The evolution of the Friday night social on Richmond Hill
Updated: Mar 20, 2023
11 March 2022
This is a journal I wrote a year ago from publishing. It is not a detailed documentation of history, rather it is written from my own lens and experience.
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I’ve spent time w/ 3 waves of uni students during my time living in BCP. I never went to uni myself, however I manage to benefit from the social outings whilst earning a regular salary and working my way up the corporate ladder. My favourite era started by attending the Velo Sur Mer crit cycling races which saw the third race ending @ what is now an iconic cafe - this was around 2014.
It was a transitory phase of my life - one where I realised I had a boat load of time to still figure out what my ideal life would look like. A privilege not many people have, going through those formative years as a young adult, paying bills regularly now that you’ve finally figured out how to set up a direct debit, register on the electoral role, experiencing that first break up which naturally pulls you apart enough to look at your life from a wider, macro perspective.
You’re old enough to have held it down on the 9-5 for quite some time now, you’re actually really stoked you didn't decide to get married and have kids whilst you’re still so wet behind the ears, cus let’s face it, you’ve had enough set backs or realisations to know that life ain't really what you thought it was going to be. That Audi A3 TFSI and earning £40k by age 25, which you stupidly put down on your first quarterly work review, didnt quite come to fruition. You could tell Tax Manager, Neil, had a little smirk on his face when he read that absurd SMART objective.
I really bloody enjoyed hanging out at South Coast Roast. It was where I first tasted coffee that was not instant, and I was always interested to know how they made it taste slightly different each time I went in there. It was only the previous year that I’d spend Sunday’s taking advantage of Boscanova’s 2-for-1 pancakes before 9:30am after walking the dog w/ my mum from Fisherman's Walk all the way to Boscombe pier - a walk I still do more than 10 years later. And this is of course the same world that Dan and the Velo Sur Mer crew operated in.
Why is the wave of uni students I mentioned at the outset relevant for a post about a local cafe? It's quite obviously been a very appealing and suitable place for them to work in, zero hour contracts and all that - particularly the LGBTQAUB crowd, w/ their sick tattoo’s, colourful hair, and lovely white skin. This has been the case for independent, and non-independent cafe culture in general. I’ve spent a good amount of time in this cafe, and I reckon on average per visit I spent at least a tenner. Despite National Minimum Wage being the norm, I've also noticed quite a few of the post graduate crowd spending time there. What newly graduated student has ten bloody pounds to be spending in these venues on average per visit. Or was this me witnessing a different demographic than my experience had previously encountered? A demographic of more affluence. I wasn’t a student, but for some reason this is the association my brain decided to make. I guess Dan (a Year of 2015 fine art AUG grad) and his associated social circle all worked either at South Coast Roast or Boscanova in some capacity or had affiliations with it - Joel created something really unique there with those two places and I wonder if he realises this. The Jimmy’s Iced Coffee crew were also similar in ethos and vibe and were starting to host a bunch of cool events around BCP during this time.
Nonetheless, I always saw that crowd as the OG Avo on Toast fixie bike hipsters - when riding fixed gear bicycles was still cool. This is an evolution of what the 2009 tattoo / big beard crowd had evolved into, is how my mind saw it.
I was a former late bloomer to the Dupstep and Fixed Gear cycling scenes and caught them both at their tail ends, so naturally I’d had a fixation on making new friends who were from worlds I’d not formerly been a part of, and to be fair they were really the coolest thing in our conservative little sea side town - I was very bored of venturing to one of those bars/clubs on Old Christchurch road. Bar Me, Bliss, Dusk Till Dawn, Toko, Crank, I’ve seen most of them. Haha, look at me talking as if I’m an OG - one day I’ll try see if local club promotors and DJ's, Bob Povey, or Jon Coomer are willing to sit down w/ me so I can quiz them of the 'before my time' lol.
South Coast Roast started out as a place that had the ideals of a more sustainable world - I thought this might have been the origins of the woke movement as we know it today, but I’ve recently come to understand that this was just merely another iteration of it. The Grouch - Artsy was released in 2009 and talks about yoga pants while sipping Chai Tea. Perhaps Joel was into that era of concious hip hop and that’s where he got the inspiration from? Not that we can credit him for any of the subcultures that spawned around the cafes. It felt new, it felt exciting, and like I say most places around here hadn’t even got to grips with what an Americano was. I was no wiser either. So we were all being educated really.
Small town mentality and all that.
By around 2017, the DJ journey was well underway. My early years of cycling regularly w/ the Velo crew had grown few and far between since those initial alley cat races and Wednesday Night sessions roaming around the BH area in groups of 10 or more. Luke, Toby and Jim had already managed to evolve things even further by capturing an ethos and vibe that was only ever experienced in big cities like London, Manchester, San Fransisco etc. You know, the vibe that a ton of the creative people that attend BU or AUB leave this town for once they graduate.
They did this by hosting Friday night after work music and drink socials. Again, it was fresh, it was simple, and it was only on from 7-10pm. Get that, you can go out after work, see your friends and even better, you could meet new people. You’d hear some interesting music which was a bloody breath of fresh air from the constant loop of chart tunes you’d hear at Slug n Lettuce just a few doors down the road. And my god the people in Slug n Lettuce. It was nice to speak to girls who didn't look as if they were about to fall over from their uncomfortable heels and fake tanned to the nines. All of this and you could be in bed by 11pm.
I don't think I was ever fully built for the status quo life in this town. Or just towns in general.
That last bit might come off a bit harsh toward the crowds of people that attend those off the shelf places, but like I pointed out I was one of them too. Hopefully by writing this I am articulating a lot of the Love Hate relationship some of us feel towards life here. It’s turned out to be a cyclical thing. Cant quite put my finger one it. Ebbs and flows, and if you're anything like me it is usually indicative of where my head is at toward life in general.
The years of Eats n Beats (formerly Caffineated Beats) was my first excursion into socialising in places where the norm wasn't to wear a Ralph Lauren oxford shirt and those generic brown boat shoes - I’m looking at my pair as I type this. It was a place where I was made to feel relaxed. You’d often see some of the guys who worked at Consortium hanging out here too. The slack skater style of the clothing would naturally add to this, encouraging me to approach the Friday night social in a more relaxed manner than I previously would have. Plus who doesn’t like a hoody, tapered jean, white socks and classic black Vans combo?
Jim took over fully of the Friday night curation during all of 2017 up to Giles’ ownership takeover of the cafe later that year. And for me, that was the golden year for it. What happened there was quite special and something that I’ve not since seen captured around here. Not in the same community spirited way, in my opinion. Perhaps my opinion is a tad biased as this regular occurence of the event saw all the DJ collectives, that I am now proud to call some of my closest friends, congregate together on that hill. If you were lucky enough to catch it during the summer months it was some of the best sunset evenings I’ve had in this town. It was where my relationships with people like Bob, Donna, Micky, Dan Orchard, Sonya, fuck and so many more people I realised that it’s silly for me to even mention a few names. The lo key collective threw our first ever party at an Eats n Beats too - April 2017.
It was one of those things where if you weren't sure what was happening, you could gaurantee South Coast Roast was a good holding space for something that would unfold later on in the evening - and this was every Friday for a whole year. I remember people turning up on their own too - a feature that's still massively underated. Remember this was a time where nights out would regularly end around 2am, for any pre-covid readers not fortunate enough to experience the glory years lol.
3 different DJ’s across the night, a bespoke street food menu capped at £5, and of course who can forget the legendary Red Stripes. The beer that made you piss 3.1 ratio per can. I loved it though, and for nostalgia’s sake I’m going to post the artwork that miche made for us for one of our takeover nights.
We celebrated Donna’s 40th there, Garphie and Joss had moved over from Guavavibe in Charminster to do one, we brought one of our Birmingham friends down, Gary Ellis was involved, Chris Wheatley, Matt Richards, the Drum n Bass crowd and all my Accounting/Tax apprentices came down too - I remember one night in particular where chef Robbo would get us so blind drunk that we decided to convince a taxi driver to put down his back seats, load our bikes into it and still take us home to Canford Cliffs in his now illegal fare as there was not enough seats. So many after party's where the harem of fans would flock back to our bachelor pad - sometimes we'd even split off and head to the Get Satisfied club nights to consume illegal substances and listen to heavy repetitive music until the early hours of the morning. Returning home only to find a group of people still awake in the flat.
Those experiences would not have happened if it weren’t for Jim, Luke and Toby's persistence from Eats N Beats to Caffeinated Beats and all the other iterations of the Friday night social at the cafe.
Like everything though, that era had to come to an end. Jim had moved on in terms of employment, miche and I were at a stage of deciding to quit our 9-5’s to pursue this DJ thing full time. We’d just come back from the annual trip to Amsterdam Dance Event, so when it was time to share our new vinyl purchases, you could feel in the air that things were changing. Giles came in, James had taken more steer on the nights and to be fair to them, they shot a sick promo video of a night where miche and I were sharing music. A ton of us spent New Years Eve together too at the final Buffalo Winton soiree so I do look back on that year very fondly.
I continued to work with the venue all the way until late 2018, I was even employed in the kitchen where lovely relationships w/ Harry, Olivia, Archie, James and everyone else had blossomed.
We won’t delve on the 2018 events, however it did display something that I touched on very briefly earlier in this post. Those white skinned creative students leaving our beloved sunny bmouth for the grafitti filled freedom of Bristol, or those vintage cobbly lanes of Brighton. It was a completely new crowd, curated differently, and to be honest it had become hard work. Execution often left me wanting. That year was great in it’s own ways.
Since then, I've always wondered what the ingredients would need to be for things not to be as cyclical as they are. For events and scenes like these to gel, and stick. Are small towns designed that way? and by it’s very nature these vibrant pockets of thinking outside of the box are only ever guaranteed a short life span? Is that what makes those periods of magic so special?
I’m writing this from a perspective of taking inspiration from era’s of nightlife culture like the 70’s Disco struggle in gay and black New York, the militant afro futurism of Detroit Techno, early 00’s pirate radio London and the scene and cultures that these movements have garnered. It’s what I’ve always tried to create here in this town w/ lo key.
Regardless, I hope you enjoyed this little love letter. Thanks Jim, and everyone else, for what you did there. It made me very glad to see that Andy and Alex are now stepping up w/ the Been Around Collective and their take on what this Friday Night Social should look like. I wish them all the best and Gilles contact me when you’re ready to sell bro.
Peace, love and IPA's ;-)
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