From famed city venues to popular suburban haunts, there was no shortage of places to go. And no day of the week seemed out of the question if you felt like tying one on, with many venues or precincts taking ownership of themed nights.

Many of the night spots are now long gone. But some have gone from strength to strength, largely built on the followings they amassed in the noughties.

Take a trip down memory lane, then check out Legendary Nightclubs Part 1 and Part 2.

RISE

After the party is the after-party and once your favourite club turned on its harsh fluoro lights at 5am (yes, kids! We once were allowed to drink till 5am at places other than the Casino) there was only once place you headed – Rise! Located in the Light Square building that some readers may remember as Regines Nightclub from the 1980s, Rise was only for SERIOUS clubbers and remained open till 12pm, branding itself as Adelaide’s “recovery club”. Needless to say, “recovering” wasn’t really high on the agenda for most of the patrons with many wanting a party that just never stopped. This made for some interesting sights in the car park for parents bringing their children to the building next door for ballet classes in the early hours of the morning.

SODA ROOM

On Pirie Street, down the road from The Planet, Soda Room was the place you went if the line to The Planet was too long, or if they were doing Friday night Hit Machine when all you wanted was R&B. A multi-storey building, Soda Room was a smaller alternative to the superclubs like HQ or Heaven. Its top room is now the home of Adelaide’s comedy scene when the Rhino Room took over in 2017 after being empty for almost 10 years. 

PROSCENIUM

Before Emos had even attended their Year 8 induction day, we used to have a cultural subset called Goths, and Proscenium was their playground. Located off Hindley, on Blyth Street, it was a haven of 80s, 90s and alternative music. Think The Cure’s Love Cats or anything in the Marilyn Manson discography (before we all realised that he was a total creep). Sadly the building that housed Proscenium was torn down and is now a Holiday Inn, but the memories still live on.

BLACK CAT/WHITE CAT

Upstairs from the glorious Mars Bar, nestled in Gouger Street, Black Cat/White Cat was once the rehearsal studio for Australian Dance Theatre and Janet Jackson famously held a rehearsal there while on tour. It was maybe a premonition for what was to come with Janet’s songs being on high rotation when the R&B club opened its doors. Sadly the venue itself lacked atmosphere with the wooden floorboards still giving the room a dance studio feel. We’re pretty sure there were even still ballet rails still fixed to the walls. Now the venue houses Mrs Q’s Asian Kitchen Bar.

WEDNESDAY NIGHTS ON WEST TCE

Ask anyone from Adelaide over the age of 35 “what time is it?” And you can be sure their instant response will still be “IT’S TIMEWARP TIIIIME”. This was the catchcry of the uber popular club night Timewarp that started in the late 1990s at Heaven nightclub. Timewarp’s poster girl was Nikki Heuskes aka Barbarella (who even released a single Colour My Love in the first year of the millennium) and every Wednesday night a throng of uni students would pack the West Tce club – sometimes in excess of over 1500 partygoers.

Heaven might have had its doors closed in 2006, but Wednesday nights remained popular when the club was reopened as HQ. Replicating the Timewarp formula, Flashdance had stage shows, costume nights, Chupa Chups and $2 Cowboy shots. What more could a hard studying student want in the middle of the week?

MARS BAR

It wouldn’t be a wrap up of Adelaide clubs of any decade without mentioning Mars Bar and that’s because it was around for so damn long after opening in the mid-1970s. As Adelaide’s only gay nightclub for decades, until the emergence of Mary’s Poppin, Mars was a rite of passage for most of the city’s LGBTIQ community … and pretty much everyone else. The 2000s was probably the end of its golden era before it closed its doors in 2017.

But queens Fifi and Rochelle made sure the club went out in style as patrons obediently sat crossed legged on the floor every Friday and Saturday night to watch their 2am drag show. By 3am most of the crowd would thin out, heading home before the neon lights came on at 5am. But if you were still there at that time of the morning, no doubt you were part of the weekly pilgrimage of people who headed down Gouger Street to keep the party going at the legendary La Sing.

VODKA BAR

Don’t let the unassuming entrance fool you, this Hindley St haunt was an emporium of good times once you stepped inside. Downstairs there was a bar you could head straight to before fighting through the main dancefloor, which had some sort of an arrangement whereby you could dance on ledges around the edges. Ascend some more stairs and, for a time, you could stop by a bar made of ice – complete with vodka shots served in icy shot glasses. If you were still able, after a few of those shots at the ice bar, upstairs there were lounges for you to get, umm, cosy, if you catch our drift, over the throbbing of the music (mostly dance tracks). Sadly, the place once officially known as Moskva Vodka Bar is no more with UniSA’s expansion gentrifying its former footprint. All that remains are the memories.

CHURCH/APPLE

Hands up if you remember Friday nights here when Big Brother evictees would take to the stage (aka a very fancy converted altar – or a bimah as it should be correctly known). No? They probably don’t either such was the hedonistic mix encouraged in this two-level former synagogue in, appropriately named Synagogue Place, just off Rundle St. The “90c beer, wine and bubbly” happy hour probably has a lot to do with it too. As well as reality TV rejects, this haunt was famed for foam parties and had promo girls aplenty right throughout the 90s and into the 2000s. But circa 2009 a name change to Apple Bar just seemed a little too … wholesome? Nowadays the site remains a staple of the Adelaide night scene, with new life breathed into it in the form of LGBTQIA+ safe space Mary’s Poppin where a good time can be had by all.

THE WOOLSHED

Before the days of the mechanical bull there were far more humble beginnings for the Woolshed. There was a time in the early noughties when the main thing the venue had to hang its (cowboy) hat on was a rotating dance floor. That, and Bundaberg draught. You get an ominous sense when you enter a venue and they’re pouring Bundy and coke from a tap, but the clientele at this slice of the country, smack bang in the middle of Adelaide’s party strip on Hindley Street, absolutely lapped it up.

Popular with country folk who had popped into the big smoke, private school boarders (all of whom, of course, would’ve been over the age of 18...) and those with a penchant for Bundy and a bit of Garth Brooks while spinning on the rotating dance floor. Also a popular haunt for city slickers eager to showcase some RMs or an Akubra. Often reserved its biggest shindigs for the weekend of the Clipsal 500 (another place that peaked in the noughties, may it rest in peace), when racegoers would flock to the venue and, ahem, other ‘entertainment’ destinations on Hindley Street. Nowadays, it’s more about the mechanical bull (one of the city’s great night-life attractions!) and DJs.

SHOTZ

Lovingly referred to as “emo palace” by its regulars, Shotz was the place to go to if your wardrobe consisted of black skinny jeans and a My Chemical Romance T-shirt topped off with a pair of black and white checkered Vans.

Half bar, half pool lounge, Shotz was as famous for its cheap drinks as it was for it’s erratic playlist. One minute you’d be bobbing to Barbie Girl, the next it would be Short Stack or Kate Bush.

It was the kind of glorious establishment that really told you exactly what it was going to be before you even stepped foot in the door.

One Yelp reviewer summed it up perfectly saying “it’s the kind of solid trashy place that you can come when you’re well in to your night out and just want to dance like no ones watching, because they aren’t, they’re here on the floor dancing just as crazy as you.”

DOG AND DUCK

The Dog & Duck rose to fame quickly in the early to mid 2000s when it opened as a relatively straightforward pub in the thick of the Hindley Street action. Perhaps its normalcy on Hindley made it a novelty in itself! Back before it had controversial social media posts to rely on for publicity, the Dog would regularly just attract a line up as one of the places to be through such simple things as a solid dancefloor. Such simple charm, in fact, that it had some genuine front bar feels about it until you’d step out the back to the packed d-floor with very minimal social distancing. But it was a far cry from some of its more established near neighbours, such as Red Square, and punters seemed to dig the alternative. Either that, or they just appreciated being able to hear the person next to them when they talked. A second floor/mezzanine overlooking the dancefloor added a bit of pizzazz but that’s about as fancy as it got here – and that’s all it ever needed to be.

MANSIONS

Fancy name, yes, but once you descended the stairs off Pulteney St you were in another world, mostly fuelled by $1 Illusion shots. This was often a place where the night could start (by downing the aforementioned sickly-sweet shots) but also, a place where it could end and when the lights came up, that walk back up the stairs felt like an ascension back into reality – usually one accompanied by a world of pain. Then there was the jukebox. Who needs a DJ when you have a crowd of willing patrons to select the tunes? It made for one hell of an erratic dancefloor with groups coming and going depending on whether the chosen tune was pop, dance, RnB or, heaven forbid, rock.

SUPERMILD

It’s a crying shame this venue is no more because slipping down into the basement at Supermild was like entering another world. A compact space with a very grungy feel (and filthy floor!), and an epic ability for DJs to just rattle off banger after banger, ‘Supers’ had an almost cult following in its heyday during the 2000s. Tucked away on the ‘quiet’ west end of Hindley underneath another bygone haunt, Elysium Lounge, Supermild was a destination you had to know about, as opposed to a place you would just stumble across.

Longneck beers, friendly banter with bar staff and fellow patrons, and a boogie on the dancefloor to a mix of tunes across the ages were staples at this much-missed nightspot. It’s almost six years now since it closed its doors to the basement for the last time. Can we bring it back?

SWISH

A nightclub in a hotel foyer … how swish. Actually, it was anything but, but it sure was fun! This was the go-to place on a Friday night. You’d enter from the dingy laneway side entrance (lest the riff raff disturb Stamford Hotel guests in the foyer) and end up on a sweaty dancefloor almost immediately. With the daytime sofas pushed to one side, you knew you’d arrived too early in the night if the floor wasn’t sticky. Nevermind the filth, you’d dump your handbags in the middle of a circle – or, if one of the booths around the edges wasn’t already being used by an amorous couple already that was a safer bet – and get set to dance to all the Spice Girls, S Club 7 and Steps your heart desired. And the best part? The DJ took requests! The only thing seedier than the dancefloor post-midnight was the all-too-bright walk of shame through the pokie room to the toilets which always seemed to have someone a little worse for wear in one of the cubicles.

THURSDAY NIGHT SPECIALS

If you were a uni student in the noughties, Thursday nights are probably when you did some of your best work … away from the textbooks. It was often dubbed as ‘uni night’ by venues, who clearly knew it was pretty easy for students to get on the lash if you had 12 contact hours a week with Fridays off. Or if you were doing a fancier degree than we did, you could still just front up and sit at the back of the lecture theatre with the world’s worst hangover. Or just not go. The competition for your hard-earned part-time job wage (or your youth allowance!) was hot and $3 pints, 2-4-1 base spirits and Jagerbomb specials were the minimum standard. The Havelock Hotel on Hutt St was a common place to start, while the walk to the Exchange after the Havey’s rather frustrating midnight close was a rite of passage for any city pubgoer of the noughties worth their salt.

The Havey long appeared to have a mortgage on the start of the night until the Marble Bar on Waymouth Street mounted the challenge.

There you could ‘Toss the Boss’ (sounds wrong but you literally just tossed a coin or did rock, paper, scissors) for free drinks. Then the Cumby upped the ante big time in the form of 50c beers and $1 Vodka Cruisers. It’s the kind of thing the liquor licencing commissioner probably wouldn’t look too fondly on these days. Needless to say, line-ups at the Havey quickly migrated to the Cumby. While the Cumby’s bathroom facilities were woefully inadequate to cater for the numbers of people consuming liquid at that level, no one really seemed to mind. Ahhh those were the days when you could split a taxi fare in and out of the city, drink all night, scoop up an Australia’s Pizza House pizza on the way home and come in at well under $100!

NORTH ADELAIDE NIGHTS

Why go to the city when you can bar hop with less crowds AND then feast at Adelaide’s best 24 hour bakery? It depended on the night and the place du jour but over the years a combination of hopping from The Lion to The Archer, to The Ox(ford) to the Royal Oak was a well-worn North Adelaide rite of passage. Particular favourites of uni college residents nearby, these four - plus sometimes The Cathedral, which is now in full swing with a swanky facelift – each offered something a little different to the other. The Lion was the Sunday night place to be for those who couldn’t be bothered making the pilgrimage to Glenelg while the Royal Oak was a top spot for live music – on the right night. The Archer (remember their huge beer glasses?) and The Ox occupied somewhere in between – both geographically and in terms of offering with the former usually boasting a better dancefloor (especially upstairs) and the latter better drink specials. Whatever you were after it was a short crawl from one to the other.

THE ‘BURBS

When you CBF going into the city, or it was a Tuesday (just cos), suburban watering holes were the place to be. Just about the only silver lining to come from pokies was the wave of pub upgrades it led to in the 2000s. This created shiny new environments for us to consume in, and the list seemed to be endless. It was often the case that a fresh upgrade would attract the crowd. A special shout out to the Edinburgh Hotel at Mitcham, which managed to create a serious Tuesday night movement that often led to the rather surreal sight of a line-up to get into a quaint suburban pub. Again, $3 pints of Coopers Pale and 2-4-1 vodkas were the bedrock of these nights, where there were usually more popped collars than a day at the cricket. Over west a little more, both Shenanigans and New York Bar and Grill (and for a short time Zanzibar) made Marion a destination outside of shopping (and cinema-going) hours. At Shenanigans it was often ladies night, especially Thursdays. $2 vodkas and a stripper upstairs for ladies only. Double parking on drinks accepted here – of course you’d order as many vodkas as bar staff would allow, to avoid lining up again. The ultimate test? Trying to navigate your way back down the stairs, eight vodkas later. While over at New York Bar & grill this placed pumped when Face Off jeans and white pants were must-haves in a girls’ wardrobe. Supposedly this was a restaurant by day. Come night, it was packed to the rafters with 18-year-olds. Dance and R&B was music of choice and if you were confident, your real aim was to get up on stage to shake your good thing.

SUNDAY NIGHTS AT THE BAY

Did you even live through the noughties in Adelaide if you didn’t line up at The Grand for at least an hour on a Sunday night? You’d wanna get there extra early if it was a public holiday the next day. We recall waiting nearly three hours once … really. A DJ would spin mostly pop music and dance tracks as young things moved their happy feet on sticky floors. Rest and smooch breaks were taken on the upper level.

But then, circa 2008, as part of the then-controversial pier redevelopment just north of Moseley Square, another operator decided to get in on the action – and why stop with just one nightspot when you can have two? Pier Bar was the more popular and approachable for most and, for a time, made a dent in The Grand’s monopoly. It was your stock-standard pub-cum-dancefloor arrangement but was a good foil for Sol Bar, which you could find at the other end of the Oaks Pier Apartments’ lobby. This pastel-hued, mosaic-filled lounge bar marketed itself as Glenelg’s home of RnB and catered to a very specific clientele who would happily dance the night away with ocean views. These days, according to its website, the Pier Bar is still a thing and, if the mood takes you, you can hire the Sol Bar for your special events. The Dublin Hotel also opened in the noughties, adjacent the Grand in Moseley Square. But it never quite hit the same heights as the Grand, with most still prepared to endure a long wait in a line-up to get into the Grand, as opposed to walking straight into the Dublin. The Dublin is now the home of the fancier and more popular Moseley Bar and Kitchen.

RELATED NEWS: SHENANNIGANS IS COMING BACK – FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY!