. Inside my box I won a voucher to exchange for a sandwich - RESULT! I was so hungry and definitely needed a munch to soak up all the Cubanisto's we had been drinking (which is very nice, by the way - light and not too fizzy with the smooth taste of rum throughout) There was a photobooth that synced up with your key and uploaded the photo straight to your facebook etc, not to mention you had to exit the photobooth via a secret door at the back. There was also live graffiti taking place, with UV paint which was quite trippy, and peoples anonymous confessions being projected onto a screen at the back of the room.
The clock on the dj booth counted down to midnight, and then an amazing beat boxer took to the stage. I didn't catch his name (sort of blaming the alcohol by this point) but he was singing in between beat boxing, it was absolutely insane! After his performance, Roska dj'd until 2am, and then we went for food and grabbed a taxi home. Me and Ashley both agreed that we would love to attend more House Of Mask parties, they sure do know how to throw a good night, with so many different layers and aspects to the evening that you wouldn't get at any normal club night. You can see some of my pictures from the evening on instagram, and all of the above were taken by the Cubanisto/House Of Mask photographer.
Back to reality last weekend with a fairly normal (in comparison!) club night at the ABC for my beautiful friend Heather's birthday. I don't go out in Glasgow as much as I used to in my early 20's, but I sort of prefer it this way because it means I really have more money and energy for when I do go out. Sounds like I'm getting awfully old, I'm only 25! My favourite clubs in Glasgow are the ABC, Cathouse and The Garage, and favourite bars include Tiki Bar, Slouch, and Nice & Sleazys. There are so many options for places to drink and dance in Glasgow depending on what night of the week it is, what sort of music you like, and how much money you have to spend. I feel lucky to have such a vibrant and bustling nightlife scene on my doorstep, even if I don't frequent them all as much as I used to.
It will be a quiet few weekends for me over the next month, as I just spent the bulk of my 'play' pennies on a trip down to Leeds to get tattooed by a rather talented man called Neil Dransfield.
This Wizard of Oz inspired piece is on my thigh, and took around 5 hours. I did it all in the one sitting which is the longest I've ever sat for before. Absolutely over the moon with how it turned out, and it's totally worth being skint for the next month for. Plus, with the size my thigh has swollen to, drinking and dancing is probably the last thing I could manage to do right now! :)
What is the club/pub scene like where you live? And do you go out more or less than you did when you were a bit younger?
