Carling Academy: anything more to say?

Carling Academy Islington N1 Centre 16 Parkfield Street London N1 0PS

There is nothing more exciting and entertaining that unplanned nights. It´s been a while since I realized about this for good, but I´m nothing but confirming it here in London. You may have a huge pub crawl organized with your best friends and their she-friends and, of course, the outcome of the night will be a bloody pain in the ass. In the other hand, meet some but not too many friends in a pub for a chilling evening with nothing else than having some Staropramen in mind, and you end up discovering there is a club in London called as your nickname. And with good music, good mood and fairly cheap priced beers.

So we started, Juanfran and me, in a pub called the Camden Head, but not in Camden, but in Ingliston, an area I didn´t know at all before coming to live here and that fortunately is an endless source of Pintofcarlingplease posts. When you meet in a Friday at 7pm you know what the outcome is going to be, of course: a more blur and funny world, at least for that night. And so far so good, with several drinks and another five friends on board conforming a fairly international crew (four Spaniards, a French and Welshman), we started that such a Spanish thing consisting in wasting half of the night in order to try to decide which is the next place to go. Not this time, as Juanfran proposed a club he remembered wasn´t too bad around the corner: the Carling Academy. Of course, with that name it was a compulsory thing to try, even if it was just for a one-off. And I reckon it will not be a one-off, as we all enjoyed the place all the way through.

Carling Academy, unfortunately, is a chain... yeah, I know, this is supposed to be an authenthic blog and bla bla bla bla. You see the cross, there, in the explorer, up in the right? Just press it, is it such a complicated thing? Hehehe, just kidding... there are Academies in Oxford, Liverpool, Bristol, Glasgow, Leeds, and so on. I´ll talk about the one I know: the Islington one (there are another two in London, in Brixton and somewhere else).The club is just a typical London club, with two different rooms: an 80´s and a 90´s one. The 80´s, smaller, is more like a bar and they play classic 80s stuff: Van Allen, Aerosmith, etc etc etc. Packed with nice looking chicks, it is good fun.

However, the one I liked more is the 90´s one. Bigger, this is a real club indeed, with DJs playing music and random groups of people scattered through all over the place. They play classic 90´s stuff, that is, the kind of music they used to play on the radio while I was a teenager and I started to go out. Oasis, Blur, Green Day and all the usual suspects altogether, those guys up there know how to make you shake your ass with the music. The place is big enough (800 people is the official capacity, but I guess more people than that can squeeze there) to allow you to lose your friends for a while if you are interested on that, and, just in case you feel the music is becoming a bit cheesy, you have always the pretty enjoyable 80´s room. A good deal, hence. And if you are lucky enough, you may assist to a great gig as well. Bands as The Cure, Prodigy, Franz Fer or Muse have played there since its opening at 2003.

About the drinks (and we had quite a lot), there are obviously spirits and two beers: Carling and Carling Extra Cold . Just joking, but almost everybody drinks Carling over there. They give you custom Carling Academy glasses with just one problem (but a big one): plastic glasses. I know this is a common thing in most clubs in London (while you don´t get straight the can without glass), but I still can´t get used to it.

Prices fair, cheap even. A Carling was less than 3 quid, which is very likely the cheapest you may find in a Club in London. Not too sure about spirits, but I guess those were quite overpriced, as the cloak room (2 pounds to leave your coat there). I cannot remember how much was the door cover, but I want to remember it was around 6 pints. Again, affordable. And enjoyable, which is the actual point!