Club Retro Review

Review By Sophie Lane

As I prepared for a night out at the alluring Club Retro, I adorned my peppiest summertime dress, (1950's trimming included - I contemplated wearing frilly socks but decided it may have been a step too far) thinking that I'd be a smash hit at a club where retro reigns supreme. I was ready to jump, jive and wail. Boy oh boy was I wrong! (Seize the soda pop swing dancing).

Retro is the new metro apparently, as the line outside Lonsdale Streets Club Retro revealed. My hopes were high and my hem line was low... and the girl in front of me was wearing a dress that only just covered what her Mumma gave her. Where's a pair of scissors? Was it too late to cut out the Sound Of Music style sentiments and replace it with a bit of cleavage? As the bouncers waved us in and I heard the hymns of Hanson I realised that yes, yes it was. I had been wooed into a sense of peppy security by the wording of 'Retro' in Club Retro.

Shattered fragments of my expectations set aside, the line to get in was fast moving, and although there was a mix up with guest lists, the door men let us in with a cheaper entry fee regardless. Maybe they felt sorry for my naive interpretation of retro as retro, not retro as metro, and let me in with a tinge of sympathy? Who was I to care. I was in, and two shots of Russian vodka later I was singing to a Backstreet Boys remix at the top of my lungs.

The bar service was quick and easy, and the bartenders sleazy, just as many of my dance floor acquaintances were. Usually fast bar service burns a hole in the wallet, but with standard drink prices and nothing more, the only hole being burnt was the one on my tongue after yet another Tequila.

The ladies bathroom was easy to locate in a drunken haze, just as realising that the reason why all those girls let you use the spare cubicle before them was because there was no lock on the door, and no toilet seat either. Descriptions of dunny time set aside, I managed to use the run down cubicle and cut out a fifteen minute wait in an echoing chamber of "If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends" (cue Spice girls squeels).

Club Retro is split up into three levels, all comprising of girly retro tunes spaced out with Rhianna and Keyo (or is that Neyo?) beats.

Club Retro provides a great night out if you enjoy reliving the 90's and nothing more nostalgic.

For a club which prides itself on the very word 'retro', the vibe is young, and despite some other retro misconceptions, I am relieved to see that there are no war veterans sitting by the bar. Although, if there were, maybe I would have actually been hit on? I did have a very literal interpretation of retro after all.

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