Why do I go to Likwid?

Hi. I'm Afam, and this is my blog. If I'm lucky you haven't heard of me, because as much as I love my regular readers I love me some new ones. Anyway let's get on with it. I must confess I'm not as excited about this one as I usually am, but that doesn't matter much, the words will come either way.

I live in Lagos and I go out at night. I mostly only go out on Friday nights. Saturday nights are tricky because I've got church the following morning and I haven't reached the stage where I can tell my father, Papa Afam, to leave me alone so that I can suffer my hangovers in private. Being hung over in Church isn't fun. I fall asleep and Papa Afam calls me on my phone every two minutes. The vibrations jolt me awake every time I nod off. I'm sure the people at my church must think I've got a combination of narcolepsy and epilepsy. On Friday nights I mostlygo to one place, Likwid. It's an alright club as far as these things go. Actually I'm lying. It's a little bit not that great but that's okay. I don't mind it. I'm easy. People often ask me if it's fun, and it is. It always is.

• It was fun the time my mate's phone got stolen, 
• and it was fun the time my money got stolen, 
• and it was fun the time I didn't get in, 
• and it was fun the time I got squished into the gate by the crowd of people trying to get in, 
• and it was fun the time gun shots were fired outside and people fell into the gutter, 
• and it was fun the time I was threatened with a taser by a bouncer, 
• and it was fun the time I made it in through the gate only to be held up at the door, 
• and it was fun the time I got pushed down the three stairs at the entrance by one of the bouncers, 
• and it was fun the time I got in but there wasn't actually any space to do anything, 
• and it was fun the time I fought and hustled to get into the VIP floor only to find that it was more crowded, and not at all different from the non VIP floor, 
• and it was fun the time the music was so naff that I spent the night counting the beams on the ground floor, and measuring the square footage in feet, 
• and it was fun the time I fell asleep on a couch from 1 till 3. 
• and it was fun the time someone teargassed the club. I don't know who did it, so I can't point any fingers without making myself liable to a law suit. But it's still horrible isn't it?
• and it was fun the time koki's sisters got man handled by one charlatan I went to uni with (more on this later and Koki had two sisters there. This fellow manhandled one and then went on to manhandle the other. I don't mean manhandle in a sexual light. I mean manhandle in a I'm going to beat you, I'm choking you right now wrestlemania way. And why? Because he wanted to get in. We're going to have words. They will be fighting ones.)

As you can tell it's a really really fun place. There's never a dull moment there. If you go there and you leave without incident, then count yourself lucky. What I can't say is why I keep going back. Are my so called super fun and super turned up times actually shit times glossed over by the filters of instagram and truly stupendous levels of optimism? Or do our tragically low expectations of  Lagos night outs reduce our standards dangerously? By going there week after week even though it's only roaring fun once in a blue moon, am I society's biggest slave? 

So what's in the club? To be honest I don't know, sometimes I think someone put my name in a Likwid calabash. It's a converted house with serious waste management issues. I'm not joking. Look at this. 

 and this...

Why no dustbin though? Is it not slightly odd? Or is it just me? Odd or not, it's definitely kind of sort of more than a little bit gross. All in all, this is the most pointless blog post I've ever written because, do you care that the club you go to might just accidentally get you killed one day? No, probably not. We're all YOLO-ing right? I'm not even judging you. I don't care that much either. I'll probably be there on Friday, and the Friday after that, and the Friday after that. But is this who we are now? 

The truth of it is that we're the ones at fault. I know the club has got is issues but we're the ones swarming at the gates, and pushing to get in. Maybe the fact that they've got tasers is okay, because when we're there, hustling and shoving, we're acting like people who need to be tased and tear gassed into compliance. Or maybe we expect that great difficulty always leads to great rewards, so we delight in the struggle because we expect that there'll be some sort of clubbing utopia at the top of those VIP stairs. Or maybe we're just blinded by the Champagne Campaign that the rich subscribe to. 

Happy Days,

Afam