A brief history of why Oxford will never be cooler than Cambridge

Have we ever seen a bucket hat on the river cam? No – but that’s because bucket hats are possibly the shittiest things you could ever wear.


So Oxford think they’re edgier than us?

It’s hard to imagine how they found the time in their hip, cool, and Reebok Classic loving lives to write us an article. But they did – and, well, just read it for yourselves. Yep.

I’ve never seen so much love for grime music contained in one picture.

Let’s start with the music. There’s no denying the rep our city’s nightlife has. For years upon years, a host of dreadful nights, plagued by a never ending loop of the top 40 and members of TOWIE have resulted in various jaeger bomb-induced deaths. But things are changing.

This year has already seen kings of Garage, Artful Dodger, as well as Preditah and Stormzy come to town. The six foot five MOBO-award-winner headlined Halloween and was heard to remark, “Seen fam, I thought Cambs was gonna be a dead ting, but that was proper lit.”

That being said, we wouldn’t expect any readers from Oxford to understand that. For a city that uses “rah” as a term of mutual self-endearment and “peng” as an Oriental Studies dissertation title, their grasp of slang is abominably low.

Back to the music. Techno is the new movement taking over Cambridge with a new night, Embassy, proving one of the city’s most popular. We also have White Noise, Capital, Boomslang and CBL providing our fix of House, Garage, Grime and more.

We also have one thing Oxford definitely doesn’t have – our own student-run festival! Yeah, we both have May Week and all the students get drunk in tuxedos, but when their May Week is over we have a full-on music festival on our doorstep every summer! Strawberries & Creem last year even had Skepta and Stylo G. Eat that, Oxford.

Our techno night, Embassy. Because let’s be honest, any club pics of you and your smiley mates are the perfect signifier of a dead night

Oxford’s pinnacle of edgy nightlife, Turf, not only hosts nights in Cambridge but was founded by a student here. Whoops. Whilst naming a night SE10 just shows how even a London postcode is enough to send shockwaves through the Oxford underground community.

One Oxford undergrad told us, “We have a lot of cool stuff going on, like Ben UFO, but the majority of us are too tired or busy to go”.

How cool.

He went on to discuss the typical array of nightlife options. “The only night everyone goes to every week is Bridge Thursdays, and every week it’s shit.”

How “edgy”.

And I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry. But claiming that New Yorker Levon Vincent is “Berlin’s biggest DJ” is wrong on so many levels. Never say that again. Ever.

Turf’s response to Oxford’s article. Ha ha.

Moving on to fashion and as I’ve already mentioned, we don’t really like bucket hats here. But then again, we don’t really listen to Fetty Wap or Young Thug for that matter. You’ll find plenty of 5-panels, trench coats and Doc Martens about though.

“Creepers, chokers, crops”? Sounds more like a 14-year-old girl who’s just discovered Drake and rollies than any sort of high-end fashion.

Our architecture is pretty rad too. We’ve got a 5ft, 24-carat-gold grasshopper clock built into the side of Corpus, whilst it’s known that legendary club Berghain was designed as a nod to our UL.

Berghain or the UL? Either way, if you’re from Oxford you’re not getting in.

“Oxford thinks it’s edgy. It may think it’s edgier than it actually is.” But let’s be honest, only pagans use the word “edgy”.

Ultimately, they’re just Oxford and we’re just Cambridge. They wish they were Bristol and we wish we were London. Arguing which one is cooler is like arguing who you prefer out of Katie Hopkins and Piers Morgan.

After a while’s thought you may come to a decision. But at the end of the day, they’re both still shit.