One of the interesting side affects of being a webdesigner and working with other companies for a period of time is the evolution of not only your own business, but also the evolution of theirs.
Today I tried to contact a long-standing client about an email I sent last week. It was just a request for a domain renewal, but I hadn’t heard anything so I gave them a ring. The number was dead. I tried the mobile, the same again.
The client is Echos nightclub in Loughborough. A staple of student life; when I was in my fresher year, this was the only place to be on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. After I designed the Towers Hall website in 2004, Echos soon approached me to do the same for them.
Not being able to make contact with the boss, I enquired at the Font of all Loughborough Knowledge (Nick) and was shocked to discover that Echos is no more. The club closed for a small repair/refurbishment last week, but after discovering the initial problem was more serious than first thought, the landlord pulled the plug and club became non-viable.
And so that is the rather pitiful end of Echos. No more are the days of sticky shoes and sticky bars. Gone are house ‘tequila’, ‘whiskey’ and ‘vodka’ shots for a quid. Gone are nights and nights of free entry and queue jumps.
I’m sad that ‘Chos has gone. It may have been the fading starlet of Loughborough town nightlife, but most people will still hopefully look back and remember it in it’s heyday – the good times, the fun times and most of all the sticky-and-smelling-of-cheap-spirits times.