Le Batchi has been the gay club of Rennes since the 1980s and is now the only one left in the city. It sits on rue Vasselot in the centre, a short walk from place de la République, and the door is easy to walk straight past: there is no frontage to speak of, just a discreet entrance set between the shopfronts.
The room is small and the sound is loud. DJs run pop, electro and party sets on a floor that fills quickly, and the crowd is mostly students and people in their twenties, with an older contingent that has been turning up since the early years. It is a weekend club. What regulars single out is the welcome: it is somewhere you can arrive on your own without that being a problem.
It calls itself an LGBT club-discothèque, and after a run of closures across the Rennes scene that plain description now covers the last gay dancefloor in the city.
