Heroes

Name: Heroes (See also "The Inn On The Park")
Location: West Park, St. Helier
Period: Late 1980s/early 1990s
Fate: Demolished
Regular Tunes: Pop.
 
 






















Heroes was a small purpose-built nightclub located inside The Inn On The Park.  The entrance was seperate to the building's main entrance, being to the left-hand side of the facade through a set of modern glass doors which lead into a foyer area where a number of payphones lined the wall. To the right of these phones were a set of stairs leading to a first-floor bar, to the left was another set of glass doors which led to the nightclub. Walking through these doors you found yourself in another small foyer area, with a till to the right, beyond which were another set of glass doors which led into the club itself.
 
Once inside the club the small dancefloor and DJ booth were directly in front of you. The main bar was on the left hand side, midway down the length of the room, next to which was an alcove just big enough to contain one table and surrounding seating.
 
There was a cloakroom to your immediate right, just beyond which was a small set of stairs leading to a bar with a small area for seating in the corner next to it. The bar ran about 2/3rds of the length of the wall, at the furthest end of which was an odd little room that can't have been more than 8 feet wide and 10 feet long, with bench seating round the edges. Nobody ever seemed to bother with it, despite it being perfectly suited to all kinds of underhand shenanigans.
  
Directly opposite the door of that room, and midway across the main room, was more seating and tables, beyond which in the far corner was a small bar. Next to this was a fire exit which was occasionally opened on the hotter summer's nights to allow some circulation of air, with a bouncer always on guard in front of it.

Before The Inn On The Park began their "Friday Night Live" sessions Heroes was busy every weekend with the younger crowd, aged on average 18-20, almost exclusively local. It didn't serve pints, only halves, and if you asked for a bottled Lager they wouldn't allow you to have the bottle. The music was entirely Pop, I remember Erasure and Yello being played a lot more than was natural.

The club's decline began with the arrival of "Friday Night Live", which took place in the old ballroom in the same building, and was such a draw that it sucked the custom right out of Heroes. It also had the effect of waking a lot of Heroes regulars up to the fact that Heroes was a bit "youth-clubby" compared to what a nightclub could be, so a lot of them moved to other pastures and returned to the building only for "Friday Night Live".

To stem the downward slide Heroes began to focus on regular "unders 18s" afternoons and evenings, which hardly served to preserve its reputation as a nightclub worth checking out by anyone aged over 18. In the wake of "Friday Night Live" the club limped into the start of the 1990's with an increasingly dwindling adult customer-base, but the loss in trade was terminal and they closed down after a couple more years.

Sadly The Inn On The Park itself went the same way before the decade was out. After a number of years of laying ununsed and neglected the building was sold to a property developer. Despite public protest it was demolished, and today a block of multi-million pound flats named West Park Apartments stands in its place.