Pulkvedim Neviens Neraksta
If you’re not quite into the strutting of the mainstream music clubs, Pulkvedim Neviens Neraksta (Nobody Writes to the Colonel) offers something more unique.
Approaching the club, we had to weave through the many smokers standing out front as we arrived in the wee hours of a Saturday morning. The good old 80s reggae hit “Red Red Wine” was playing in the main bar and dance area. You enter a somewhat crowded vestibule to where people check in their coats and pay the cover charge (free on Mondays, €2.80 on Tuesdays-Wednesdays, just over €4 to around €6 on Thursdays-Saturdays, depending on the DJ). On the left is a foosball table where a happy couple was battling it out.
As usual, the main floor of this long-standing club was jam-packed with punters grooving to a really eclectic mix including some frenzied bongo beats and soul-influenced funk. The mostly local DJs, many from the local alternative radio station, change often so there is a variety of music including R ‘n’ B, funk, hip-hop, break-beat and disco. These don’t seem to be strictly divided in style depending on which dance space you are on. The dark and semi-industrial decorated upstairs has a mid-sized dance floor by a crowded circular bar. There are TV screens set up around here showing music videos. The bar divides a separate area with tables where you can sit and talk since the music isn’t deafening. Large windows here give you a link to the outside world, making this place more of a blur between pub and nightclub.
The downstairs area, where Austin Powers would feel right at home, has more of an intimate vibe. Pink shag-pile carpet art and fluorescent flowers dot the walls. Here the dance-floor is tiny, and there’s a small seating area with another bar too. Prices are quite reasonable for drinks here and upstairs, with large draught beers at €2.80, a Corona bottled beer at €3.50, and cocktails €5-10. Overall, Pulkvedis has more of a casual and happy-go-lucky feel, with the somewhat alternative crowd mostly in their 20s and 30s. It’s not a place to see and be seen, but rather just to relax and be surprised by the music variety. There’s a 21 year age minimum and face control is apparently just to keep the really drunk people out.
