Tap’n’Tin

A year back, if you were looking for me on a Friday or Saturday night, this is the place you would find me. Now, I wouldn’t be seen dead in there.
The basics: The place used to be a car manufacturing plant I believe and there are still heavy chains hanging across the place. The walls are covered in what is mostly a bad attempt at artistic graffiti. There are three floors, 6 bars, a laundrette, a hairdresser, a tattooist, an Internet radio station and a beer garden. During the day, only the ground floor is operational. There are no windows, so the place is pretty much always a murky cavern. Expect to stick to the floor if you stand in one place for more than several seconds. Avoid draft beer and stick to bottled; the beer lines are rarely cleaned. You’ll also have to trek up a flight of stairs that smell of vomit from the weekend to get to the toilet. Oh, and the place is usually empty.
On Monday nights, the Tap is packed as it’s £1 per drink up until midnight. They open at 8pm so get there early and feel the irony at being given a disapproving once-​over by the art students in silly clothes from the nearby art college, a far cry from the chilled out atmosphere that used to prevail a few years ago. Expect overcrowding, spilling your drink all over yourself and long queues in the toilets.
Friday and Saturday nights are when all the bars are open;
Ground floor has either a DJ or a CD on.
Pool room has a jukebox and four new-​ish pool tables.
Garden bar has no beer pumps and you can’t smoke under the canopy. There is a free BBQ on though.
Middle floor is relatively quiet.
Cage room (Torture Garden this ain’t; the names comes from the gate locking the room at all other times) has bad local bands on Fridays and metal music on Saturdays. Also no beer pumps.
Top floor has a mishmash of stuff on Fridays, from Linkin Park to Faithless and is usually a bit of fun. On Saturdays it’s 60’s onwards music.
If you’re not too picky about cleanliness and service then you will probably enjoy the place. The good side is that you won’t have to dress up; jeans and a t-​shirt is fine. The downside is that the staff will hate you, the bouncers are hit-​and-​miss on the understanding scale and you’ll be overlooked in favour of friends, staff on their day off and regulars while waiting for 30 minutes at the bar.