Breakfast with Bristol24/7: Marti Burgess

The Immune Booster tea at The Bristolian is sensational.

It’s a mix of ginger, honey, cayenne pepper and lemon juice and it’s just what the doctor ordered for both myself and Marti Burgess an early Tuesday morning.

The Bristolian, a cafe in Montpelier, is just a six-minute walk away from Richmond Road, where Marti was born.

It’s just five minutes from Lakota, a popular Stokes Croft nightclub which Marti has co-owned since 1994, and three minutes away from Bianchis, an Italian restaurant where her husband is landlord. Montpelier is her area and she knows it well.

Marti’s grandparents immigrated from Jamaica to Bristol in the 1950s and, when they got here, found there weren’t many “places in the city for Black people to go”. So, they decided to host regular parties in the basement of their house.

Marti has been a co-owner of Lakota since 1994 – photo: Milan Perera

When Marti was young, her parents entered the nightclub business and bought the Tropic Club, in Stokes Croft, but Marti hadn’t yet felt the itch to enter the industry.

It was the 1990s and, after completing her studies as a scholarship student at Clifton High School, she had just graduated with an undergraduate law degree from London Metropolitan University.

However, after her older brother Bentleigh got close with one of the owners of what was then the Moon Club (now Lakota), Marti eventually ventured into the events industry too: “I came when Lakota opened. I came to work for the first weekend and just gradually got involved.”

Marti, now in her 50s, is not particularly active in the 2020s scene (although she has “kitchen raves” from time to time at home: “if my cousin Mandi’s involved, it’s usually a cocktail or two, followed by shots, followed by dancing”).

However, in the 90s, she regularly went clubbing and her experience meant she soon became an asset to the team at Lakota.

Marti explains: “I knew of some of the DJs and it became quite clear, after Lakota had been open for about a year, that the way for it to go was to become more focussed on the dance music side.

“I mean, there were really successful acid jazz nights at the beginning, but dance music was just exploding.”

This was the era of Sasha, Roger Sanchez and Todd Terry (“Keep on jumpin’! Let your body fly“). In 1994, when the majority-owner of Lakota fell irrecoverably ill and the club was repossessed, Marti and Bentleigh decided to buy to club.

She was in her mid-twenties at this point.

Was she scared about taking on the responsibility of owning a club? No.

“I don’t really know people in my family, especially the women in my family, who are scared of much,” she says. “On my dad’s side, we’re descended from maroons. I always tell my daughters, when they’re up against anything, just think of Nanny (of the Maroons) and what she overcame.”

The Bristolian is an independent cafe on Picton Street – photo: Martin Booth

As she approached her late twenties, Marti then decided to return to her legal training and did a post-graduate qualification that allowed her to practice as a solicitor.

Although she was keen to then become a human rights lawyer, she was tied to Bristol because of Lakota and, back then, there wasn’t really a human rights legal scene in the city (her best bet would have been to move to London).

Enter Paul Stephenson.

A key figure in the Bristol Bus Boycott, who died in November 2024, Stephenson was a family friend when Marti was growing up. After completing her legal studies, the civil rights pioneer encouraged her “to get involved in stuff”.

Marti adds: “He encouraged me to join the board at the Bristol Beacon and got me involved in a Black-led Chamber of Commerce and in 2008 got me involved in some of the initiatives in Bristol to commemorate the legacy of the Transatlantic trade in Africans.”

Weeks before he died, the Bay Horse on Lewins Mead dubbed a section of their pub ‘Paul’s Corner’, in Paul Stephenson’s honour – photo: Seun Matiluko

With Stephenson’s encouragement, Marti became more of an “active citizen” in Bristol and is now the chair of the board of the Black South West Network, a merchant venturer and a board member at Bristol24/7 (she decided to join the board after her friend and board chair Dougal Templeton invited her on).

She thinks Stephenson had confidence in her because of her strong debating skills.

She says: “He was somebody who encouraged healthy debate and put you on the spot. If you made a comment then he would challenge you.

“You couldn’t get away with just making flippant points. I’d imagine someone like him would expose Trump as a complete tit.

“Paul Stephenson would drill down and be unrelenting until it was revealed that your argument was shallow.”

Between her legal practice, her various board memberships, her co-ownership of Lakota and her being a very active mother to two relatively young daughters, I’m tempted to think of her as a superwoman.

How does she find the time?

Especially as Lakota, in particular, continues to evolve. The club made headlines recently when it was revealed it had successfully applied for a licence to put on ‘sex positive events’. As Marti puts it: “If Lakota stood still, it would have been closed a long time ago”.

However, although Marti’s life is incredibly active now, she is looking forward to retiring within the next decade so she can find time to spend with herself too.

At the top of her to do list is to go travelling. The last time she went to South Africa was in 2000 and she’s keen to see how the country has changed in the last twenty-five years.

She is also hoping to travel across East Africa and spend more time in the Caribbean.

Retiring, for Marti, means “I will have all of my time under my control”. And, on that note, I quickly finish my pancakes as Marti finishes her smashed pea on toast. She’s got another meeting to head to.

Illustration by Lucy J Turner

This article is taken from the May/June 2025 Bristol24/7 magazine

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• Lakota wants to put on X-rated entertainment
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• Bristol remembers Paul Stephenson