10 ways the Night Tube will improve your weekend

The Night Tube opens this Friday. For Londoners, it means better public transport at weekends and for Londoners who party, it means the city will be opened up for fun like never before.

Here are 10 ways the new service will improve your weekend. Lord knows we've all been waiting for it long enough...

Kerri Chandler’s playing at midnight in Shoreditch and Helena Hauff’s on at 3am in Brixton. You want to see both do their thing but the Night Buses will never get you across the city in time and you and your mates can’t be arsed to pay the taxi fare.

Sound familiar? It’s a quandary that many London clubbers will have faced. Every weekend there’s a plethora of amazing parties to go to but no way of reaching them all. The capital is too big and the public transport infrastructure just isn’t built to ferry ravers around.

That’s all going to change now the Night Tube is open. From this Friday, we’ll finally be able to hit more than one club during a night out and share the same sense of adventure that’s second nature to other European hotspots such as Amsterdam and Berlin. London and all its gleaming party gems are now ours to unlock.

Before this weekend, heading out on a Friday or Saturday meant leaving the house by midnight in order to catch the last Tube. After a long day’s work as well as the ritual of getting ready, that never left much time to chill and recharge with your friends before hours of dancing. It’s always been an irritating reality that’s turned pre-drinking into a post-modern version of Dante’s Inferno sponsored by Tyskie and Glenn’s Vodka. But no more! Thanks to the Night Tube, pre-bevs will become leisurely soirees during which you can get psyched for the party ahead in your own damn time.

The less open-minded Londoner gets a bit territorial when it comes to going out. If those tribalists are among your friends then you’ll know how hard it is to get those living south of the river to head north and vice versa. We don’t blame you for getting frustrated at your non-adventurous buds but now the Night Tube’s open, they have no excuse not to dart around the city like a game of rave Monopoly.

How many times have you had to cut a night short because you've got to jump on the Tube before the station shutters go down for the night? It's a deflating, pride-sucking moment that often ends up with your mates calling you boring and going on about how good the rest of the night was for weeks. Nice of them to offer to put you up for the night, eh? Now, you'll be a bore no more: you can finally stick two fingers up at the 12.28am Victoria Line service from Brixton to Finsbury Park you've rushed to catch so much in the past.

"There was this one time, right..." You know how it goes with cabbies. They love to reel off all the celebrities they've picked up in the past, recall all the weirdos over the years and tell of the offers needy night owls have apparently put on a plate for them. They often moan about passengers piling their woes on them, but they're not totally innocent of spilling their own life stories, are they?

Much like the hard-to-shake, mosquito-like gurner chatting shit at the afterparty, cabbies can be pretty draining when all you want to do is get home in peace. Tales of their career behind the wheel is the last thing you wanna hear after a night of banging tunes. Granted, there's likely to be plenty of ear-chewing from strangers on the Night Tube, but it's way more acceptable to listen to your headphones on a train than it is in a cab. Plus, someone that's been boozing all night is bound to have something way more humorous to say.

It’s 5am on a Sunday and the journey techno you were fully involved with two hours earlier feels like it’s not going anywhere after all. You’re with your best squad but you get the feeling that everyone would rather be back at yours cracking on to a soundtrack of piano house played off YouTube. Now that the Night Tube is running, you can easily gather your crew and get the fuck out of there.

Afterparties are going to be so much more easy to reach and thanks to the speed and regularity of the new weekend Tube service, it’ll be a doddle picking up booze on the way to a kick-on and a breeze popping home for a fresh T-shirt and much-needed cheeky livener before continuing an epic through-er. You’ll be round some random’s flat in Seven Sisters or down at Jaded in Elephant and Castle in no time.

Oh, the feeling of dread when your head cocks back, you open your eyes in a daze and you realise you've nodded off, missed your bus stop and are miles away from home in a dead-end part of town. It's not so bad in the summer but waiting around for the bus in winter is not the one. "Why the fuck didn't anyone wake me up?" you ask yourself as you realise you've dreamed your way way north of Tottenham or ended up deep in Skream's old stomping ground, Croydon. You've only got yourself to blame, kid. But now you can say goodbye to those lengthy, sometimes sketchy, waits for the reverse journey. Say hello to waking up at the end of the Tube line instead. At least it'll be warmer and much quicker to get back to your bed.

Note the lack of Uber receipts in your inbox this Monday.

Night Buses are generally shit, right? They're almost like a morgue on wheels, gloomy and depressing and about as exciting as an episode of Countdown. The only difference is the cogs in your brain actually get to work when watching the show, whereas travelling on your ones through the city at night or in the wee hours of the AM is utterly mind-numbing and dull.

The Night Tube won't just make getting home so much easier, it'll bring a whole load of joy to that trip from A to B. Forget the awkward stares or attempts to dodge eye contact like during the day, you'll probably be best mates with everyone on your carriage by the time you've reached your destination. Cue party trains!

The Night Tube will finally turn London into a proper 24-hour city. We’ve been jealous of other European capitals for so long and now one of the greatest cities in the world has got what it deserves. The possibility for fun at weekends is endless.

Although the Night Tube was launched while Boris Johnson was Mayor of London, it’s Sadiq Kahn who gets to open it. The Labour politician has said he’ll fight for nightlife in the city, so the opening of the service this Friday marks the first step of that campaign. With clubs closing every month, we’ll be closely watching his next move.

Seb Wheeler and Dave Turner are delighted that they'll never have to catch three Night Buses home again

Alex Jenkins is a freelance illustrator and regular contributor to Mixmag. Follow him on Instagram