Alright, my luvver? It’s been a while. Almost two years, in fact, since VICE photographer Yushy Pachnanda and I stayed out all night in Britain’s capital city and documented our experience in the good name of, uh, journalism.
Since then, we’ve stretched the limits of licensing laws in Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, and even at Glastonbury Festival. In that time, I’ve suffered sleep terrors and narcolepsy, and aged by about a decade. Still, like some kind of neverending, nightmare circus that rolls from town to town, the show must go on. So is Bristol a 24-hour city? I stayed out all night to find out.
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It’s 1PM and the sky is a crisp blue. All aboard the Grain Barge, a floating pub on the River Avon. I’m a sucker for gimmicks, so we’re kicking things off with a tour of novelty pubs. Fitting, as this is a city that prides itself on its eccentricity: Banksy, Wallace and Gromit, former Top Gear presenter, James May – all stone cold weirdos who were born and raised in Bristol.
We finish our drinks and head up the road to Bag of Nails. This drinker’s USP is that it’s full of cats (no, not jazz slang, there’s literally furry animals all over the bar). I order a pint of something called “scrumpy”, a West Country cider that isn’t fizzy or sweet. It’s horrible. Really, really disgusting. A bit like drinking a pint of high ABV cement.
We hail a water bus and head downstream to our next stop. The Black Castle is a Grade I listed pub at the back of a Sainsbury’s car park. Unlike almost every other pub (I’m looking at you “Windmill Arms” and “Railway Tavern”), it’s true to its name – I have to walk through the gateway of the gothic castle and into the stone courtyard to get there. A quick Google tells me that the pub’s medieval facade is older than the United States.
Inside is the kind of 21st century chain fare that sells chips, hamburgers, and skinfulls of cheap booze. A trip to the Black Castle takes you back to Arthurian England, only with Sky Sports, free Wi-Fi, and continental lager on tap. This only adds to the Lynchian atmosphere of wonder and dread. It’s like if Walt Disney opened a Wetherspoons. I love everything about it.
It’s 6PM and I need something to sober me up. We head back into Bristol proper and make for an unassuming curry house on a sleepy backstreet. But the place is already half-full of stags and hens. What gives? Ah… This isn’t your average curry house. This is Urban Tandoor, of viral internet fame.
Maybe you’ve seen their TikTok parodies of Barbie (“I’m a Bhaji Girl”) or Grease (“You’re the Naan that I Want”). Maybe this is the future. The year is 2044 and kitchen staff must retrain as content creators and marketing managers. If the food tastes as good as it does at this place, I’m alright with that – the butter chicken is gooey and delicious and the prawn jalfrezi has just the right kick to wake me up.
Yushy and I stagger out the door and walk to King Street, the beating heart of Bristol on a Saturday night. You can find all of metropolitan life in this strip of riverside pubs: skaters, students, trendies, goths, normies, trusties, rockers, ravers, lads dressed as superheroes and huns dressed as nuns. It’s rammed. And it’s not even 9PM.
Next, we catch a cab to Turbo Island, that strange and mythical place that exists as much in the Bristolian imagination as it does in real life. According to legend, it’s something like the ancestral homeland of the city’s street drinkers and dreamers. A lawless place; a land of slab concrete on an abandoned street corner, where residents eat acid for breakfast, and a bonfire burns through the day and the night.
By the time we arrive, it’s drizzling and just after eleven. The island is deserted, but the embers of the bonfire are still hot. What epic catastrophe happened here? Who is the architect of this thrilling dystopia? Sadly, there are no answers for us tonight.
We’re racing towards midnight and a side quest is calling us. Well, not a side quest, exactly. The lad on the other end of the line is actually called Jack – he’s a first year student at the University of Bristol – and tonight he’s throwing “a fat pre-drinks” in his halls, and we’re invited.
Yushy and I make a quick stop at an off-licence to pick up some Red Stripes (yes, we’re in Bristol), then, we jump in a cab and arrive at the wrong student halls. Twice.
By the time we pull up to Unite Students Marketgate, Jack’s first year pals have been hammering shots for the last two hours. Shit. If you want to confront your own mortality, walk into a party full of pissed students. If you want to feel trampled by the unstoppable march of time, make it a freshers party, at that.
Twelve of the UK’s best and brightest are huddled around a bluetooth speaker in a box kitchen, sipping rum from plastic cups. It takes me back to my own university days. The joy. The abandon. The long days spent with my head over the bog. After an hour of drinking games, Jack and his friends head out for the sticky floors of a student nightclub, while we peel away in search of a late night snack.
When it comes to late night takeaways, your discerning Bristolian stumbles into Rice & Things in Stokes Croft, or the Mayflower Chinese Restaurant on Cannon Street. Sadly, both of those have already shut, so we head to Jason Donervan for a late night kebab.
For the benefit of our American readers, Jason Donovan was a child star who was in the Australian soap Neighbours, a “döner” is a pita bread stuffed with meat, and a van is a truck. Got it? Good. It’s an elite pun, but a very sad kebab. I’m cold and surrounded by teenagers. Get me to a club.
As well as graffiti and Chicken Run, Bristol is known for its underground music scene. Over the last 30 years, some of the UK’s most forward-thinking acts have come out of the city’s clubs, including Massive Attack, Portishead and Tricky. We walk to the Trinity Centre, a community space in a 19th century church, for an event headlined by Gabber Modus Operandi and the British Murder Boys.
It’s a reminder of this city’s appetite for fucking weird sounds. There’s no danger of falling asleep while the 10 foot sound systems blare out bass. The tunes are hard, and fast, fast, fast. I’m talking pitched-up trap and chopped and screwed trance. It sounds, at times, as if someone has fed Depeche Mode through a terrible cheesegrater.
Hours fly by in a blur of 160 BPM tunes and cursed smoking area chats. When the lights come on at 5AM, the dance floor is still half full. We follow the flow of undead punters out of the club.
It’s 5.30AM, and I’m stumbling through the city streets, having failed to blag my way into an afters. Luckily, I’ve got the UK’s pre-eminent free party photographer at my side. Yushy tries a rave hotline he’s got wind of and receives the coordinates – except it’s in Wales. It’s not the outcome that either of us want.
Down but not out, we wander into the Cabot Circus shopping centre and lie down on a bench, while service workers on the graveyard shift open up Pret. After about 15 minutes, a security guard chases us off into the wet and windy Somerset night.
So, is Bristol a 24-hour city? No, sorry. The only things that are open at 6AM are Turbo Island, Slix Fast Foods, and the regional chain of Grosvenor Casino.
That being said, between the students and the ravers, there’s clearly an appetite for a sort of Berghain-on-Sea. Right, fuck it. We’re off to that free party in Wales. See you there?
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