Passing Clouds

Passing Clouds is, more than anything (and more than can be said of their Dalston Cola), refreshing. I can’t think of a venue like it – and if you can then a) You’re a better person than me b) Could you show me where it is, please? And c) You should be writing this, not me.

Passing Cloud’s greatest strength is its variety – though at a base level most nights there do tend to involve too much drink and relentless hours of dancing at and around other people (don’t all?). As a man who thinks most clubs are mainly a louder and more annoying form of places where you jostle about next to other people you don’t know – like lifts, or Bank station at rush hour – this would not normally appeal. Passing Clouds, however, seems to be imbued with the spirit of misrule, which somehow makes this all you want to spend your time doing there. If this is not the effect it has on you, then reassess your life-choices – or for god’s sake have a detox and reinvigorate your relationship with serotonin.

I still think that Nirvana are cutting edge and am just as likely to kill any mood by playing Burial as by blaring out Slayer so I am in no way qualified to judge any venue’s selection of music, whether positively or negatively. However, there is something in the atmosphere here that means whatever is chosen is somehow, at that exact moment, the only thing that could possibly make you want to writhe, gyrate and jump around more intensely and for longer than before. A combination of this and the structure, not to mention the decorations, which could have been put together by someone blasted forward in time from the 60s in full flow, conspires to give Passing Clouds a sense of near free-fall fun.

Passing Clouds manages to cause such chaos, that if anarchy was transformed into an evening on the town, it would be here. Recollecting the next day (or a few days later, if it was a particularly big one or you woke up in Bracknell and had to make a confusing journey home), no one story of the night seems the same, and each small group seems to have just missed out on the most obscene aspect of the other’s evening.

It is situated just behind The Haggerston - an excellent choice for a few drinks before venturing into Passing Clouds - off an increasingly less bleak stretch of Kingsland Road. Once you’ve decided to enter into this vortex of a club, you can exclaim - ‘Look the entrance to this club is near where some bins are’, and all of a sudden the entourage you have collected from visiting the other bars on this blog will, almost now jaded, once again bow down to your superior judgement. The best way to demonstrate its combination of variety and chaos at this point is by discussing a recent visit. 

Since the ground floor was yet to be opened, we climbed up the stairs to the second. This is at times a pleasant escape from the mayhem downstairs – though I have recently seen someone pirouette through a table. On this occasion, despite being calm it was unnervingly so, and we soon discovered the reason why. We appeared to have stumbled into a rerun of the bleakest entrants to Britain’s Got Talent; witnessing a surreal and disturbing puppet show re-enactment/parody of certain Shakespeare plays. It was the perfect tone to begin an absurd evening.

Aside from the obligatory intense motion, and the occasional burst of reality brought on by a cigarette break, the night soon blended into a stream of mostly unconnected images. One clear thought was however, having seen them casually reclining at the bar, that someone had just decided to bring their albino python on a night out. Apparently this was Missy Fatale and her companion in a burlesque act, which I sadly missed.* I cannot escape from the fact that, having seen this creature, I was genuinely concerned that I would wake up adrift somewhere with my name and other useless details tattoed to the snake – fortunately that was not the case, unless I’m still dreaming.

Despite the clear attraction of this, Passing Clouds is not solely about such nights: is a multi-purpose venue and community project. There have been salsa classes, spoken word events and many more, on a busy and diverse schedule, while on Sundays they hold a regular community kitchen. While these are interesting aspects of the venue and all add to its allure, this is a blog about cool bars to show off with, and not a blog about where to take your difficult vegan friend, so you can understand why I haven’t focussed on them. Now, back to the getting drunk bit...

It can be difficult to get in due to the queues, and it is a bit steeply priced as nights out go. There is also the issue that not everybody will get along with its hippie leanings and laissez-faire attitude. I have also never been to a place where such a high percentage of people never stop smiling, which at the same time as being endearing can also be slightly draining for someone who loves to hate as much as myself.

However, I know that I would rather go here and jostle about with freaks that I can put up with, and join in with, than go to Movida, Mahiki, or another generic trash-heap and pay £5 for some water to be near people I hate, listening to the same music as the last time I went there by mistake.

I’d say I want go to Passing Clouds every weekend, but I know that if I did I would eventually explode.

*Dear Missy Fatale, I’m so sorry if I tried to touch the snake’s head more than once, despite being told not to. I know it was foolish, but he was so creamy and alluring.
O.C

Passing Clouds 1 Richmond Road
London
E8 4AA

020 7241 4889

www.passingclouds.org

Opium

The 1800s saw the might of the Empire of the Great Qing rise up against the British and French Armies in two separate wars that would rage for seven years. The cause of all this kerfuffle? Opium. 

Obviously that time it was the drug Opium, but while almost certainly not as heavily addictive (to be fair, I wouldn’t know, I’ve never tried opium because I’m not completely insane), Opium Chinatown is sure to be the subject of a hell of a lot of discussion in Britain too. 

Having launched extremely recently, we were keen to try the delights of Opium as soon as possible, so we rushed down there one Saturday with some women we were desperately trying to impress. So desperately were we trying to impress them in fact, that we got there before the ‘amber light’ came on and we had to go and sit in a pub round the corner for half an hour before Opium opened. Fucking hell. 

The doorway into Opium is the perfect way to feel like you’re Pat Bateman (when really you’re more Pat Sharpe. Or at least I am, but I’m pretty sure the mullet’s going to make a comeback any day now, then we'll see who's laughing). They advertise themselves as ‘behind the jade door’, and they’re not lying. Alright, they are a bit, it’s slightly less ‘jade’ than it is ‘chlorine’ but let’s romanticise it a bit and say jade: 15-16 Gerrard Street is a nondescript door sandwiched between two Chinese restaurants, with a single buzzer beside it. Ring it - once the amber light is on that is, otherwise they’ll tell you to go away and you’ll have to drink warm flat lager in a sad pub round the corner - and they’ll buzz you in. 

Opium is built in an old townhouse, and as such, you walk straight into the stairwell and begin the climb up. We were taken up three flights of very well-decorated stairs to the very top floor, which gave an amazing view out over the top of Chinatown and down towards the river. 

The interior is particularly well done, it’s actually Texan-style. No, obviously not, it’s Chinese. Opium have painstakingly created the perfect Chinese / British fusion, right down to the wood used in the floorboards and the patterning on the seats. Then again, the nearest I’ve been to China is a day-trip to Hastings when I was 12, so what the fuck do I know about it? Basically, it looks loads like the bits I remember in House of Flying Daggers but I mainly remember that bit that happens in a blizzard so again, I’m a bit useless here. If anyone who reads this blog has actually been to China and would like to disagree, please leave a comment below which we can promptly ignore. It looks cool, alright? 

Anyway, Opium looks cool, smells like those rugs you can buy in Camden and has a massive cocktail menu: so far so good. 

Apparently Opium specialise in dim-sum, and it’s particularly delicious, but I wouldn’t know anything about that, because I was too busy panicking over the fact that the only beer I could see was Tiger for £5.80. Indeed, many of the drinks confused and scared me, casting an eye through the menu I noticed ‘The Classics’ as well as the many Chinese-themed cocktails, such as The Shanghai Surprise and The Kung Fu Fizz. All these interested me about as much as cocktails usually do: barely at all. 

But then, I stumbled across the area of the menu entitled ‘Chinese Temperance Cocktails’ (non-alcoholic in other words). These all sounded like the kind of concoction you’d read about on the internet if you Googled ‘how do i get gum out of hair not my hair’. I’m a fairly adventurous drinker, but cress? Parsnip? No, I’m sorry, these are a bridge too far.

In the end, a friend of mine had one of the Temperance Cocktails, because apparently his tastebuds did something really evil in a former life, but he claimed it was ‘quite nice’. Some of the others we were with had a selection of the cocktails and declared them; 'stop asking me fucking questions about my cocktail, I already told you it was nice'.

I, aghast at the price, only had a £25 scotch. It definitely wasn’t because I absent-mindedly said the wrong thing to the waiter at the last moment. Not that at all. It’s because I’ve got loads of money and when the bill came I definitely didn’t consider trying to pretend another man ordered it and trying to leave.

(In fairness Opium is actually pretty reasonably priced if you’ve got a working human brain and don’t suffer from the Tourette’s version of the fucking Midas touch.)

To sum up then: Opium is a really cool bar, with great, relaxed settings, and a good cocktail menu, even if some of them do seem like they were mixed by Beetlejuice. The price is right, and it’s perfect for pretending you’ve got your ear to the ground in the throbbing London bar scene. Definitely go, and if you go from the 7th, it’s Chinese New Year, so I have no doubt they’ll have some great stuff on.

I know what you’re thinking. In answer to your last question: they left very shortly afterwards. After we took them to a lonely pub and I had an apparent brain haemorrhage whilst trying to order a drink, they cut their losses and they left. God I’m so alone.

P.S: Puns I considered using in this review but then didn’t manage to:
Crouching Lager, Hidden Flagon.
Big Trouble in Tipple China.
The Carafe Kid.

J. Clee

Behind The Jade Door,
15-16 Gerrard Street,
Chinatown,
London
W1D 6JE

020 7734 7276

www.opiumchinatown.com