SAVAGE! Where do we even START with Savage. Ok, ok, ok. Let’s paint a picture. It’s 11pm on Saturday night and you’ve just put the finishing touches to your latest Facebook status about cultural appropriation.
Your flatmate Kumiko is in the next room getting wasted on cheap rum with her mates from CSM who all think they’re really edgy because they’re listening to Grimes. THE PHONE RINGS. It’s your drag queen pal Serena, and she’s inviting you to Savage! You leap up, fall into an Uber with her, and fall OUT of the Uber into a glitter-spattered, club kid, nightlife revolution!
Savage is at Metropolis Strip Club over Cambridge Heath way, and it’s one of the best nights around. There’s a stripper pole that goes down through two floors. There’s a top beach bar with beds and a floor that’s real sand (it’s worth it just to see drag queens stumbling in, then getting really confused, then sinking slightly). The impression when you walk in is of lazerlit hedonism, the type we haven’t seen since the pre-crossrail days of Ghetto and The Astoria. It’s that, with a generous slug of absinthe-laced ultra modern genderqueer campery and creatively crafted confusion!
On the second floor, there’s even a big pink sparkly car that you can sit in and pretend to be Britney and Iggy in the video for “Pretty Girls” (actually, more like fight over which one gets to be Britney).
You get all sorts in there! Muscle boys, heroin-chic Pete Doherty types, starry-eyed straight people who think they’ve died and gone to purgatory, scene queens, drag queens and EVEN once, Lindsay Lohan (although we’re still not sure whether it was her or Ursula Snakes on a comedown).
BUT THAT’S NOT ALL. Now Savage are giving East London’s club-craving kids of the night a double penetration with their new Friday nights! Open on Friday AND Saturday! It’s almost too much. Almost.
Right, is Brick Lane Market open yet? We need a pair of vintage leather diamante-studded calf boots, ASAP.
• Savage is every Friday and Saturday at Metropolis (235 Cambridge Heath Road, E2 9NN) from March 4th onward, 11pm – 5am.
