Don’t Stop Believin’ in Cindies

For the majority of Cantabrigians, myself included, the statement “I love Cindies more than life itself!” would only constitute as minor hyperbole – I just can’t get enough. So I was torn apart by recent news that Cindies might be closing. Were this to happen, it would be an unmitigated disaster, ruining the Cambridge student experience forever.

Now, some people have tried to tell me that a Cindies closure wouldn’t be so bad, as “Cindies is actually not even that good.”

If we break Cindies down to it’s core components, we can see they have a point: the dancefloor is coated with a dubious sticky substance and it’s so crowded that a cloud of hot sweat-mist precipitates on the ceiling. By objective standards it is a flawed place, yet Cindies has become an integral part of Cambridge life.

Tom and friends engaging in high-class Cindies revelry

For me, a night in Cindies is like watching a bad film; if you approach it with a sense of irony, it becomes so bad it’s actually good. It is this principle that allows us to enjoy the music of Busted and Holly Valance, consider it “laddish” to down orange VKs, and think it a good idea to break out dance moves copied from Saturday Night Fever.

Only by immersing ourselves in “ironic” enjoyment of bad music in a bad club can we ever truly detach ourselves from the stress of the Cambridge bubble and disappointment of real life.

It’s the “it’s so bad it’s good” mentality that has allowed Cindies to ingrain itself on the student psyche, becoming part of the quintessential Cambridge experience, and developing its own unique cult status, which no other club can ever hope to match. While there will always be Kambar for those with pretentious tastes, and Lola Lo for a faceless chain club, in Cindies we have something really very special, something we can enjoy and love in spite of it’s many flaws. It would be a travesty to see it go.