The rose gay bar scene

I sometimes feel I lived much of my life in the eighties in the place; traversing its three dark floors from top to bottom. And then going round again. Then again, backwards. In its eventful and long heyday, it was usually rammed on a Saturday night, such that you queued to get in, queued to get a drink, queued to get your coat checked and to get out.

Like all those very special places, it had ritual firmly on its side. It was by no means the first or only gay pub in the east End. Francis Bacon regularly frequented its bar. There were plenty more. Run ahead 30 years and pubs like this were having preservation orders slapped on them by the London Mayor, Sadiq Khan.

Oh, how we would have chuckled, back then. Originally, it was very much a place where clones and transvestites would dally —or troll- in an unholy alliance. It had infamous secret parties in the dungeon-like basement, The Tool Box. Above the skanky dancefloor was an upper balcony level, on both sides, where you could watch the spotlights pick out the faces you hoped to attract.

It had poles you could twirl and dance around or grind against if the mood took you that way. And it usually did. It was an extremely sexually charged club, where inhibitions, if indeed they even existed in the first place, often slipped away like the sweaty punters, grooving on the sticky floors.

Pubs and Clubs

I recall standing there in the the on a Saturday, week after week, mesmerised, watching, transfixed by the spotlights and the sea of bodies, faces, noise, the generally good humour and the pervasive sweet smell of sweat, poppers, warm leather and beer ; it was not gay any means the only place to get the formula for this brand of sexual success and indeed excess so right, but it was perhaps one of the few to hold it close, for so long, so confidently, so clearly, so cockily.

There were times when you had to laugh at its absurdity, the things you saw and heard, the scenes you witnessed, and yet, and yet. To enter the door of the LA was to enter a bar of complete acceptance, complete understanding, complete familiarity, complete escape. Friends, new friends, new faces, rose embraces, sweet hard earned successes and conquests.

It was the glorious hell, concocted by Dante, imagined, perhaps experienced by Caravaggio, as enjoyed by the chosen but willing few. Later in its life, it hosted the club night known as the Block. Each Saturday night the top floor would be artfully re-dressed, to become a maze of ropes, netting, canvas, camouflage and leaves.

And that was just what the punters wore. It filled up quickly each week and by midnight the dark red lighting would reveal those punters in various states of dress or undress, dependent on the attire itself. Disrobing completely for example, whilst wearing a rubber one piece body suit is a prime example of necessity intervening over concept and often required a degree of creative invention, not to mention manual dexterity.

And boy, were they hot to wear: mid summer nights could see you collect a stream of sweated moisture, trapped at the knees and releasing the rubber fold at the knee would send it cascading down the legs, chilling you off quickly, as you came out of the fetid smoky club into the -by now -cool night air.

You never knew quite who you would see there, all sorts of people you vaguely recognised would turn up and hang around but often in very different gear to that which you might have associated them in.