London, thankfully, is full of opportunities to scam free booze. From private views to products launches, shop openings to bizarre booze promotion nights, there’s a plethora of free alcohol out there if you know where to look for it. Hence we bring you the Free Booze Review… separating the wheat from the chav on the free booze horizon.
Halloween is a great time to hunt for free booze – providing a great seven-day window of badly themed parties and poor fancy dress – we take stock of two of last night’s affairs.
First up: The Launch of the Hammer Films festival at The Idea Generation Gallery in Shoreditch.
Excuse for free booze: Launch of a week long festival of Hammer Films (if you don’t know what these are look them up sharp).
List situation: Fairly loose. Sign up to the gallery mailing list and you’re in.
Entertainment: Good actually. A pretty awesome collection of posters and prints from Hammer’s back catalogue of films. Dracula grins, swooning page three girls, corsets, vampires and blood.
Refreshments – Average. White wine and Magners Cider. Magners Cider currently rated as the ‘most frequently given away booze at free booze parties ever’ beverage. White wine supplies diminished rapidly, Magners, sadly, went on forever. Food, non-existent.
The Crowd – Fairly sophisticated mix of designers, media luvvies and free booze bandits. Couple of super rad dudes like these dressed up too.
Overall Impression – Short but sweet free booze do. Average drinks, good entertainment – could do a lot worse on a Tuesday night.
If you’d like to check out more free booze affairs from the Idea’s Generation Gallery sign up here.
Free booze party number two: The Opal Nera Halloween Ball
Excuse for free booze: Opal Nera’s annual free sticky black sambuca bash
Guest List Situation: An open to all Facebook affair with elaborate wrist band send out. Explains a lot.
Entertainment: Obscure DJ’s, over the top gothic props and cobweb decorations.
Refreshments: Poor. Basically a free sticky shot of sambuca with every Vibe Bar priced drink you buy. This stuff tastes as bad as it looks. Food was only on sale (boo) and consisted mostly of kebabs.
The Crowd: Very dressed up. Very drunk. Mostly Australian I think. Lots of in-party kebab scoffing going on a 10pm, which is never a good sign.
Over all impression: Sticky, Australian and expensive. Poor.
If you’d like to get an invite to Opal Nera’s next bash (yep I think its a whole year away), sign up to their mailing list here.