I’ve been half-planning a party. It takes a while to commit, for me – I need a bit of a run-up, four or five conversations just before sleep, two or three reasons to celebrate, the casual dangling of the possibility to a handful of friends, before I set a date and make a playlist and finally, with great ceremony, put out the nice crisps. It was midway through this process, a tickle of anxiety at my throat, that I learned about the rise of fake house parties.
These are club nights designed to look and feel like guests are drinking in someone’s dim front room, with wallpapered dancefloors and spaces done up like suburban bathrooms, lit for selfies. Stormzy is behind one of these clubs – in a press release he explained the concept: “We all know everyone wants to go to a house party, nobody really wants to host one – and this is exactly what this house is for.” It’s an attempt to conjure the feeling of a house party, but safely, in a club in Soho with 10-quid drinks.
