Open-House parties: Would you have the nerve?

A new phenomenon has hit Portswood lately that has left students abandoning their usual Jesticles and ‘Triplevods’ for a cheaper all-night alternative: the ‘open-house’ party.

We had a chat with Portswood’s most notorious open-house hosts, known under the pseudonym ‘8GA’, and found out the highs and lows of letting over four hundred people into your home, and the results of adopting an ‘anything goes’ approach.

8GA: bedroom by day, dancefloor by night.

The seven residents never thought the parties would escalate like they have done, and they’ve now accepted that their deposit is well and truly lost. In fact, the carnage left after the first ‘open-house’ was so considerable that local bouncers actually offered to help the boys out for free at the second one.

At least there was no trouble from the neighbours though. Why? They were all at the party, although they eventually had to lend their toilets out to the cause.

8GA stairs make a simple toilet trip exhausting

Even the police were pretty lenient, only appearing at 6am when the party was still in full swing, asking for the music to be turned down. Which it was. For five minutes.

So clearly open-house parties are, if anything, too popular, but are they stressful to hold? According to 8GA, the way to avoid the panic of seeing your house deteriorate around you is to pretend you don’t live there and just join in…

This is all very well until you have to clean up, which is no small task. Their last ‘open-house’ took four solid days of clearing up, made ten times worse by a lingering hangover. In fact, the boys’ house still smells like Jesters.

Similarly to the Palace of Dreams, the term ‘open-house’ party implies a cheap night out for most of us, but this wasn’t the case for 8GA, who spent £450 on alcohol for the first party alone, which didn’t even begin to cover the hundreds of unexpected partygoers!

Indeed, unexpected is the word since the boys reckon they only knew about 50% of the mass of people in their increasingly suffering house.

Obviously, inviting so many strangers into your house poses various risks, and 8GA felt the repercussions after the second ‘open-house’ when they were burgled only a few days later by people they suspect were sussing out the layout of the house at the party.

On a lighter note though, the anecdotes from an ‘open-house’ like 8GA’s are second to none. From the less than conscious guy who was literally carried out by the crowd to the miscellaneous pregnant partygoer who was getting very involved, open-house nights are unpredictable and memorable (or not so, as the case may be).

However, arguably the most prominent guest at 8GA’s ‘open-house’ events is the mighty Beerzilla (picture a water butt, 15 funnels and pipes and 400 pints of cider hanging from a tree). It was so immense it’s still festering there to this day.

So what does the future hold for Portswood’s ‘open-house’ trend? Well, they seem to be popping up all over the place – all you need to do is keep an eye out on Facebook. As for 8GA, the deposit’s already lost and the Beerzilla’s ready and waiting so watch this space!