I used to meet this dealer around there which was never fun and he would eventually turn up in some banger with an Italian number plate before disappearing off to Laos for the winter. Brixton in 2000s always felt so different to the E London scene. Different crowds & darker music.
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Used to see the dregs piling out of love muscle when I was on the morning work commute. Getting propositioned by prostitutes was also the norm.
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Return to the Source? Had a very strange night in there myself with lots of people in flouro face paint. Terrible music!
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Downstairs at Home James Taxi’s in L Junction was interesting
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Escape From Samsara was one of the regular psy trance parties at the Fridge. 150bpm sounds right.
does anyone remember Cafe Cairo? by Clapham North tube. You’d knock on the door and they might or might not let you in. downstairs looked like a boudoir. DJs pretty decent, loungey house vibe. going back about 20 years here
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Yes! With the, errr, smoking tent out the back!
I think it finally gave up during covid. Had some crazy nights in there.
They ran a cafe at Glasto too as well as some of the other ferstivals like Shambala.
Going way back it used to be the Bagelodeon which was the only after hours drink in the area b4 the late licenses, with the basement like a shabeen (as opposed to the actual shabeen below the patty shop a few doors down).
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Yes, DJed there a few times. Shady operation!
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so many sshh places, mostly long gone now… (getting a bit wistful here)
- that loft with the lift on cambridge heath road (mare street?)
- that tiny gallery off Brockwell Park in Herne Hill where they did New Years
- Troys
- that social club in Hackney where you could get ‘anything’
- the george & dragon in Acton with the attic you had to climb up a ladder to get to (loads of motorcycles suspended off ceiling?)
- the ‘secret’ room at Herbal
- Melange kingsland road - recall one TP forum member turning lights off and telling everyone to keep quiet in the basement when rozzers turned up
- that glorious boozer in New Cross run by the old ladies with the stagecoach with the horses inside and all the taxidermy everywhere (Montague Arms I think)
- that basement on wardour street (?) where Kashpoint did an electroclash party
- The Castle on Commercial Road - “the worst toilets in Scotland”
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I was just up the road in Streatham Hill in 2000ish. Good party house-share set up with some mates. There was a grubby toilet block at the end of our road opposite a cafe and would also get propositioned on the way to work- err no thanks!
Coincidentally we were just by Woodleigh Gardens which is where Nina Walsh lived and presumably gave name to the Woodleigh Research Project. Would have been fun to see Weatherall walking past.
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There was a place on Edgware Road that was similar to cafe Cairo. Upstairs Middle Eastern food, downstairs a basement where all sorts went on. Early 2000s.
Also some place up some stairs in Soho - proper old school drinking den, late 90s. Possibly off Charing X Road but my memory is hazy and only went once. People opening chopping out at 2pm on a Wednesday afternoon. Terrifying crew hanging around a pool table.
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Troy’s on Hanway Street? Think it’s still going!
Was Kash Point at Moonlighting? Think it may still be going too, some how.
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Ha, lived just round the corner from there. Fun late night place
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really? wow! I thought Westminster were all over them.
97/98 was a strange time. just out of uni, finding my feet, working as a dogsbody at the Valuation Office in Holborn. Thurs night ‘specials’ getting obliterated around Hanway St, Soho, Chinatown… Interminably long nightbuses back West… Miss that London but don’t really miss that ‘me’.
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Troy’s definitely legit now and Moonlighting always legit (though presumably basically a money laundering exercises!)
FAO anyone who missed it at the time, here’s a top bit of writing about the origins of Bradley’s Spanish Bar (the clue ISN’T in the name…)
this is a really good London blog too for ‘Smoke’ nerds
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good read
I remember some other after-hours Spanish bar on Hanway st that was up some stairs (or maybe I’ve just got Bradleys upside down)
Maybe Troy’s?
I wouldn’t remember the name but also remember another bar on a higher level around there. And another long basement bar too, drinks served in plastic cups only, or cans, wasn’t really a bar there, more just a table for serving drinks at end of a long basement,
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Berlin’s beat goes quiet as techno clubs close their doors
Watergate will shut for good at new year, and as gentrification erases the city’s gritty appeal, officials are struggling to stop others following suit
December 07 2021, 12.01am
It is not the only nightclub that is struggling in the city known as Europe’s techno capital. Renate, another famous club in Friedrichshain, across the river from Treptower Park, has failed to renew its lease beyond next year.
The city’s nightlife is under “enormous pressure” from “falling numbers of visitors, rising costs and a lack of government support”, the association said. Its member survey found that more than half of the clubs had fewer visitors than a year ago and had recorded declining profits.
Berlin faces losing many of the clubs that helped the city transform its identity
ALAMY
After the advent of techno in the 1980s and early 1990s, Berlin provided ideal conditions for a rampant nightlife. In the period after reunification, abandoned factories and buildings were transformed into party venues and supercharged the blossoming techno scene.
Watergate’s location, just on the East Berlin side of the former border, used to be “completely dead”, one early resident DJ recalled in a promo video for the club’s ten-year jubilee in 2012. Another noted it was “really ghetto, riddled with bullet holes and graffiti everywhere”.
The techno scene has not fully recovered since Covid
ALAMY
The grittiness became a hallmark of Berlin’s nightlife and made clubs like Berghain, part of a converted power station with a notoriously tough door policy, world-famous. High-profile DJs and cheap flights encouraged party-seekers from across Europe and beyond to flock to the city every weekend.
But as Berlin turned into a glamorous European metropolis, the cheap rents expired as investors began to eye up the lucrative profits from short-term and luxury lets. Clubs have seen their rents increase and some have had their leases cancelled. After the Covid-19 pandemic, many venues struggled further. “Berlin’s tourism has still only recovered to the level of 2015, and changes in consumption behaviour among young people and staff availability make it harder to generate income,” says Lutz Leichsenring of the Clubcommission.
As the music scene suffers, Berlin officials are acutely aware they risk losing an important economic draw. A spokesman for the local culture ministry said nightclubs were still the beating “heart chambers of this city”, enticing three million tourists annually.
Berlin’s culture minister, Joe Chialo, a former musician and record-label boss, is injecting money into initiatives and events, and plans to hold regular round tables with club representatives. But disputes and stand-offs with private landlords are out of the administration’s reach, the ministry said.
Leichsenring is encouraged by the co-operation of officials but notes that cuts to Berlin’s culture budget and a planned motorway extension that could obliterate several nightclubs are big challenges.
Watergate’s management are not convinced that the problems can be solved with money. They may simply mark changes in consumer habits, Ulrich Wombacher, the club’s chief executive, told Berliner Zeitung. “Berlin’s corner pubs no longer exist … Why shouldn’t clubs also be a temporary phenomenon?” he says.
Charlotte de Witte will be one of the last DJs to perform at Watergate
MAURICIO SANTANA/GETTY IMAGES)
On Friday Watergate will kick off several weeks of farewell club nights, featuring DJs such as Sven Väth and Charlotte de Witte, culminating in a finale on New Year’s Eve.
“The party is over — long live the party,” the venue declared in announcing its closure.
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