Pier Pressure’s slow, sorry death is the saddest thing in Aber

I’ve been in Aber a while now. Well, I’ve been here for three years which is an age in university time, and long enough to see Salt and Vaults disappear, and Wiff-Waff and Libertine emerge, and there’s something that has been noticeable for a while. Nobody wants to admit it, but everybody can see it: Pier Pressure is dying.

Sure it’s still busy on certain days: after loans come in, the occasional super packed Friday, Halloween – but it seems fewer and fewer people are going there, and that it’s becoming a shell of the club it used to be. We all know that it went into administration due to financial issues, and that in itself is a huge sign of how bad things are getting there. It’s one of two clubs in a student town, yet it can barely keep itself running.

‘Yeah come Pier, it’s utterly rammed this time. Really.’

But why is it dying? It used to be the place to be. What happened to the stumbling march from Pier to Angel after lights up, or the rush to Lip Lickin? Pier Pressure was an institution. Somewhere to go if you found Yoko’s just a little bit too grim, but still wanted to drink post Harley’s or Academy. Perhaps it’s the ever changing entry fee and drink prices (this is Aber, if it ain’t to see an artist we aren’t going to pay an entry fee!), how far away it is from everything else, or that once you leave you can’t get back in.

The thing is, it’s not as if anything has really changed about Pier. The smoking area over the sea is still one of the best places in Aber, the music is still great if you’re the sort of person that would take a bit of cheese over the endless chart hits of Yoko’s and you don’t have to deal with nearly as much fight-picking tossers than you do elsewhere. There’s no real reason for it to be declining like this, but it is.

Yeah. Pier innit swag lyk 2k13 freshers omg

Perhaps it’s just Pier’s time, and it’ll continue to slowly die before it reinvents itself. All good things have to come to an end, no matter how much we might wish otherwise. I can’t keep trying to convince the group I’m out with to go to Pier just for it to be dead, no matter how much I used to love the place.

So to Pier I bid farewell. Maybe one day you’ll be back and I won’t have to deal with Yoko’s anymore.