You! I want to take you to a gay bar!


Many weeks back I wrote a big blog post about a night out in Birmingham. For one reason or another I lost the original text and never actually posted it. However, I recently found a video on my phone from the night in question so I thought I’d re-write my original blog.

We’d decided to go to Birmingham on a night out to celebrate my brother-in-laws birthday. It started off with a massive meal and a few beers, then we ended up in an 80’s bar across the canal. I must confess that Birmingham City Centre has become a much nicer place to be in recent years – the Bull Ring and the surrounding area is great in the day and roads like Broad Street are amazing at night. After a couple of beers in the ’80s bar we decided to leave – there seemed to be large groups of blokes trying to chat up any female that wasn’t with a bloke. We hopped in a taxi and Emily started to give the taxi driver some abuse…

“Make sure you go the right way, I know my way around here you know – don’t try and fob us off by going the long way”

..Em is right, she does know her way around Birmingham, and that’s purely because she shops there quite a lot :)

We ended up in the Chinese Quarter and went to several more bars before Emily had the idea of going to a gay club. I should explain at this point that the Chinese Quarter is just outside the “gay village” in Brum but I was all up for going to a gay club or a gay bar because (a) my wife was with me (b) the music is far, far better and (c) most of the time there’s a better atmosphere. My brother-in-law wasn’t too keen, but within seconds we were queuing up in Kent Street at the Nightingale Club. Me, Emily, Em’s sister and my brother-in-law all went in and – after a couple more drinks – we were dancing around like utter loons on the dance floor.

The first floor was playing party tunes – y’know the type, “Venus” by Bananarama and “Karma Chameleon” by Culture Club. The second floor was simply amazing. Sure, there were half-naked blokes dancing on the podium and yes, there were guys kissing each other on the sofas, but the music in that club was so, so much better than any other club I’ve ever been too. Real top-drawer mixing too. Sure, a couple of blokes chatted to me but it was all friendly stuff . It’s definitely not something to be scared of, which is what most heterosexual blokes would think. We all had a brilliant night and ended up getting home about 5AM with very sore heads.