A Square Peg in a Round Hole: Manchester's Meetup Scene

I might shoot myself in the foot by writing this, but here we go. 

I set up social group Manchester Nightlife on Meetup early last month. I’ve been running Meetups fairly routinely, most weekends, since then. I decided to up my game from doing bar crawls to organising an actual club night. I’ve not been to Club LIV since before the pandemic, but I wanted to see what it was like these days. 

I knew full well that running a Meetup group to come here was going to be a challenge. Club LIV is insanely strict on the door. There’s a lot you need to do to stand a chance of getting in to this celebrity hotspot. Hence, when I set up a Meetup to go there, I specified in block caps at the top of the page: 

SMART DRESS AND PHOTO ID ESSENTIAL 

Further into the event description, I detailed: 

‘Dresscode: Shirts and shoes for gents, dresses and heels for ladies.’ 

Guess what? People came wearing whatever they wanted. Jeans, t-shirts, crop tops etc. Australasia, the meeting place, might have let them in, but LIV would never have done. 

LIV had already been difficult. I asked for guestlist earlier in the week. They’d taken ages to respond, and when they did, they’d told me it was full, but I could try on on the door. Entry couldn’t be guaranteed. (You know what that means. ‘We’ll wait til the guestlist is full of the regular faces we want, then tell you we’re full. But we want you to still try, because we want a queue of people who will never get in just to keep the place looking popular.’) 

We tried Dirty Martini, then ended at Theatre Impossible. To be honest, I’ve long felt I’ve had my fill of Theatre Impossible. Too crowded, same overplayed hip hop that was becoming tiresome before the pandemic (has no new music come out?) too expensive for what you get. £20 entry?! Good stage shows, though.

Stage shows in @impossible_mcr last night pic.twitter.com/av9cBvphVq

— Matt Tuckey 🇬🇧 (@matthewtuckey) July 14, 2024

I stayed for as long as I could tolerate it. Then I bumped into an old friend on the street who told me that LIV was closed anyway. Just for the one night. 

So yeah, sometimes the clientele of Meetup can be totally different to what certain clubs are looking for. This is a shame as there are loads of places I’d like to go to, but I know we’re going to struggle to get into. But this is why it took me so long to make the decision to open a meetup group. I knew I’d be trying to put a square peg in a round hole. 

Can it work? Can I get people to read and follow instructions? 

I dunno.