The Time Traveller's Cocktail Club: 14/20*

To Note: The Dig Party Planners organise one-off events, see website below for more

Scores

Ambiance 3/5
Design 5/5
Drinks 3/5
Staff 3/5
Extra LBC star: *yes, because it was different!

One Saturday evening at the end of June, 30^th to be precise, I went to one of the strangest events I have encountered in London: The Time Traveller’s Cocktail Club.

After reading about it on ever reliable The Nudge, I signed up to this event that was taking place at The House of 100 Years, No.9 French Place. We almost missed the alleyway leading down to this party even though it was metres from Shoreditch High Street. Dressed in 1940’s gear – it said simply to choose an era – we had our names ticket off and were handed a small glass of sherry and a drink token each - £15 a ticket, really? – and headed up the extremely narrow rickety wooden stairs. (By the way, there were no parlour games at the start and the pianist had got bored and disappeared. Also no cloakroom). The first level of this strange house – The Parlour - was a 1920’s club with a gramophone in the corner and an over-the-top “American” hostess who loudly introduced herself the the following occured:

“So what’s your name?”

“Amanda. Baxter”

“Oh my god, from Baxter Steel?! What a pleasure to meet you!”

“Um ok, lets go upstairs”

Onto the next level which was 1960’s – The Green Room - with a kitchen in one corner (?), comfortable sofas, black and white films projected on the walls and two girls dancing around the room. It took us a while to establish they were paid to do this. No one joined in. We liked this room, it felt like a house party. In a weird I-don’t-know-anyone way. The single toilet that was also a shower room downstairs did nothing to disperse this idea.

One more up level to The Loft Party. There was a multi coloured light ball, and girls dancing round it barefoot. Were they paid too? We didn’t know. That was about it, with bad 1980’s music from a boom box. We moved on.

And lastly upstairs to The Rooftop Science Lab. And once again, there was no “futuristic molecular and test-tube cocktails”. In fact we just enjoyed the views and wondered what was going on a few blocks over, looked good. Then feeling guilty, there was a 20 people at a time rule, one out out in thing, we headed back down.

It was a very strange night; it would have been better in a big group and we heard the hostess complaining at the poor turnout even if people had already handed over their money for the tickets. We had two cocktails each which was enough, they were not the best. Not bad, but not great either. This was mainly in the 20’s room, avoiding the crazy hostess winding up her fake gramophone.

Then we headed home. Hardly “the mind bending not to be missed event” that it promised to be. However, it was memorable. 

From Dig Party Planners - www.digpartyplanners.co.uk