Nightcrawl The Student Experience
the BIRMINGHAM edition
H
ello and welcome to Nightcrawl magazine. Whether you’re new to Birmingham or if you’ve lived round here all your life, in this magazine you’ll discover the entertainment hotspots in the city, things to do and the people to see, to ensure that you’re time at university is as exciting and memorable as you ever thought the student experience could be. So from students to students, enjoy our magazine, dive in and live it up!
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Where’s the fun at?
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Where’s the party at?
10 - 19
Where’s the music at?
20 - 27
Where’s the good food at?
28 - 33
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Where’s the fun at?
Star City 4
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Star City is a good place to go if you’ve ever wanted to run away and join the circus. There’s no need to blow your own trumpet,
because there’s a clown to do that for you. If you’re feeling a bit different and want to try something new, then there’s always the option of being strapped into a giant metal ball and being sprung into the air by elastic. Don’t forget to take your bags of pennies
to slot into the arcade and have a gamble on the
mechanically moving busses, which go seriously slow might I add.
But if the arcade doesn’t do it for you and you want to
get your hands on some serious cash, then put on your poker face and strut into the casino to gamble against the REAL men. As ‘fun’ as this all might sound, I’d always stick to less crazy options of having fun, like playing a bit of football.
You could easily burn off half your Nando’s by dribbling on a ‘very safe roof’. Instead of the usual kicking balls, why don’t you bowl them, there’s lots of more up sides to bowling like trying on some
nifty clown shoes and rolling balls to knock down ten pins.
There’s literally no better way to spend your Friday nights. If you are just too vain to even look at those hideous bowling shoes, then maybe the Virgin Active Gym is more up your alley; but then when you finish and get out, there’s always that tempting smell of coffee to revitalise you.
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Let’s be honest, everyone loves watching a good film, so if illegally downloading films just isn’t your thing, then
VUE cinemas is filled with 25 big screens of action packed
adventure. Then, there’s Laser Quest which is just like
sci-fi ‘Call Of Duty’, running around crazy in a dark room shooting enemies with your laser gun, and it’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt.
There’s so much to do! I guess once you’ve experienced
all this fun, fun, fun, it’s time to drink, eat, and drink! There are plenty of different places to go whether you want to eat
Italian, American, Chinese, Indian, the list goes on.
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So overall, I think you can agree that you wouldn’t really get bore
in this magical illuminate place unless you just hate all that fake colourful chaos!
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“As a student, you gotta find the balance between work and play. ‘Play’ doesn’t mean getting smashed off your face all the time. You don’t want your uni memories to be of just that. Get a bunch of friends together and go bowling!”
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“If you wanna go out, but don’t wanna go clubbing,
then this is the place to go! It’s fun and there’s lots to do!”
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Where’s the party at?
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Broad Street
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So Anyway basically broad Street is the place to go for entertainment, well that is acording to the
People from Brum Town. It’s full of places to get wasted,
you can get Girls and Boys for the price of a shot and best of all their are taxis everywhere to drop you +1 off
at your crib, what more would you want peeps?
Howeeever, if you wana just chill with your homies
there are still many more places to go such as the cinema around the block... oh yeah and also the Nando’s to get yourself some Peri Peri chicken, that’s if
your lovin’ it, finger lickin’... fuck
just hungry
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The Noise Next Door are an improvisational comedy troupe. Driven on suggestions from the audience, this insanely talented group perform the most ludicrous sketches, impersonations and comical songs with the quickest and most ingenious wit you’ve ever seen. The guys (from left to right) are Tom Livingstone (Big Tom), Charlie Granville, Matt Grant, Tom Houghton (Little Tom) and Sam Pacelli. Even with one man down, the rest of the group still took Birmingham by storm.
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As soon as you guys hit the stage you’re so energetic and lively, what motivates you to keep up this vibe throughout the show? Charlie: Red Bull! Sam: The fun that we have up there. I know it’s a bit of a cheesy answer, but this is what we actually want to be doing; getting up there with your mates, having that buzz and feeling the energy from the audience is huge. You guys have created a series of ‘improv adventures’, where you take suggestions from your fans on Facebook and Twitter of the sort of things they’d like to see you do under a certain theme. ‘Improv Avengers’ is my personal favourite [watch the video here]; but your most recent improv adventure was ‘Dib Dib Deeds’ [watch the video here] which you did in Birmingham. How did you come up with the idea of an improv adventure? Sam: Out of boredom really. We work at night; I wanted something to do in the day. At the start, we didn’t really know what we were doing. We were just walking around, asking people for things to do and filming it. Charlie: We’ve ended up doing some really cool stuff. We’ve done things we would never have done otherwise. Little Tom: Some of the places we’ve been to! We went to the Isle of Wight for fifteen minutes. Big Tom: And I got that dragon tattoo.
Sam: We quite like it when someone refuses to believe it’s all improvised; I mean that’s quite a big compliment. They’ll say “oh you wrote that”, we obviously didn’t, if we did we would have done it better anyway. And how could we have prepared it, you shouted it out during the show. What’s the most controversial sketch you’ve performed? Little Tom: I remember we were singing a boy band style love song to a girl, and to be able to come up with lyrics to sing in the song, we asked her what she likes to do and she said “going to church”. My chorus was “it’s clear to see that Jesus is your boss, come home with me and I’ll nail you on a cross”. And I said that in the chorus so we all had to repeat it, several times! Ever had any crazy fans? Little Tom: There was a guy last night, here in Birmingham, who knows every single word to our DVD. Sam: What! Little Tom: He’s watched it so much he knows every word. Big Tom: That’s mental.
So tonight you are performing in Jongleurs on Broad Street; there are venues all over Britain but what’s so great about Birmingham? Charlie: We really like Birmingham! We’ve performed here twelve times this month. Since you’re on the road a lot, how do Little Tom: Literally! you keep yourselves entertained? Charlie: The audiences here are just Charlie: I don’t think it’s any secret brilliant. There’s not one gig we’ve done that we like to play games. Card games, here that I didn’t like. board games. Big Tom: We love quizzes! Lastly, why should people come see you? Little Tom: Yeah, quizzes! Reading as Sam: It’s unlike anything you’ll ever see. well, we’ve started to read. Charlie: We love to make people laugh. Big Tom: Yes, we’ve learnt how to read. We have so much fun up there, and we share the fun with the room. What’s the best compliment you’ve Little Tom: It’s different every time. ever received? Sam: We’re not trying to prove a point, or Big Tom: That’s a spectacular penis. make any statement about any opinion. Charlie: Hey! That was private! We are just there to entertain you.
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An interview with a bouncer So what’s the best thing about your job? I like the fact that I can keep people safe from the dickheads outside and also I get to meet a variety of people. Oh ok, do you tend to get on with the other bouncers around Broad Street? Yeah, I get on with a lot of them, however not the people from Gatecrasher as they tend to be up themselves and are from a different agency to most of the door men on this part of Broad Street. I feel the same way about those bouncers too, so anyway, can you tell me something that we didn’t know about bouncers? Well recently... [goes off and helps escort a guy out of a bar for causing problems]. What was that all about? Argh, this dickhead thinks he can throw a drink on a girl’s dress, so I had to escort his ass out of the building. Oh ok... Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, so recently now all door men have to wear stab proof vests due to problems that have occurred in the past and even though the vest can be a bit awkward to wear, it does protect us. Another thing you might not have known is that most bouncers here are educated and have got other jobs, for example my friend over there is a teacher and I’m an engineer during the daytime. I would never have thought that you were an engineer! Yeah and I bet you wouldn’t have thought that big guy over there is a stripper also! What!? I was only kidding about that, but your facial reaction was priceless.
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The Rainbow 20
Where’s the music at?
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“The
Rainbow brings some of the
best music and djs to the city.�
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“Satisfying
your musical cravings till’ the early morning hours.”
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Born and bred in Birmingham, Tom Shorterz is a resident DJ at some of the best bass music venues in the city, including The Rainbow Complex in Digbeth. He works very closely with The Rainbow to co-promote ‘Face’ and ‘02:21’ nights. He DJs a range of music including house and bass, as well as mixing different elements from his favourite genres. His tracks have regular airplay on Radio 1 and Radio 1Xtra. We caught up with Tom before one of his sets at The Rainbow to see what he’s all about. 24
What’s the best thing about playing? Without fail, making people dance. How you can throw a track to the dance floor, may it be an anthem or something they’ve never heard before and watching people go crazy. That’s what it’s about. Then from that, giving people an experience that they will remember in years to come. Memories will live forever. Have you got any rituals before you play? To be fair, I just jump on the decks and go with it. I tend to plan my first three tracks I’m gonna play in my head and just go with it. I’m thinking of yoga, just haven’t got round to buying a roll mat. Who’s appearing in your sets a lot? There is so many at the moment, but I would say Disclosure, Huxley, Lorenzo, MK and Le Roi. Tee Circus has just dropped me a hot EP which will definitely get some love in my sets. Who inspires you? I listen to so much music past and present. I love listening to old 80s music from house to disco, there’s just something so warm and raw about it, and it’s really good fun trying to recapture those sounds when possible. But to cut a long story short, everything! Where do you think the Birmingham house scene will go? House is such a broad name for a genre. For the style of house music I play, it’s growing and growing, reaching people for a first time and it’s creating loads of new followers in my home town. I honestly believe the 02:31 after party has set a bench mark in this
city and proved you don’t have to just play one sound at your party. There is a world of music out there, embrace it, forget the rules. What’s your favourite track of your own to this date? I did a track with Enigma featuring Little Palm, called ‘Rag Doll’. [Listen to the song here]. We called the style ‘chill step’, it’s just a really great piece of music and it had millions of views on the internet. I honestly thought it was gonna blow up but it kind of slipped under the radar of any commercial success, BUT, it sure has touched people far and wide as I’m forever getting emails and seeing YouTube comments about how people loved that track just as much as me. Who would you really like to work with? Todd Edwards and Redlight, they’re both unique in every way. What’s your favourite place in Birmingham to wind down? I absolutely love Spotlight in Digbeth, such a great place to go chill. Yumm cafe in The Custard Factory, also The Cross in Moseley I have been frequenting for the past few weeks. Some places just have that feel to them and are well worth checking out for some chill time. Finally, in three words, describe The Rainbow. Innovative, Electric, Diverse.
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Where’s the good food at?
The Arcadian 29
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“There’s such a great range of restaurants at The, Arcadian. There’s Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Mexican, Italian and so on! It’s like the food epicentre of
Birmingham.”
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Cook your own Chinese food
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For most people, being a student and living away from home is your first taste of independence. It’s a time to be adventurous and try new things, but as cheaply and conveniently as possible. Who else is in a cycle of eating ready made meals and takeaways? I mean, who doesn’t love a Chinese takeaway. So while we’re in this experience of trying new things, how about cooking your own Chinese food? At New Sum Ye, the Chinese fast food restaurant in The Arcadian, we asked the chef Mr Zheng to tell us a recipe for a Chinese meal that would be easy for students to make themselves at home. So here we have a recipe for
duck and noodles in plum sauce; a meal for two.
You will need
two boneless duck breasts
(because you don’t want to cut the meat from the bones yourself, do you?). Make sure they are fully defrosted, and then you can slice the raw meat into smaller chunks; this way it will cook quicker. Splash some olive oil in a non-stick frying pan and cook the duck meat for 8-10 minutes until well browned.
While you’re waiting for this to cook, you can put on the noodles. As students I’m sure we’re all quite familiar with how to make pot noodles. For the noodles in this dish, you only need to follow
the packet instructions. Mr Zheng says you can use any Yi Mein or egg noodles but the Chinese brand noodles will be the best. Bean sprouts are also a common ingredient in Asian cuisine, Mr Zheng says it is optional, but if you want to you can cook some bean sprouts with your noodles to make it a bit more special. When the noodles are finished, drain the hot water that you cooked them in, and serve them on your two plates. Keep checking on the duck, and when it’s done, add the pieces to your two plates. Mr Zheng told us that Chinese plum sauce can be quite complicated to make yourself as there so many ingredients. So he recommends that you buy the sauce, such as the brand Lee Kum Kee. This sauce is made from preserved Chinese plums, high quality ginger and chilies; it is widely recognised as a great sauce for roasted and for duck dishes. For each plate,
take 3 tablespoons of the plum sauce
from the jar then smother and mix it over the food. As an extra touch to go with the sauce if you’re feeling adventurous, you can peel the skin off a plum,
cut it into cubes and add this to your dish.
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