The Project

Being a student; I like drinking, dancing and socialising, so naturally UEA’s LCR has become my fifth home – a variety of pubs make up my second, third and forth. This may not have been love at first sight, but gradually, all through my first year the club became more to me than just a sticky floored, second-rate pit of a club; it’s now the first club in Norwich I’ll consider going to.

I used to justify this by assuring myself that there was nothing more natural then preferring the LCR. The drinks are far more affordable than other clubs in town and the music is effectively the same as most other venues. But over time these arguments began to ring more and more hollow, afterall any self respecting student would surely search Norwich for a club or venue that offers some degree of originality or variety. But I didn’t. In fact, very few people seemed to, for some inexplicable reasons scores of otherwise intelligent people consistently return to the LCR - you have to wonder if stockholm is alive and well in Norwich.

Of course, some people go to the LCR because it offers inovative "events": fancy dress nights and other "wacky" unique nights seem to occur every week. I personally can’t stand such nights, and have to believe that most students feel the same way ( I have to, otherwise Norwich will have its first series of nihilist terrorist attacks)- and it’s only the people who consider themselves "like totally random" who bounce their way to such LCR nights.

I don’t know why the LCR keeps cropping up in my affections. It’s only open a couple of days a week, meaning that if you’re a first year student living on campus, then you are fairly often forced to look further afield for night-time entertainment if the idea of a house party doesn’t appeal. So, it definitely isn’t as if it is a lack of knowledge of what else Norwich has to offer that draws me back to the LCR. While it’s true that when the LCR is open a world of hassle disappears for those who live on campus; you don’t have to organise transport and decide between a taxi or a bus. But that alone does not explain my feelings towards the LCR.

I could try and intellectually justify my gut feelings towards the place by talking about how it’s the only club that I’ll meet people I know (almost exclusively meeting people I know in fact) and that the club is safe. But neither arguments really stand up, no one goes to a club to meet people, in fact clubs are fundamentally designed to limit people talking to each other - when people are talking they’re drinking less. And while the LCR is safe, so is most of Norwich, and if anything people are probably lulled into a sense of false security by being surrounded by people they know.

Another unique quirk that UEA offers to its inberiated clientel is the "the Red Bull bar". For those the uninitated, this is in fact not a bar at all. Its a of plastic barriar from behind which pestered and over worked students manage to break the fundermental rule that everything tastes better when you’re drunk. The tepid susbstance that they hand over (laughingly called vodka and redbull,) tastes like battery acid however pissed you are. Yet somehow this not only fails to ruin the evening but I would not have it anyother way and yet people flock to the bar every night.

Ultimately, I can’t explain why I keep returning to the LCR, rather than go out in Norwich, I can’t. It is a deep gut feeling I have, which draws me towards the otherwise un-remarkable Union House once or twice a week to spend money I don’t really have. Maybe future generations won’t feel this way and places like the LCR will fall by the wayside. I find this somewhat unlikely though as its appeal may be indesbribable but generations on I know scores and scores of people will still turn up at the LCR, get ridiculously drunk, grab a burger from the vans outside and stumble on home.

SAM HILTON
WRITER