Everyone is drinking and singing along — badly — to karaoke classics in the parents’ bedroom. There’s an old Nintendo 64 in the corner. Red Solo cups litter the beer pong table and you can hear the bass of someone’s terrible AUX cord song choice in the soles of your feet. You know next to nobody here. You lost your friend in the queue for the toilets and now you’re frantically texting them from a corner of the kitchen while trying to ignore the strangers snogging each other next to you. Several people are vaping in what they think is a surreptitious way, so they don’t get told off. This is, for all intents and purposes, a house party. In a sense. It’s just not a real one.
This is House Party, a club that opened a few weeks ago in Soho, which bills itself as “the ultimate house party experience in London”. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it self-identifies as a “new and disruptive concept” (a series of words which mean absolutely nothing).
“I’ve always loved the energy of a classic house party — it’s where the best memories are made,” said co-founder Stormzy in a pre-released statement to coincide with House Party’s launch. “We wanted to create a nostalgic experience where everyone is welcome, and no two nights are the same. We all know everyone wants to go to a house party, nobody really wants to host one — and this is exactly what this house is for.”