Spankd

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Posted by Tanos on Mon 23 Jun 08, 12:28 PM

Saturday was our (me, lili, popi and charlie) first visit to Spankd in Cheshire, and we were very impressed

I've been through one of those phases of just going to specific events for a while, rather than going out regularly month after month. But we did start going to Nemesis again ... just before it closed

So all the buzz about Spankd recently and it's closeness to Manchester (just under 30 miles) made it an obvious place to try next, and I'm glad we did.

We had a warm welcome and tour from Dave, who has the kind of infectious enthusiasm every great event's organiser has. He also outlined some of the further plans and how they're responding to what people ask for and to how the space works out in practice during events.

It's also a fascinating building: an ex-ICI office building, that's been a nightclub and now a sauna for guys during the day. I must admit to trying to guess which parts were original (staff bar? locker room?) and which were from these various phases The self-service locker room in particular is much better, IMO, than a cloakroom, especially since BDSM people tend to went to get at their bags of kit during the night in a way which is quite unlike a vanilla nightclub.

The dungeon is in a room of its own on the first floor and has about 8 pieces of BDSM furniture, along with a gated area for wax, knife and violet wand play (which lili and charlie occupied at one point). I think there are plans to open up some more dungeon space, which would be a good idea since it was packed (aren't they always!) later on in the night.

As social spaces, there's a downstairs bar with food, and an upstairs dance floor, seating area and bar in one large room - the Blue Room, which acted as the focal part of the venue. The bar prices were sensible too, which is always a good sign.

Some of the cabins for the daytime sauna are also accessible, but they have mattresses occupying most or all of their floor, and they don't really work as private rooms in the sense of the old Nemesis ones: with lots of floorspace and maybe a piece of equipment or at least some attachment points. They do have a range of privacy though, from completely enclosed downstairs, to ones with narrow or wide slits in the upstairs ones.

As I said, I was very impressed: there's plenty of space, especially social space, everything was being run in an organised way, and it was full of people having a good time

Edited Thu 26 Jun 08, 11:19 AM by Tanos


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