Shadows

Shadows. Quiet the dive. This place is full of classic examples of the ‘student attitude’. What qualifies as being a ‘full time’ student really is a joke, especially in first year. There are three palces where you can typically see people getting drunk in the middle of the day: homeless shelters, holiday resorts and student bars. Being a student is somewhere between being a bum and being on holiday. Shadows doesn’t have the cheap prices you would hope to expect from a student bar, but doesn’t really matter if your course related costs have just been approved. Yay students!

Shadows is dark and smells like stale beer — just as it should. Most importantly everyone in there is having a good time. I don’t go for the slightly cheaper booze or to see someone vom on the carpet, I go for the live music. Over the years there have been some good bands play at Shadows and I’ve had some great nights out there. They’ve all been NZ bands; Katchafire, Fat Freddy’s drop, Fast Crew, Shapeshifter and usually before they’ve really made it big. It’s quite cool to think we were able to see bands and DJS that are pretty big now in such a small little venue. The sound quality was always good as the area is so small and it was cool to see experience music in such a little place.

Ah, Shads. A bar at a prominent university full of depressed and poor students — you can almost imagine what it would be like. The name added to my expectation, but I didn’t find Shadows to be as dark and dingy as I thought it would be. Perhaps that’s because I went during the day, when there was much natural light and not many shadows at all.
I sat in a booth here with my friends right after our last class of semester (which is probably their busiest week). The prices were okay, not the best considering we’re all pretty much broke, but the drinks were good. The coolest thing about Shadows is the amount of local acts that perform there — as a previous reviewer has mentioned, they’ve had the likes of Fat Freddy’s, Shapeshifter and all those other awesome Kiwi bands which have become nationally famous. Awesome.
I’ve never been here at night but I know lots of people who have, and hadn’t had a very good experience.

Ah dingy old Shads, the drinking institution of the UoA campus. Late in 2012 they apparently just about went belly up (quite how you do that selling alcohol in a captive market I don’t know), but happily they’re now back on their feet doing what they do best — serving beer to thirsty students! My memories of this place in the last four years are too great to number, but needless to say lots of beer has been drunk, lots of pool has been played, and lots of laughs have been had. It’s dingy as hell, but man it’s a cheery place and for that you gotta love it! My only gripe is the prices which are decidedly un-​student like. Maybe they need it to make more money?