Although there have also been closures in Brighton and Manchester, two major gay hubs, it’s in London where the issue is becoming serious. A handful more, including South London’s celebrated Royal Vauxhall Tavern, which was sold last year, are now at risk. A lot of small businesses have suffered, but none more so, it seems, than those catering to the LGBT community.Īt least 12 gay venues have faced closure in recent years. Gentrification has made entire boroughs of the city uninhabitable for anyone on anything less than an £100k salary. Over the past few years, the recession has pummelled and squeezed London like a Skittle-fed toddler let loose on the Play-Doh. My own kitsch-induced existential crisis aside, the queue I just waited in did not exactly scream “gay scene in distress”.
When I reach the packed downstairs club, ABBA is playing and I start to wonder if the gay scene is now stratified with so many layers of irony that its about to collapse in on itself. The bar is co-owned, after all, by East London’s doyenne of drag, Jonny Woo. We’re waiting, in the January cold, to get inside, have several G&Ts and dance with some drag queens.
It’s midnight and outside The Glory, one of London’s newest gay bars, I’m part of a pick ‘n’ mix of queers that’s trailing down the Haggerston end of Kingsland Road, towards Shoreditch.
