“I Just Ordered A Beer At Boots” – A Night Of Raving In Manchester’s Retail Ruins 

I’ve had my fair share of head-spinning, reality-blurring moments at raves, festivals and club nights. But ordering a beer at the prescriptions counter of an actual branch of Boots, the British pharmacy chain, at two in the morning on a Friday, must be the most potently psychoactive of the lot. Can someone check my pupils?

Labelled A Repeat Prescription, it’s the latest madcap night from Ruf Dug and his business partner Dan Hope, founders of party collective Rainy Heart. Both characters deserve biopics. Ruf is a legendary Manchester-via-Ibiza DJ and NTS resident who has played everywhere from Glastonbury to Burning Man, while Dan has worked for Apple, acted in 24-Hour Party People, moonlighted as a pro poker player, worked as a sound engineer on a Grammy-award winning LP and is now a pop-up expert. 

Its origins are also a long story, involving a pair of vintage BBC monitor speakers, a love of Japanese hi-fi, the localisation of lockdown and a serendipitous meeting... But all you need to know, for now, is that Ruf and Dan are taking audio in Manchester to new levels – including the world’s smallest listening bar in a news kiosk, an alcohol-free club and now, this Boots party.

Like all good nights, this one begins round the back of a warehouse. It’s half seven, just a few hours before the party starts. We head through the bin shed of an industrial unit in Stretford. “It’s in the dirt here, you know, getting involved as a community. It goes back 150 years,” he says of the Manchester suburb’s civic history, with Stretford Public Hall built by philanthropists John and Enriquetta Rylands and opened in 1879.

Once inside, we turn the corner, and I find myself in the skeleton of the town’s old Boots. Although it’s pretty much been gutted since its closure last year, remnants of its past are still intact, including Calpol adverts on the floor and an old consultancy booth that’s now bathed in red light.

And, of course, its entrance, which surreally leads into the (soon to be knocked down) shopping centre that it’s housed in: Stretford Mall. It means that when you stumble to the loos, you’re slap bang in the mall and are suddenly faced with an array of familiar outlets, including Pound Bakery, JD Sports and, just a few doors down, arch competitor Holland & Barrett (I bet they would offer glamping).

This disorientating sense of space is what Ruf Dug digs. First organising squat raves way back in the ’90s, the NTS resident DJ is a nightlife alchemist, expertly transforming derelict units into fleeting utopias. He’s interested in psychogeography, which studies how our environment affects us emotionally. “This whole aesthetic hooks into a love of liminal spaces. As the world becomes more virtual, physical space becomes fetishized in the same way that cassette tapes do. It becomes a medium,” he explains as he gets ready for the rave. 

Which, by the way, is somehow legal. So how did A Repeat Prescription get signed off? It’s thanks to Abigail Barker, the events manager for Bruntwood, the organisation regenerating Stretford town centre in partnership with Trafford Council. Drawing from her fine art background and love of raving, Abby has pushed things forwards, acting as both the facilitator and envisaging much of the night’s creative direction. “While we have this space, as a person with the keys, I can help realise these different kinds of concepts bubbling away in Stretford,” she says.

It’s not the first Boots bash; Rainy Heart threw a rave here late last year. “We kept it a secret, so nobody knew until they actually walked in,” Ruf says. And it made for an uncanny experience. “Nearly everyone that came had a pre-existing relationship with the space. It could be something as mundane as having had a flu jab in that consulting room or buying nappies,” he continues, noting that several ravers even used to work at the Boots. For Abby, it was about bringing Stretfordians together. “We turned the lights on and nobody left because everyone just knew each other.”

Now, this second event is all about taking the situationist art further, playing with pharmaceutical signs and symbols through trippy installations, retro TVs and projections. Over pizza from local aficionados Bakehouse 32, I catch up with Jamie House, the designer behind tonight’s visuals (think medical diagrams and prismatic lighting). “I love stuff like this,” he says. “Everyone’s been proper bouncing off each other.” He’s engineered a reach-for-the-lasers display inspired by pharmaceuticals and psychedelia. “There are crystals in front of all the projects to create refraction. It’s really wicked.”

Around 10pm, the first ravers enter Boots, soundtracked by a melon-twisting, Balearic edit of Happy Mondays’ Step On. The apparent tagline of the night: “This is mad,” whispered by punters as they enter the pharmacy. For the next few hours, I’m in a blissful daze, either dancing to old-school Italo and Hacienda-adjacent house from legendary Manchester selector Luke Una or sauntering around the mall.  
 
Which is, actually, incredibly nostalgic. I didn’t grow up in Stretford – I’m from Croydon – but it’s eerily similar to the Whitgift Centre, where I wasted many teenage days. With the recent closure of stalwarts such as WHSmiths, British high streets have become wastelands; each “Everything Must Go!” sign a nail in the coffin. Walking back through to Boots, I clock one of those coin-operated car rides, bleeping away into the void. It must have looked futuristic, once. 
 
Ruf is equally sentimental about local spaces. But he’s also optimistic. “I’m very interested in doing things in my own backyard,” he says. “It’s about leaning into parochialism and creating something world class on your doorstep.” Having settled down in Stretford during the pandemic, he’s no longer interested in DJing across the world. Instead, he wants to enhance people’s nights around his own stomping ground. “The majority of people who have a clubbing experience now are getting a very watered-down version of what’s available to them,” he says, lamenting the widespread commodification of club culture. While the drinks have yet to be literally watered down, he’s right – the demolition of actually discerning clubs such as Wire in Leeds and The Shed in Glasgow has left few options outside of London (and even less out in the sticks). 

The key focus is creating a fleeting moment of beauty, tapping into the “happenings” of past counterculture that can’t be captured on social media. “It’s ephemeral and it’s temporary and can only be experienced by the people creating it.” Matthew Williams, who has worked with Jamie on many multimedia shows, echoes this: “People are hungry for something different, where if you weren’t there, you missed it. Your whole body has to be a part of it as well.”

By half two, I’m suffering from a decent bout of fatigue. If only there was a pack of paracetamol for the imminent hangover, I think. But, on the way out, I do pick up a Repeat Prescription box from the display cabinet installation. I tear it open, and there’s a plastic pill case with a piece of paper, rolled-up fortune-cookie style, inside, featuring a meticulously designed patient information pamphlet.

The words are blurry, but they perfectly encapsulate the intended effect of the night. “Upon exit, you are unchanged, yet altered. The traces of collectiveness linger. Full dissipation may take time.” Days later, I’m still waiting.