Tales from an accelerated culture

There's a club in Portsmouth that sits on the end of a long line of clubs and pubs in the 'imaginatively' named 'Guildhall Walk'. Guildhall Walk is the place where decency goes to die. In some respects I find this a bit sad as the Portsmouth Guildhall is one of my favourite buildings ever. Firstly it's got big muthafugging stone lions sat atop plinths on either side of the grand staircase that must have served as the entrance for the regency and such like at one time in the past (now everyone has to use the side entrance... unless you are Same Difference making a 'triumphant' return home in which case it's all red carpets and faux-enthusiasm from the mayor) but I love them because they remind me of the final scenes of Ghostbusters (where Sigorney and Rick Moranis go all demon-dog on your ass: Gozer-style), added to which there's a gloriously opulent clock tower. Wherever I am, a clock tower immediately gives me TOTAL Back to the Future chills. When I'm drunk and have braved the Guildhall Walk experience I will normally grab whomever I'm with and make them stand with me in the middle of the square to just gaze at it in wonderment. Then, because everyone I choose to spend time with hates the world and everything in it, they normally (forcibly) spin me around and shout at me to open my eyes and look what stands opposite the beauteous, magnificent, palatial Guildhall. The council buildings. The council buildings what were built in the 70's and look a bit like baby skyscrapers. But not cute babies - babies that have been dropped on their head and do nothing but scream all day. Although, having said that, I get a strange thrill from observing the juxtaposition of these diametrically opposed architectural feats. It would be like putting Stephen Fry and Paris Hilton in the same room together - an interesting experiment maybe but at the end of the day all that will happen is one's flaws will be made all the more apparent whilst the other's splendor will, similarly, shine all the more brightly (I'll let you decide who is who in that little analogy).

Anyway, that's not the point of the story. The point is, at the very end of the Guildhall Walk is a club called 'Babylon'. The name, I'm sure you'll agree is extremely evocative. Personally, if I hear a club is called Babylon then I'm expecting girls to be squashing their ass cheeks up against a pole of some kind and moving up and down in a way that no deity ever intended (of course, the actual strip club in Portsmouth is called 'Elegance' - who said sweaty, sleazy men called Barry that run establishments such as these don't have a sense of humour?) However, Babylon holds no such delights. Babylon is a 'nineties club'.

Eight years into the new millennium and already we are fetishising a time in history that happened when The Chuckle Brothers had already started to be considered as 'old hat'. I have post-it notes the pre-date 1989. For a club to base it's entire ethos on a decade that isn't even a decade old itself yet astonishes me. We really are living in an accelerated culture.

Of course, having said that, I love it. I *do* fetishise the 90's to a worrying degree. I often wish I could travel back to 1995 and manage to get on the full-time cast list of Mr Show, dress like Angela Chase, share an apartment with Larry Sanders-era Jeanne Garofalo, date Jason London, and all the while rock exclusively to Weezer, Smashing Pumpkins, and Britney Spears. It's safe to say the 90's holds a weird allure for me. I just don't know it's a 'good' thing for anyone (including me) to be celebrating the oh-so recent past. Without wanting to sound too much like a Daily Mail article: Where will it all end?