The Green Door Store owners opened their doors when everyone else was closing theirs, thank god.

Was it scary seeing other venues closing when you were planning to open?
Paul: Well, at the risk of sounding conceited, no. It reinforced in my mind what we were doing was right. Your Broken Brighton headline – that was in my mind as well. When we were planning this place it was obvious to me that this is what Brighton needed.

Why has the Green Door Store been so successful?
P: The venue, our musical programme, the staff that we have here, our programmer Ed Lilo – all that combined just works. And we don’t tell any lies – it is what it is. The club nights are free to get in; we’re looking for the newest music and the coolest music.

Some of the music is quite challenging.
P: Yeah. I sit down with Ed on a frequent basis and come up with some random ideas. He’s talking about skating indoors now and I’m like, no. We start with this stupid idea and it usually flourishes into something that is quite cool and works. But we’re open seven days a week, every week of the year and you can’t have all cool, all challenging. So we do have blues and jazz – regular kind of stuff – on a weekly basis because you need to pay the rent.

The place has a really distinctive look – you told us once that if you had more money you’d have fucked it up. Ambre: I might have said that when I was drunk.
P: Well, I think it’s true. If you’ve got lots of money then you’ve got lots of time, and with time comes doubt and with doubt you change your original ideas. We didn’t have time and we didn’t have any money.
A: Some of the décor in there was down to me being quite nerdy. Like about exposing all the brickwork around the doorways. It pretty much took a week to get the paint off each doorway.

Words by James Kendall & Sol Brown
Photo By James Kendall

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