11th January, 2009

More footage of the howling, urinating, car door-slamming, brawling and bawling individuals who patronise Mango's. Police officers and Mango's security staff are nowhere in sight.

Drunk, enraged...and ARMED.

The following comment was left by a local resident:

Mango’s was obviously in full swing again on Saturday night (10 January, 2009) as I was kept awake until after 4 o’clock in the morning with the usual gangs of Mango’s customers shouting, urinating in the street, playing ridiculously loud music and beeping car horns relentlessly outside my flat.However, I just wanted to warn you all about an incident myself and my boyfriend witnessed in the early hours of Sunday morning (11th January.)At about 3 am we became aware of a particularly aggressive and loud argument escalating in the middle of the street. At this point we got up to look out of our window to check what was happening and saw a young Asian man who was clearly drunk and enraged, threatening to go after someone and “get them.” His friend who had driven them there was trying to calm him down but after the argument continued and the first man was getting more aggressive towards his friend, they both went over to the boot of their car and rummaged for something, (lowering the boot door and shielding the view whenever a car passed.) It was then that the drunk man produced a long, metallic blue cosh in one hand and a large butchers knife with an 8 inch blade in the other. His friend began demanding the drunk man to give it him back and this argument continued for 5 minutes during which time we took the make and model of the car and its number plate. Eventually, the driver managed to take the knife off his friend and persuade him to get in the car, they then drove off. We phoned the police immediately and gave them full details.We’ve seen a lot of anti social behaviour since living on Pennington street but this was by far the worst. The fact that people are now bringing weapons in to our street just to go on a night out is frightening and it goes without saying we would never be exposed to this level of danger if it weren’t for Mango’s. This also suggests that any safety measures Mango’s may claim to put in place (a security attendant was no where to be seen all night) clearly have no benefit to us as residents. The metal detectors on Mango’s door just mean that people leave their knives in the car and take any violence into our street later.

For all we know this is a common occurence. For all we know there could even be firearms in some of these cars. The key point, and a point very well made by this contributor, is that residents would not be exposed to weapons in the street were it not for Mango's.

Christmas Night

A bit of a surprise and a bit of tradition. Surprise in that the entrepreneurial management of Mango's had rented their club out to a Yuletide gathering of chavs; tradition in that the noise around 04:00 am was more than enough to wake anyone up - car horns, shouting, all the traditional trimmings. There was at least one incident sufficiently serious for the police to require their siren in order to clear a path through Pennington Street. You wouldn't have thought that would have been strictly necessary at 04:00 am on Christmas Night, but there you go. Merry Christmas.

The Thin Blue Line

A number of Community Police Officers were present outside Waitrose on Sunday 22 December. Naturally, I don't want to hear your car stereo at 04:00 am took the opportunity to remind them of the anti-social behaviour in Pennington Street as a result of Mango's. They made some notes and informed me that they 'know all about Mango's' and that 'there is an ongoing investigation, that's all I can say'.

More shocking footage - Pennington Street 04:00 am

More shocking footage supplied by Pennington Street residents, regularly disturbed by the sort of anti-social behaviour on display in the video. At some points in the film the bass from the car sound systems was so strong as to swamp the recording equipment. The scenes of the cars zooming up and down the street, horns blaring, underline the fact that for residents the only solution to the problems caused by patrons of Mango's is permanent closure of the club. Imagine all of this going on right outside your bedroom window at four o'clock in the morning... Particularly shocking is the impertinent 'allright bruv?' from one of the Mango's patrons towards the end of the film. Funnily enough, no, we're not allright, bruv...

30 November 2008 04:00 am

This video was shot around 04:00 am on the morning of Sunday 30 November with a mobile phone. This is exactly the kind of thing that wakes us up weekend after weekend. Shouting, car horns, cars zooming past, idiots jumping on the cars - in fact, compared to some weekends this is pretty mild. All the same, it should be clear that the people in the street have no regard whatsoever for anyone living here.

Why do the police not breathalyze all of these drivers? Are we to believe that they have limited themselves to mineral water?

No doubt in subsequent installments we will have the dubious pleasure of publishing clips of the mobile sound systems in action.

Bear in mind that this is merely a two minute clip. This sort of thing goes on for hours. It is particularly bad, as might be expected, around closing time but can start around 23:00 and carry on until 04:30 or thereabouts.

Saturday 22 November: 04:14 am

We would not have this amount of traffic at 04:00 in the morning were it not for the presence of Mango's. At the end of the clip there is some classic pointless beeping of car horns of the kind we are all too familiar with.

What this proves to me is that even if there are quieter weekends from time to time, as long as Mango's is there we will be exposed to this nonsense.