FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Noisey

Does It Matter That Nightlife for Queer Women in London Is Kinda Dead?

The LGBTQ clubs we have left are still primarily considered spaces for gay men – and thats not changing anytime soon.

A large portion of my most valuable teenage experiences can be traced back to the queer clubs of London. My first serious turn at karaoke: beneath the dull, turquoise lights of The Joiners Arms, in which I emptied the dancefloor by sadly murmuring the words to Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car" to a chorus of eye rolls. My first bump of ket: huddled within the piss-stained cubicles of The George & Dragon with a drag king called Bethlehem to the delirious synth of "Smalltown Boy" by Bronski Beat. The only time I've ever thrown a drink in someone's face: Peggy Mitchell-style, in the sweaty basement of East Bloc, because they asked me to see how it would feel.

Advertisement

These memories could have happened anywhere, at any sort of club, but they happened at queer clubs, because that's where my mates and I preferred to be. The "straighter" clubs weren't quite the same; they didn't always play the music we were into, it was much harder to dance without some guy aggressively invading our personal space and everyone looked hotter and more stylish anyway for reasons I still don't entirely understand but which will probably one day be explained by science. A lot of these queer clubs have since closed down but back in 2008 in London, we took up space.

That said, many of these LGBTQ clubs and bars were – and still are – primarily considered spaces for gay men. There were a few monthly club nights for queer women scattered here and there (Lemon Juice at The Haggerston, Girlcore at Catch, Club Jolene at Visions, Unskinny Bop at the Star of Bethnal Green, Clam Jam at Dalston Superstore) but for the most part, they felt like an afterthought; a novelty themed night in a space not usually centred on female-identifying people. The few bars that did exist for women, of which there were a grand total of three at an absolute push (Ku Bar, She Soho, Candy Bar), felt dry as hell for many of us because who wants to travel to central London to stand in a glossy pink bar supping £8 cocktails to the dull thump of Rita Ora, just to get some?

But as we all know, in the past few years, LGBTQ clubs have closed down at an alarming rate. Of those aforementioned club nights and bars, only Ku Bar and She Soho remain, with just a few very occasional nights. Thanks to a whole host of reasons that vaguely fall under the umbrella of "gentrification", the state of queer nightlife is admittedly dire for all genders and sexualities, but for women, it seems even more so. In a city as big as London, with as many queer women as there are – and I know there are lots because I have seen them shopping at Harvest in Dalston and drinking coffee at Palm Vaults in Hackney and smoking outside the library at Goldsmiths Uni – there is literally nowhere to get wasted and dance in a space where you are the majority. So, what gives?

Read more on Noisey.