Calling all of you who went to university in Manchester: Sankeys has closed. I repeat, Sankeys has closed. The clubbing institution, that for so many of us that trekked up north can recall three years of (messy) fun within its walls, has closed after the building was sold to be turned into apartments. The club’s former owned confirmed yesterday the news about the Beehive Mill building.
Sankys isn’t the first superclub to close it’s doors - early half of the UK’s nightclubs have shut their doors in the last decade. It would appear Manchester’s history is repeating itself with the closure of the Hacienda back in 1997, and now one of it's last superclubs being forced to close due to renovations. Are we forgetting the culture of these iconic nightclubs? From the enriched music scene to the event of going itself - Sankey’s opened over 20 years ago and was like no other space in Manchester. It put Manchester back on the dance map and filled the massive void the Hacienda left.
Apart from the Warehouse Project for a few months a year, the space it occupied was where music lovers, university students and everyone in between went to lose themselves, make friends in toilets and enjoy being squished in a dark, dingy room. It sounds grim on paper, does’t it? But oh Sankeys how we loved thee.
My fondest memory of Sankeys is from my first year of university back in 2009. It was my birthday night out, the final big one before me and my fresher friends went home for Christmas. This meant excessive cider drinking in Cambridge Halls before getting on the ‘Sankeys bus,’ to Ancoats. The simple fact alone that Sankeys had it’s own bus surely makes it the best club ever? No taxi money = more money for cider.
Before we left, my best friend/guy who I then had a thing for gave me a hand-made necklace with an elephant on it. To 17-year-old me, this was adorable. Now I’m not so sure. He did leave it on my pillow though, aw.
All I can remember from the night was losing all of my mates, falling over even though I was wearing trainers, and taking far too many pictures that I now choose not to look at because we all look horrendously sweaty. I wore the elephant necklace all night long, though.
I decided to ask my Manchester girls what nights they could remember, and this is what they came up with.
‘Erm…I remember a night when I drank so much I thought I was dying and then ended up on the Sankey’s beach.' I have no recollection of a beach within Sankeys...
‘I had my very first public kiss with the guy I was secretly-but-not-so-secretly seeing. Delightful.’
‘I once made friends with a girl and texted her for two weeks straight after because she bought me a bottle of water.’ Sounds about right.
‘Just the queuing in general. Whyyyy did it take so long.
‘That time we tried to walk home at 6am, completely forgetting it was in the middle of no where and we lived miles away. We got home at 8am.’ We then tried this a second, third, forth and fifth time. It always took ages, and we always got lost.
’Seeing Fake Blood and it being AMAZING, but it was so so busy and the room felt like it was raining from sweat.’ Gross.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.