Boozed up Baby Lynch draws the crowds and the queues
By Paul Smith • Aug 14th, 2008 • Category: favourite, nightlife
Newcastle has never been about club culture or partying; this is a city that thrives on drinking.
And when there’s a free bar promised, Newcastle will not disappoint; expect freeloaders aplenty and as much cleavage as is considered legal.
And so the latest bar from Vibrant Ventures was born tonight. Baby Lynch joined the growing roster of well-to-do establishments for beautiful people that includes Jesmond’s Mr Lynch and As You Like It, Nancy’s Bordello on the edge of Byker and Florita’s.
Anybody familiar with The Apartment will recognise what has happened here; in closing The Apartment to relaunch it as Florita’s, a third of the main bar has been sealed off to create Baby Lynch.
Except nobody told the builders the plan; at 6 o’clock tonight, just 60 minutes before the hour of free drinking began, tools and turmoil obscured the front door.
![](http://newcastlecentric.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/baby_2.png "\\"We\'re gonna need a bigger boat.\\"")
The paint hadn’t dried 45 minutes later, so the crowds were given half price vouchers for Florita’s next door, itself barely a month old. All part of the plan, it would seem; the promise of free hangovers had steered a couple of hundred people into a bar they may have otherwise ignored.
By quarter past seven tonight there was still no entry, just a very long queue stretching from the front door of Baby Lynch and turning the corner into the Bigg Market, spilling out into Collingwood Street and reducing traffic to one lane.
At this point, the newcastlecentric team went elsewhere; it’s all very well offering a free bar, but you’ve got to be able to drink from it. We returned an hour later, and naturally the free bar was over.
And what of the venue? If you’ve paid a visit to Florita’s or Mister Lynch, you already know what to expect; sumptuous fittings and a crowd that loves to be loved. You can’t help but feel that Baby Lynch is a cynical scheme to create a two-bar pub crawl rather than a venue in its own right - it may as well be another bar in Florita’s - and it’s a little too narrow to be comfortable when busy.
Of course, you’ll go there, you’ll drink and be merry; you’ll look good and you’ll feel special. Just remember though - never give a baby booze, especially on its christening.
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Paul Smith is the editor of newcastlecentric.com. He's quite a tall chap.
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I took a pass on the opening for just this reason - there might be a way to run a free bar event in a venue like that without making it a misery for all concerned, but I suspect it’s going to take a genius of Newtonian proportions to work out how. Being a VV launch it was bound to attract a large crowd (even on a school night), and the hour of free booze is just going to make it worse. Did anyone apart from a select few liggers walk away feeling satisfied, I wonder?
Big mistake from a marketing perspective, I think. Put the words “free” and “bar” anywhere near an event and you’re going to get mobbed beyond what your staff can handle.
With that being said, good luck to VV. Apartment/Florita’s is still the only venue of theirs I’ve been in but it’s smashing. On a Sunday afternoon when nobody else is there. If they take those stupid wide eyed portraits away.
[...] Baby Lynch was launched last month with a free bar, it was less about drinking and more about frustration for plenty of punters. But word of the venue spread like wildfire so job done, and now owners [...]
[...] currently sweeping Newcastle that is Lynchism (I made that up myself). Florita’s and little Baby Lynch next door are both Vibrant Venture bars, fitting into what is the cool new trend of being totally [...]