Youth Clubs

Did any of you ever go to a youth club as a teenager (or slightly younger)? You know the set-up: couple of rooms, pool table, table tennis, table football, tuck shop, five a side football, someone bringing the cassette tape single of Here Comes The Hotstepper and playing it on loop all night… That sort of thing. Tell us about your youth club times.

Yes, yes I did!

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Yes, yes i did!

nothing terribly exciting to share about my adventures in youth club though.

I want to hear anyway! Who organised it? What was there? Who ruled the roost at the youth club? Did you have a nemesis?

Did karate for a bit, which definitely paid off as I am now renowned for karate.
It was in a youth club.

There was one but I didn’t go to it. Despite Karen someone or other begging me to. How different my life could have been if I’d gone.

Went to one for “gifted” children for a bit. It was shite.

Yep. Only now do I look back and see how good they were, they did keep us off the streets. Table tennis, pool, snooker, arcade games, computers, tuck shop thing, music room kitted out with drums, guitars etc. Disco type thing at one end. Ours was divided into age groups as well.

Well it was great, until it wasn’t cool any more and sitting in playgrounds and drinking cider and running away from the police (for being 15 and drinking) was far more appealing.

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I went to cubs for a bit. My rich mate had a games room with a pool table so we just went there tbh.

My supernatural mind-reading powers are telling me that you’re not entirely serious.

Also that you’re wearing stripes today.

Ours had:

  • one room with a pool table, table tennis table and a big old midi system
  • one room for five-a-side football - though I remember once that one of the youth workers borrowed a strobe light and tried to put on a rave. I remember being fascinated by the site of us all running around in what looked like stop-motion.
  • a tuck shop / bar area.

I used to drink too much Coke and then struggle to sleep on youth club nights.

It was great. And they had tomato ketchup flavoured crisps (puff ball things) for 5p a pack. Good times.

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do you mean an orphanage?

I only ever went to it a couple of times, don’t know why I didn’t go more, it just wasn’t on my radar. Seemed quite cool though, it was where a lot of the stoner kids used to hang out. At some point some of the bands in school started doing gigs there so I went to those.

Was always amused that it was literally next door to the police station, helped keep a lid on any craziness.

Ah it sounds grander than it was! The pool table had a rip in the cloth; the table tennis table was propped up with beer mats and the sofas in the bar area must have been a fire hazard, they were so old.

I had some fun years there, though.

The church I had to go to did a youth club which I went to on Fridays, my Mum ran the tuck shop.

It was mostly twatting a foam football about in the main church section and there was a snooker table which I resented being there because it belonged to my Granddad and it meant that there wasn’t a snooker table in his house any more.

Was fun until you had to sit through a God bit for five minute or so every week, I used to take a mate from school and absolutely dread the Goddy bit as he wasn’t a church-goer or owt.

Yeah the one I attended was organised by a church. I had a bit of an arch-nemesis thing going on with the minister’s son which boiled over during a game of five-a-side.

They didn’t go the whole five minute God bit with us (thank goodness as, again, I brought some non-churchgoing friends along most weeks) but occasionally they’d try to drag us along to something a bit more evangelistic.

Nothing worse as a church going kid is there, I always feel quite guilty about it however