Bonapartes

Name: Bonapartes
Location: Fort Regent, St. Helier
Period: Late 1980s/early 1990s
Fate: Closed down
Regular Tunes: Whiplash, Whole Lotta Rosie, Run To The Hills, Rosalie, Paradise City      

Bonapartes was a very small nightclub located in a side passage just off the East side of the Gloucester Hall in Fort Regent.

Entry was through a single-width door, with the till on the right. A short passage led beyond this into the club itself. There were two small bars, the first of which was on the right hand side. This was a self-contained cocktail bar with stools for seating and a glassless windowspace (or whatever the technical term is for an extended rectangular hole a wall) along the side allowing you to see across the dancefloor (which can't have been much more than 15 feet square).

Just past this bar, in the centre of the room, was the  DJ booth, on either side of which were a few steps leading towards a slightly raised area. This rear half of the club had tables and sofa style seating around two sides, the third side being taken up by the main bar (which was probably no more than 12 feet long). 

Running down the remainder of that side of the wall, at dancefloor level, were three seating alcoves. The toilets were upstairs and were shared with a seperate bar which occupied the neighbouring passage (the adjoining door to which was locked once the club opened at 10.30pm) The cigarette machine was at the bottom of these stairs.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s Bonapartes main business was done on Friday nights as a Rock/Metal club. They had the monopoly on that music amongst town nightclubs so always pulled in a large regular crowd.

By 1992 things started to change and Bonapartes previously loyal customers began to fade away. That was most likely down to growing competition from out of town clubs which had started dropping more Rock music into their playlists as Grunge took hold. It didn't help matters that around the same time both Sands and the Watersplash began to put on free coaches from The Weighbridge to their venues.

During Bonapartes "Metal era" the club had always been guaranteed to be packed unless it was a rare occasion when a major Metal event was going on elsewhere. I'd estimate their capacity to have been a couple of hundred at most. The last few times I went there, probably near the end of 1992, they were struggling to pull in a tenth of that number. A few months later I heard the news they'd closed down.