It’s an exciting time for clubs in London – just not in Soho
Everyone’s saying Soho sucks, but I’m 35 and Soho has sucked ever since I was of legal age. The best clubs in London aren’t in central, says Adam Bloodworth
It was once where they brewed Tetley’s bitter, but now the ordinary-looking office windows of a former factory look as if they might explode. It’s 2am and the panes are changing colour from midnight blue to rainforest green, each ‘boommf, boommf’ of bass shaking the curled floor tiles of this dreary old building. DJs were scheduled until 6am. On a vast balcony overlooking an old lobby, people were lined up in rows, trying to get a better view down onto the dancefloor. Hundreds had gathered to watch DJ Haai, who didn’t come on until 3am. This is The Cause, a recently reopened club and arts space in London’s Canning Town.
Have you also noticed hundreds of besquinned folk gathering at Tottenham Hale at unusual times, piling onto trains out of London that would otherwise be quiet. They’re on their way to Drumsheds, a new superclub near Meridian Water on the capital’s outskirts. It occupies the former Ikea building; the inaugural show featured Hot Chip frontman Alexis Taylor. There’s space for 15,000 to shake off the work week on the air conditioned dancefloor.
Creatives famously react well in times of strife, so expect selectors to be spinning better sets even longer into the night now there are fewer places for dancing. The community will never die, it just morphs
Back in Canning Town, turn left out of the train station’s main entrance and, despite it being early in the afternoon on a Sunday, you’ll notice a queue spiralling into the hundreds. It snakes past a load of units in an ordinary-looking industrial estate. This is the line for Fold, a 24-hour club with lockers to store a change of clothes and shutters that open in the morning to let the light flood onto the still-heaving dancefloor. If you turn up much past 3pm you’ll wait over three hours to get in. The line- up is never revealed: that’s the fun. Some of the world’s most respected DJs turn up to play this covert, Berlin-style party.
If you read the papers, including this one, you could be forgiven for thinking British nightlife was dead and buried – and it’s true that cities including Manchester, Bristol and Glasgow have, like London, lost centrally-located and legendary clubs to gentrification and the cost of living. Nightclubs country-wide have almost halved in the past decade, partly because Brits are spending less on a night out.
You would be hard pressed to find a proper nightclub in Soho these days. Madame Jojo’s shut in 2014 and G-A-Y Late stopped operating last year, leaving Freedom and… that’s about it. The council is more interested in placating a handful of fussy residents than they are encouraging one of the most vibrant and vital industries in the country.
But it’s time to move on and simply accept that Soho is now a collection of historic pubs and some decent restaurants – certainly not somewhere you want to find yourself after 11pm. I’m 35 and I can’t remember Soho being fun, nor a time when London had more going on. Let’s not conflate nightlife dying in city centres with nightlife dying in general. There might be fewer clubs, but those remaining are working harder than ever to show how it’s done. Creatives famously react well in times of strife, so expect selectors to be spinning better sets even longer into the night now there are fewer places for dancing. The community will never die, it just morphs.
Clubs like Fold, The Cause, and Drumsheds are creating ways for people to dance. You have to travel a little further to reach the pulsating windows, and fabulous, sequinned hordes, but if you crave a sweaty room full of interesting people in which to shake a leg, now is a great time to be alive.