To step inside the Acapulco Nightclub in Halifax is to enter an eerie time warp. Your eyes boggle at the swirly, kaleidoscopic purple carpets and the shimmering chrome and mirrored surfaces everywhere, including a stainless steel dancefloor. It would have been seen as retro 20 or even 30 years ago. “It’s still got the same feel, and probably still the same smell, as when people used to go out back in the 1980s and 90s,” says owner Simon Jackson.
The Acapulco – or the Mighty Acca as it is also known – is the oldest nightclub in the UK. It’s about to celebrate its 65th birthday and is currently campaigning to be recognised with an English Heritage Blue Plaque. “I would love a plaque,” says Lydia De La Murrãy, who is a 33-year-old diehard fan of the club. “It absolutely must get one. It’s a real achievement to be around that long and it’s such a staple of Halifax – it's part of so many people's lives.”
Murrãy can attest to this more than most. While many of her friends have turned their back on the club now – it’s very popular with late teens and early twenties crowds, as well as some older, but is a bit of a dead zone in between – she will still go at any opportunity. “I just love it,” she says. “It’s grotty but it's just about giving people a good time for as cheap as possible.”
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She even has a square of the Acca’s original carpet framed on her living room wall at home – it was sold off to raise money for a local charity in 2022 – and as a theatre producer has created work based around her experiences there. “It's part of my identity,” she says. “I used to have a flat that was literally just behind it, and everybody came to mine for pre-drinks before going. And even now, part of the decision behind whether I buy a new house has to be: is it a reasonably priced taxi to and from the Acca?”
The Acca is ludicrously cheap (75p drinks before 11pm), does not take itself seriously, and is an unashamed haven for cheesy old school pop music. When we arrive, I see punters knocking back some sort of multi-coloured concoction in a pint glass. “That’s a traffic light,” Murrãy informs me. “We used to have it back in the day. No one knew what was in it but it was rumoured to have 10 shots in it. And it's not actually red, yellow and green, as it’s got blue in it. But no one questions it, we just go with the flow.”
The club was initially founded by Ted Turczak in 1961, a Polish immigrant who came to Britain fleeing the Second World War. It was originally a very classy affair; by the 1970s the likes of footballer George Best could be found popping by for a drink amongst the suited crowd. Turczak and his wife, Stephanie, ran it until the late 1980s before it was passed onto to their children, Chez and Chris Turczak. They then extended the club to the second floor, doubling its capacity, and welcomed in a new era of fun: foam parties, celebrity bookings and retro nights, ultimately setting the tone for the ensuing decades.
Today, the club is the kind of place where they’ll bring in a bucking bronco or install a jacuzzi in the smoking area. Free merch is given away with slogans on such as “Choose Life, Choose the Acca” and “I Love it Up the Acca.” And a once derogatory term has been turned into a badge of honour: “I'm an Acca Slapper”. It’s the kind of club that feels locked in the era of Black Lace’s ‘Agadoo’, with a touch of Benidorm in West Yorkshire thrown in. It’s here where you may find Katie and Harvey Price being booked to DJ or a mid-level soap star swinging by for a guest appearance. “We've never been a trendy club,” explains Jackson. “But for some reason, not being trendy seems to make it trendy.”
Not everyone agrees. “Some say it's like a turd that you can't flush away,” says Marko Randelovic, who is a documentary filmmaker from Halifax and grew up going to the club. He now travels the world making award-winning films but a couple of years ago he decided to return home and point the camera on the Acca for a fun short film. “It makes for a great story because it's such a conflicted topic,” he says. Randelovic interviews people of the town, staff, clubbers, and recalls his own misspent youth there, rocking up early for what he calls “the power hour” which involved lining up 10 sambucas and drinking them one by one. “The club is a rite of passage,” he says. “It's like a coming-of-age ceremony. Whether that’s good or not, it is what it is, but you've got to own it and you've got to be proud of it. It’s a cultural relic.” In the film, he concludes: “If you think the Acca is a shithole, you may be right, but it’s our shithole.”
The prices are so low at 75p that they lose money on some drinks. “It’s done at a loss,” explains the club’s manager, Justin Brett. “But Simon isn't greedy. We want to be affordable and during a cost of living crisis, that really matters to people. Especially as things bite and the economy gets worse. It's nice for people to be able to let their hair down and not end up in their overdraft the following day.” Heidi Bell, an 18-year-old staff member, recalls one recent outing to another club in pure horror. “I went to Leeds the other week and it was £12 for a vodka and coke,” she says. “My mind was blown because in my head I was just like: my place of work would never [do that].”
While nobody can argue with the drink prices, there are other complaints. There are longstanding stories about overly aggressive bouncers and a floor so sticky that you literally get stuck to it. Although, by all accounts, the old carpet was pretty gross. “The first thing that hit you when you walked in was the smell,” recalls Randelovic. “It hit you like a ton of bricks. I'll always remember that smell. Like a mix of old booze, eggs, farts. It was unique. I've yet to encounter a smell on par with that.”
As a result, the club’s reputation, which it has built up over decades, can be hard to shake off. “All people ever say is you get thrown down the stairs by the bouncers, we water the drinks down, and you stick to the carpet,” says Jackson. “We don’t water the drinks down, and we probably have our carpet cleaned more than any other place in the country – once a fortnight a company comes in and they steam clean it.” (Although a recent incident of two bouncers, who no longer work at the club, being charged with affray suggests the club is still not free of incidents.)
However, the wildest story to circulate around the club is unquestionably true. “We really did have a phantom shitter,” says Jackson. “At first, we thought maybe it was one of our opposition nightclubs or just someone that had had an accident.” But then it happened again. And again. It was seven weeks or targeted attacks before they caught the guy. “It was like throwing a hand grenade in there,” says Jackson, with remarkable candour. “Because it's a stainless steel dance floor, it's very slippy and it spreads like butter and obviously everybody falls on it. Looking back, it sounds quite funny, but at the time, we were devastated. People were screaming.”
22 year-old Acca worker, Kieran Marshall, recalls the chaos. “The DJ had to tell everyone to get off the dance-floor,” he says. “Luckily, my manager cleaned it up but I had to stand there and make sure no one went near it.” The incident has gained such notoriety that the team behind the award-winning comedy true crime podcast, Who Shat On The Floor At My Wedding?, has dedicated an investigation into it as part of a new series.
However, despite its love or hate status as a club, it’s one that contains a huge amount of history and personal connections to people in Halifax. “The mother and father of my son’s girlfriend used to work at the club and they met there,” Jackson says. “So, if it hadn't been for the club, she probably wouldn't have existed.” Murrãy’s grandmother’s sister even had their wedding reception at the club. “Everybody's got memories there,” she says. “I don't think they do wedding receptions any more but I tell you what, if they did, I don't think anybody would be surprised if they got an invite from me to have mine there.” She thinks, then adds: “And that'd be the only way I'd be able to drag some of my mates there, that’s for sure.”
Memories of the Acca? Other legendary venues we should write about? Let us know in the comments.
