EVEN if it has passed from your grasp I am sure you might still remember it, your youth.
Perhaps you can remember how much fun it is to dance in the very small hours of the morning, bumping arms and backs and occasionally mouths with strangers. How light it feels to stop for a few hours in the smog of tricksy lights and elegant base line to shake it all off.
Unless you are recently spilled from the belly of a night club, the results of an evening of dancing can be infuriating for a bystander. Staggering, shouting, a melee of hot chips. You can imagine the douce local residents, those who like quiet yet inexplicably choose to buy property in the heart of a city, rolling over, sighing in their half sleep and pulling the duvet to their eyelashes.
Many of these, the douce snoozers, will be just fine with the decision by Glasgow City Council's licensing committee to restrict the licence of The Arches, threatening its future as one of Scotland's, and certainly Glasgow's, most creative, inventive and outright fun arts venues.
It is part-subsidised by Creative Scotland and part propped up by the income from the club night. To lose that income, runs the worry, is to lose the venue entire.
I am unashamedly fond of the Arches: it's the only club where you can have your face painted and take part in interactive theatre. I sang for a time in the Arches Community Choir. Its restaurant is excellent - both the backdrop to annual Christmas dinners with friends and the worst date I've ever been on. In my first and only artistic endeavour, I was tangentially involved in creating a piece of modernist art that was displayed there - I loaned them a knitted duck.
Everyone outraged by the threat to this venue has a sentimental tale like mine; everyone in agreement has likely never stepped foot in the place.
The venue gained a place on the police's watchlist last year following the death of Regane Maccoll, a 17-year-old girl who collapsed and died after being in the Arches and who is thought to have taken an Ecstasy-like pill. Instantly the venue gained the addition of "controversial" to its name in any newspaper mention.
The club was "controversial" because it was deemed a draw for people who take drugs and dance.
When Police Scotland and Glasgow City Council began bunching their undies over the club and it looked certain that it would be closed should any infractions occur, the venue issued an online appeal to its patrons to refrain from illegal substances. The Arches had also requested policing interventions in an attempt to stay on the right side of the law, but it claims these requests were then used against it at licensing committee meetings. The Arches said, for example, that almost all the police complaints stemmed from the staff alerting them to drugs finds.
I'm not sure what message this is supposed to send or the precedent it sets: it doesn't matter if a venue cooperates, it will be penalised for the actions of its patrons purely for being a draw for those patrons? What incentive is this for other nightspots to cooperate with police or be honest about its goings-on?
You may be of the opinion that the wider drug problem in Glasgow has nothing to do with those who choose to dabble recreationally and those who cannot function, who slip from fix to fix in unmasked desperation.
Whichever, it is folly to think that those who take drugs when they go dancing will cease to take those drugs. Merely they will take them at house parties or in other venues that are less well policed and less committed to dealing with the issue in an adult way. It is not preferable to disperse a problem that was otherwise contained.
The Arches, knowing its position in the police's crosshairs, asked for best behaviour from its patrons. It was not given that courtesy. It asked for council support. It was not given that courtesy. It asked to work with the police. It was not given that courtesy.
This venue is not a town centre, sticky floor disco. It is a hothouse of young talent, a community hub, a cultural hotspot.
If it closes it should not be a relief to those who tut over the noise and exuberance of its patrons: it should be an embarrassment to Glasgow's claim to be a modern, avant garde city of culture.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article