Tales of the Urban Explorer: Diamonds Strip Club

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(Edited)

I am reading that the former strip club, ‘Diamonds’ has recently been demolished. It is probably for the best seeing what happened to it just days after we had been there.

It was in May 2021 that myself and @anidiotexplores visited one Sunday morning with me parking on the same yellow double-lines as our Trapdoor trip and hoping I wasn’t going to get ticketed.

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With it being a local explore my comrade had already been in, and even with a short delay the TourBus had not quite started.

It was just as well as very shortly a squatter named ‘Wayne’ would move in, lock the doors and charge explorers £2 to look around his ‘home’.

Alternative methods of payment were beer, cigarettes, a mixture of both, and even credit arrangements which were available with payments being extended over 12 months.

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I suspect Wayne or some of his homeless buddies systematically trashed the top floor of Diamonds which was in a very habitable state when we visited or did they?

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A month later Diamonds was partially destroyed by fire. It does not surprise me in the least.

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We scrambled over this decaying wilderness, through some trees, over a small wall, up a ramp, and had to push hard on a very large door for one of us to squeeze through in turns.

The Diamonds tour had begun and was going to be like no other explore I have experienced yet.

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Within seconds I could see death was awaiting me as through those floor holes was a sizeable drop. Spritely leaping over and hoping the far side was not paper-thin, we advanced up the stairs.

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It looked like an old kitchen which quickly turned into a bar. St Nicholas Bar, it says on the outside of the building.

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Nichola or St Nicholas?

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Is that the remains of a stage, there was live music here?

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That is a sharp angle on that bar; perfect for spilling your drinks and shattering glasses. Those bottles must have been glued down.

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If it’s private..., then you need to look.

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This battered relic is or was a safe. Looking through the cracks there were coins in the bottom. It was too heavy to tip upside down and persuade the contents to come out.

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Things were about to get stranger after @anidiotexplores ushered me through this hole in the concrete.

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"Someone has bashed their way through the entire block.., Diamonds is this way", he explained to me.

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We walked into some kind of warehouse, and then up more stairs which contained yet another hole.

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...'this hole was fucking awkward to climb though. You needed to scramble upwards to progress'...

It was here things started to go wrong. Diamonds was a crawl through this 'horror hole' of mish-mash that looks like it's from a horror set.

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I caught my finger on a sharp edge and it started bleeding. I barely felt it and the blood was more of an annoyance than anything else.

With no bandages, plasters, mobile ambulances, or medics inside this old derp I had little choice but to repeatedly wipe the dripping finger on my jeans.

Ignoring the incessant 'drip-drip', we continued....

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I was guessing this was Diamonds as the style was very different. @anidiotexplores had wandered off leaving me to die of blood loss.

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This was way more interesting and less vandalised than St Nicholas Bar. Beer glasses stood everywhere of various brands.

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The old till looked quite intact but refused to yield its contents to me.

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Why this image turned out as it did, I couldn't tell you. It's an old mixing desk the DJs use.

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Those strippers were not half bad-looking chicks.

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I couldn’t fault Diamonds for variety. The cellar was full of old memories.

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They are two different couples, both of them very old.

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Alanis, I saw her live in 1996 on the Jagged Little Pill tour before the album went on to sell millions.

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Walking around down there was not easy. They had jammed all kinds of junk in it.

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Double cassette decks; the pirate’s choice once.

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It was open in 2008. That's some years ago.

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Now that is a decent VHS collection, and they would probably work too. It wasn't overly damp.

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The caps are all attached, vintage champagne? I never noticed at the time. Wayne would have gouged on these later.

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The Jack Daniels could well be Jack’s piss. Better stay on the side of caution or it could be 'Dumb and Dumber' all over again.

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These were all very empty. They went through a lot of Sambuca.

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Can you imagine sitting on the leather sofa watching those girls gyrate on the platform?

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Such signs must be displayed…, and the rules regularly bent.

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3 for £10 deals and then a warning about doubles. Talk about contradiction.

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I heard this bar got completely trashed once the TourBus arrived. You have to be quick or be content with the devastation.

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Diamonds must have been quite the hit once.

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Evolving even more and walking through the labyrinth of passages I climbed yet more stairs to get to where the boss used to live.

…'Bosses always live on the top floor. Watch Game of Death featuring a fake Bruce Lee and you will understand'…

The living quarters were almost habitable, with tables, sofas, and even a CRT TV.

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....with comforting music to listen to.

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Room dividers might be a good idea. A Jacuzzi yes, but the shower is a little public and only just covers up your bits.

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There's even a sunbed in the corner with a separate TV to stop you from being bored

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Free delivery for the boss man?

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It must have been the bedroom once, but again no dividers.

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The kitchen was right next to it and what was that… a towel!

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I never take anything from any explore but that towel was a welcome relief as my jeans were now quite soaked in blood and I was at the point of passing out.

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Plenty of items of value, no doubt sold at some pawn shop by ‘Wayne’ or other twats who steal from properties.

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At least there's free re-entry. We could always come back.

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The towel stunk of pure derpyness but helped a lot. My finger finally started to clot.

We made our way down through the bar and exited via a different door. I was relieved we didn't have to climb through 'horror hole' again.

Wayne must be thinking he is hard done by. He lost his home, his income and is back on the streets. I have seen pictures of the boss room just weeks after we visited.

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It was totally trashed; why would you trash your own squat? Was it really Wayne or the TourBus idiots?

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44 comments
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You should have titled this: Bloody Hell! 😉
!LUV

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The cut was particularly annoying. My phone was full of blood and it would not stop.

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The things some men will do to get sympathy from strippers. 🤣

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On the inside of the door though? Either that's the weirdest closet ever or some vandal defaced the joint after the fact and took a picture.

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I'm not with you here..

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Funny. Well thanks for your honesty.

The door that said Private in yellow paint pen. Looks like a closet, isn't it? And it says Private on the inside of the door.

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(Edited)

OK yeah.. I see what you mean. I'm usually going around hurriedly snapping and taking little notice of these things at the time. I always have this feeling the sealers will come while I'm inside.. barricading me in.

It is odd.. looking at it... but who wrote 'Private'.. is the key.

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I caught my finger on a sharp edge and it started bleeding.

You don’t wear sturdy leather gloves for explorations?

Maybe even Kevlar. 😀

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I have some and use them for climbing mostly.. that's if I remember to take them out of the car. I was cursing that day. I get injuries quite often, but they are never bad ones.

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Tourniquet for slobberchops!!!!

I don't care what people say, there's no excuse for VHS in 2008!!

!PIZZA

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(Edited)

Tourniquet for slobberchops!!!!

Haha, probably a little OTT. I bought some Elastoplast after leaving and getting strange looks about my bloody jeans. Haven't needed the others since, they are lying around in the car.

I started buying DVD's around 1997. 11 years later.. VHS was dead!

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(Edited)

Yeah, same here. I was over the moon to not have to worry about fankled tapes anymore!

Hope you gave it a clean, who knows what mank lurks in these places

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I dumped about 75 pristine VHS original tapes in the local tip. It was quite heart-breaking, but they were all NTSC and useless to most peeps here.

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Aye, there wasn't really much that could be done with them. My older brother still has a VHS player! The quality is shocking

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Great photography mate, but you definitely should have given that CRT a new home before the place was demolished.

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All of 2 CRT's, I see them often in derps as well as VHS tapes, though this collection was in nice nick. Some of those are from the video rentals places.. you can tell with the style of cases.

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good tour, I even imagined having been inside the facilities of the place

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Oh wow! What an adventure! You guys are super brave! I would dare going into a place that looked like that. I think one look at the horror hole would have sent me running out to the streets! Hahahaha!
Oh and next time bring a tiny little medic kit with you. Plaster, small bandages, gauze....just in case.

Hope you are doing well. It has been so long since Steemfest! Can't wait to see what else you get up too.

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I have some plasters in the car now, not that they will do me much good while inside one of these!

Will we ever have a Hivefest? It may be some time yet.., but I will probably be there.

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Can you imagine sitting on the leather sofa watching those girls gyrate on the platform?

Yes

This is a bloody good mooch, plenty of treasure, the wedding pics pretty incongruous with the rest of the place.

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As diversified as they come this one. I will probably never experience another quite the same!

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A strip club and not a pole in sight, they must have just taken the most important bit when it closed.

Thank you for your blood sacrifice to the urbex gods.

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There's an old chair where the pole should be. Perhaps these strippers used a chair and not a pole? Bolton is a strange old place, full of variance.

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That's a real epic. One place well trashed and then a time capsule. You really do need to take care though. I'm sure I've suggested gloves before. I know they're a pain when using a phone.

Does the 'touch and go' policy apply to what patrons do to the strippers?

I have to wonder how much someone will make for charging people to look around a dump like that. I guess he was desperate for anything he could get.

How big is this 'TourBus'? Is there that big an urbex scene? It's just something I don't hear about apart from on Hive.

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I have gloves, but always leave them in the car unless I'm expecting a climb. Inside a building.. that's a rare event.

The 'TourBus' is the Facebook community within a 75 mile radius. If something is posted and the location revealed, they all come within days. Some are real explorers, others are vandals, thieves, arsonists, graffiti lads or worse. How many.. I could not tell you, but the damage they leave is visible.

I have seen pictures of that boss room with everything trashed. Only in the UK.

Is it any wonder I post my content months later than the visits. This one has now gone so I have no qualms about how to get in, or anything else.

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Okay, that's clearer to me now. Every community has its own jargon that may not mean much to the rest of up. It's a shame people want to smash things up, but it's all too common. By the time your posts go up the places may be gone or locked up.

Cheers and !BEER

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I think that you're the only person I know that falls UP a series of rabbit holes....

What a wonderful variety of derp you've got there.

Shame about the bosses quarters cause it still looked quite liveable to the point it looks like someone had a party in it the night before and there was even a fresh bath mat in front of the spa....

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The boss room was great, the windows were not broken and it was very livable if you don't mind no running water. Winter would be quite cold as well, it's not a warm country.

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Actually considering it was all a derp, there's really not that much difference between the abandoned derp and most real life living areas...thinking of the castle compared to the squalor of the minions below...ok so maybe not so much real life NOW, but back then...

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This is quality derp right here. What an interesting place, I'd love to get lost in there. That boss lair looks top notch!

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Wish they were all as good as this, back to the old wrecks again next.

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Mental note:

  • always carry plasters.
  • Never bring a black light - some mysteries are best left unrevealed

I fully agree with the "leave it as it was" mentality. But I think the sealed champagne bottles might have tested my resolve.

This was a very cool explore!!!

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it's all very fascinating, the vhs covers are a real treasure. I really like the graphic style used for the film covers of those years. I made some works about it, you can see them on my blogo. Good job.

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