Salsa City Forum » News and Chat » Toad and Amber Lounge

At last, the Toad is back on Thursday. Class are starting earlier, at 8.30, for more free dancing. Let's hope they stay that way rather than drifting later.

Also Kate and Michael have a new night in the Amber Lounge (formerly Slug and Lettuce, opposite Burger King) - classes 8-8.45 open la rueda, and 9-10 lambada. £4 to do everything, or £3 for one class and dancing til 12. Starts this Wednesday

Lambada and la Rueda! Great!

Thanks for letting us know Tom, that will save me the trouble of the drive to Bristol.

I went to The Toad for its reopening last night and had a great time. It's much improved in many areas. There's more room to dance and the lessons finish earlier, I'm not sure how much earlier because I arrived quite late but dancing was in full swing shortly after ten. They played some tracks I hadn't heard before and there was no attempt to MIX them. Yay! But the removal of the seating means there is NOWHERE convenient or safe to put one's coat. Coats and bags scattered everywhere gave the place a very unsophisticated, provincial, look, like some pathetic village hall. I don't know if the management and the promoters think this is OK, but it just isn't. Customers expect better these days. It looks like there's plenty of room to set up a coatrack of some kind and I for one would be happy to pay a pound to be sure my coat was still there when it was time to go home.

You'll be pleased to hear that classes were 8:30 - 10:00, following Kate's styling workshop.
I was disappointed with the refit - closed for a month and all they seem to have done is take away the sofa and replace the floor (although I'm grateful for that as an excuse for my dire dancing). A more unfortunate side-effect of removing the sofa is the dancefloor now extends to the mirrors, which can be quite disconcerting.

I thought it was a considerable improvement. I wasn't expecting the refit to give us a bigger dancefloor. Earlier classes are definitely a good thing, and the music was good too.