The roll call of defunct gay venues in London seems to get longer every month: this spring the Black Cap in Camden, NW1, closed, pending residential redevelopment. In the Cap’s 1980s heyday you could meet Marxist revolutionaries, Lily Savage and the Pet Shop Boys in the course of a single giddy evening – but that’s all over now.
According to one of the cabaret stars who used to perform on its tiny stage, the newly converted flats will be haunted by the angry ghosts of drag queens past. “There will be bumping and grinding in the night,” he warns.
The Black Cap joins many others, all vanished: The Fallen Angel on Graham Street in Islington, N1, now converted into flats, and The Bell in King’s Cross, N1, recycled as a live music venue. The list of once-stellar gay venues now extinguished is long, very long. About 150 have vanished in the past 10 years, probably more.
London may be thriving in most respects, but gay London seems to be on a quirkier trajectory. The 2003 Licensing Act, more liberal social attitudes and internet dating sites are commonly blamed. Whatever the cause, it is still causing damage. The collapse shows no sign of stopping, even in supposedly emerging areas like Shoreditch, E1.
Shoreditch has been tipped as London’s up-and-coming gay district for the past 10 years. The cool vinyl vibe of the George and Dragon on Hackney Road, E2, set the tone when it opened in 2002. Yet despite an eastward drift – and many LGBT Londoners have moved east – the promise that Shoho would become the new Soho has not been fulfilled. Bars are closing there, too.
The London Apprentice – once the place to a share a giggle with John Paul Gaultier, or a glass of red with Ian McKellen – was the focus of the Shoreditch scene until it turned from gay to ping-pong in 2012. The Joiners Arms, purveyor of cosy pub fun since 1997, closed at the end of 2014. Five Hackney venues have dwindled to one and a half. It’s a similar story in neighbouring Tower Hamlets.
Sam Moriarty, bar manager at the George and Dragon, says: “The number of gay venues is definitely down. There’s a few left, but that’s all. Lots have gone.”
“Shoreditch’s appeal was that it was happy and relaxed, a nice mix of local gay and straight people, and not like Soho – which is a bit touristy, a bit high street. We’re one of the last places to keep that atmosphere going.”
“Today we’re seeing the hen parties coming to Shoreditch, so we’re getting more like Leicester Square,” he says, with a deep sigh, conveying a real sense that something is wrong.
There is no evidence of a new wave of gay venues to replace those that have gone. Ali Amir of Eastender Estate Agents, whose Shoreditch lists include the cost-effective community venues that appeal to new ventures, says he’s not aware of any enquiries from the LGBT community.
Some regulars at the George take more than a punter’s interest in the changed mood. One, an asset manager with a leisure property background, says: “Partly it is changing social attitudes, which means the appeal of gay bars is reduced. You can go anywhere. But commercial rents and licensing laws matter too,
and in Shoreditch those rents are catching up with everywhere else.”
He adds: “But when I go to Soho or Shoreditch, it’s not just about bars, it’s about retailing, restaurants, the dynamic mix. The licensed premises that thrive are food and dining, and the fortunes of drink-only venues across the spectrum have declined because it’s very hard to make a business work on just boozing.
“Nobody wants to stand for ages in a nasty room full of drunk men. And if you do want drunk men, then there’s probably an app for that.”
The tired-looking, under-invested, wet-led gay bars of yesteryear necessarily suffer. For many LGBT customers,
it’s a no-brainer. Why go somewhere that feels second best?
Brian Bickell, chief executive of Shaftesbury, presides over a Soho portfolio centred on Berwick Street with 106 shops and 100 restaurants. Last year’s closure of Madame JoJo’s cabaret bar sparked a celebrity-led campaign to “Save Soho” that has divided the property business. Soho Estates, which controls the bulk of the former Paul Raymond portfolio and plans to redevelop the JoJo site as the 30,000 sq ft Walker Court scheme, say fears are overblown. Raymond Estates, which controls a smaller portion, is allied to the Save Soho campaign.
Bickell accepts that Soho is changing – but says that is no bad thing. “Soho always changes, which is why people like going there. And it needs to respond, and keep reinventing itself. Of course, the LGBT element of Soho changes too. Gay life today isn’t so much about drinking and hanging around in bars. Some days you are more likely to find a hen party in a gay bar than actual gay people.
“Soho will always keep its mix,” he says, adding that rising rents will not price out the quirkier, more gay operators. And if some find their audience doesn’t justify the rent and rates, they have alternatives. “Don’t forget there are other parts of gay London – Vauxhall has a buzzy scene,” he adds.
“My guess is that younger LGBT people don’t need the security of separate gay venues that my generation did. It’s a social change that gay venues have to respond to. And it is also a question of investment in the premises, and a spike in the opening of gay premises in the 1990s, which probably led to an oversupply.”
As historians such as Matt Houlbrook have shown, the geography of gay London always changes. Once, not long ago, the arches under the County Fire Office at Piccadilly Circus, W1, were about as chic as you could get, reflections in the plate glass windows of Simpson’s in the Strand the best place to meet new friends, and Waterloo, SE1, was the buzzing gay district.
Since then parts of Mayfair, W1, and Earls Court, SW5, have come and gone as the centres of gay gravity or levity.
Yet in London the more things change, the more they stay the same. These days it is no longer necessary to knock three times and ask for Dorothy – gay venues are no longer hiding from the law, or from violent attack. Many may mourn Madam JoJo’s, the Black Cap, and the rakish gay world that went with them, but London is still one of the gayest cities in the world – second only to New York.
There is no danger of London running out of LGBT venues. No chance at all.
LGBT london art proofVoho in the ascendant
Soho’s transformation from sleazy backwater to high-rent tourist destination has prompted a small-scale migration of gay nightlife to Vauxhall’s earthier atmosphere.
The area, now known as VoHo, has not had its gay businesses hit quite as badly as those of some other districts. The fact that the area caters to a drag-meets-fetish slice of the queer world that is not designed to please tourists or straight people has, perhaps, been its lifeline.
Meanwhile, gay hipsters – too young to remember the bad old days when gay pubs were permitted in only the seediest locations – have rediscovered Vauxhall as quaint and fascinating.
The Royal Vauxhall Tavern is about as old school as you can get and sits atop half a dozen venues catering for various niche interests.
