Never quite old enough

The clubscene in Oslo is not exactly what I would call universally vibrant, it can be really stale, and serves such a wide diversity our sparse population can't abide to fill the clubs up. So what happens is that you have to be at those five or six places where things "are going down", or you will be in one of the places that have echoes in them.

Nooo, - I exaggerate. But because all clubs are terrified of being the "deserted" club, they try to be as exclusive or eccentric they possibly can, so they can attract enough people. They are also so scared of losing their alcohol licence, they make sure they get a clientelle that can stay up past bedtime, but also has legal rights to buy alcohol. This means outrageous age limits just to get in, Horgans, I remember, had 26!

 I will tell you a story, anyway, concerning the topic. It's not really that enthralling, but now that you're here... I might as well share it.

Tink (as you may know, one of my few friends of the female persuasion) and I, have worked our entire youth to crack the code which is Oslo nightlife. Even at a time when we both were blonde, and slender (Tink, still is, it is only I that seem to inflate at a frightening rate) we had a tough time getting in anywhere, and though we have never climbed in any windows, we were at one point, quite desperate.

I flaunted my sister's fake ID from when I was 16 (pretending I was 20), and that worked for most part, we got in at a lot of places and had... mostly good times, but, obviously, we also had our share of strange ones. Like when that bald guy approached us and really looked us up and down and said "Whoah! You girls deserve a diploma!" and we asked him (quite naturally, I mean, he must've seen that coming) -"What for?" And he, caught completely off-guard, said -"Um. I... Have to think about that". And this terrible awkwardness ensued and I wanted to grab his shoulders and shake him, and yell something. "Jesus! Man! You could have said ANYTHING! You could have just said 'diplomas for drinking the right friggin' beer' it wouldn't matter! Oh my God! Whyyy?! Why are you sooo dumb?!" In retrospect that is probably the way I feel about it now, while as my younger self probably just wanted to die, quickly and make the AWKWARD go away. Yes, those were the days...

Truly. But we also made it in to Café Mono, which I always regarded as some kind of perfect indie hangout, where they played Arctic Monkeys sometimes and the crowd wasn't so young. And I mean, we were there quite a lot, it was our go-to place for a long time. But fake-ID wasn't all a dance on roses, we had a couple of sweaty situations - including one when the bouncer of some other place said he would call the police on me! - made me hesitant to use it. It is, after all, illegal to use.

2008! We were like 19. I look more like I'm 12 though.

So we got cautious, and we stayed away from places where we had to use fake-ID for a while, until we could use our REAL ones. This meant going to lots of concerts and going to clubs where people where our age. We had a lot of fun, but it wasn't quite the same. So when we at last turned twenty, we thought we could stride right in to any shop and own it. Er. But we were so mistaken, it is... Um, it is almost embarrasing. We were turned down at Mono like a thousand times, because, for some reason, the place we had grown up in (well, not exactly, but we were there a couple of times even if it was lame, because we were loyal, right! We were so loyal!) wouldn't accept us when we were trying to enter under our real names! Because, as the huuge anal doorman so vigilantly kept reminding us, we had to be 22 to get in at Mono.

My 22nd birthday only just passed, I feel matured to the point that I just want to go in there just to har-umphh and snort and stride right back out again. Bah!

I had got the strange idea of hanging out at The Villa this season though, because it's Oslo's electronica scene, and it was outrageous that I hadn't even been there. But yeah, so. I was very ready, and I thought I'd better Google it, to see where it was, because, like I said, I never been there. Well. Guess what?

Yes.

You have to be 23 to get in.

Oslo Expansion Pack

"Barcode" in Bjørvika, a series of new buildings, both office space and apartments in Oslo.

"Nordenga" bridge, crossing the railway from Bjørvika to Grønland.

"Tjuvholmen" at the very tip of Aker Brygge.

"Kværnerbyen" apartments (that's the creek with stepping stones! I'll have to take a picture myself it seems).

Oslo is halfway in many aspects. We have half a good public transport system, we have half of a good shopping centre, we have a half a green city with parks in it, half of it is dead ends and half is shabby. At one intersection down the street - the road is lined with four different kinds of fences. It never seem to have occurred to anybody to build this city consistently, new bits are just being slapped on without much thought to what was there before, or what surrounds it.

Just like those new blocks that are across our street. They're all modern and square, painted in a communal barn-colour - with as much charisma as a car crash. There are lots of ugly blocks here, including ours, so to say, and they're surrounded by all those delicious wooden houses that are traditional of this area. Some blocks are really nice, and have been done up really well, but most are no. It's all over "old-town", and it's weird that they haven't been able to find some kind of middle-way between unflattering modernism and impractical nostalgia. It just looks weird and half-assed.

Major parts are under construction, and the bits that are not are often quite messy or unfinished as it is. Helge and I took a walk down to Kværnerbyen the other night (literally, night. We were home at 4 in the morning) just to look at the apartments down there. Kværnerbyen is literally a ditch, seriously, it's down in some dent, surrounded by hills, and filled with lots of concrete and roads and trains. It hasn't got a lot of appeal in other words.

The apartments are just blocks of brick, set in concrete - hardly very charming. But then it's not finished yet - and the renderings online look as usual very promising. How they are going to turn the place into what they are imaging I don't really understand. But that's the way with these sexy architectural illustrations, they always contain about twice the amount of trees and happy children to what will eventually exist. There was, however, one nice thing about the area, a constructed creek of water with square stepping stones that went along the east side of the buildings. This sizzled magically, especially at night, when it was so quiet elsewhere. So I really fell in love with that, but the rest still needs a spark of allure - it's hardly very homely there at the moment.

Oslo is really changing though, the buildings along Bjørvika are all really futuristic, so are those on Tjuvholmen. The massive bridge ending in Schweigaardsgate, "Nordenga" is anything but Norwegian, and the new Nationalmuseum at Vestbanehallen will be very modern too. It's called the "Forum Artis", I would tell you what I think of it, but it's really hard to tell from those crappy renders they have released, it does as far as I can tell - look square and angular, so I guess that's why we're going for it. As usual.

But I will stop whining now, sorry. I really hope Oslo will be more whole one day, as it is oddly unfinished right now. We are lucky to have some visionaries who are at least trying to create something better out of what we already have, especially in Bjørvika.