East London has gained a bad reputation for its ungodly rents and an over-saturation of people who call themselves trend forecasters. But for decades it has also been the subcultural engine of the UK. It is the birthplace of the Aba Shanti-I sound system, grime and hipsterism. The photographer Gavin Watson described it as rave’s spiritual home and I once saw Rihanna go into a pub on Columbia Road wearing fishnet cycling shorts.
Last week, Hackney council did its best to bring that era to a close. In a unanimous decision, it decided to ban all new venues from opening past 11pm on weekdays and midnight on weekends. It is a curfew more familiar to Year 10s who have to call home first if they are going to stay over at someone’s house than to Britain’s supposed nightlife hub.
What is particularly galling about the Hackney decision is the way the council is still trying to pretend it is down with the kids. Writing in the Guardian on Friday, Hackney’s mayor Philip Glanville defended the decision, claiming that while he was bang up for a good time, and nightlife “is at the heart of the borough’s creativity”, he also had to think about vomit in the streets, extra policing and a major clearup operation – so if we could all kindly be tucked up in bed before the shipping forecast, that would be tickety-boo.
What he didn’t mention was that 73% of those who replied to the public consultation didn’t favour stricter controls, or that Hackney council has been directly responsible for the closure of legendary nightclub spots such as Herbal and Four Acres. Nor that, in the language of a draft licensing policy three years ago, nightclubs were “not considered appropriate” for the borough. Even more galling was his suggestion that they weren’t all killjoys because the council had just extended the licensing hours of a restaurant. Sorry, but restaurants are not the same as nightclubs. Neither are arts spaces or cinemas or one-day yoga festivals that have proliferated in Hackney while clubs continue to close.
That is the problem with recent half-hearted attempts to save Britain’s nightlife. They are all focused on the abstract concept of cultural value. Clubs are deemed worthy only if they have some artistic output, not in and of themselves – so the Barbican can put on more late nights and cabaret bars are saved while actual clubs continue to close.
Certainly, exciting new substrands of dance music can emerge at 5am when someone plays a record at the wrong speed, and certain spaces can become safe havens for marginalised communities. But those can’t be planned for, they are corollaries of a nightclub’s central purpose: to be a space of abandon and freedom where you can be inebriated and uninhibited. Clubs are the engine of the following week’s gossip, over quieter dinners and swift halves. They are the difference between a “fine” and an “oof” when someone asks you how your weekend was on Monday morning.
Of course, nobody wants a situation where nightlife is making the lives of other residents a misery, but Glanville’s binary between streets flooded with vomit or an entire borough taking itself to bed at 11pm is bizarre. The problem is bad licensing and poor provision: as more clubs close, the ones that remain become tense and overcrowded. Chain cocktail bars on the same strip of one street all chuck out at the same time, leading to inevitable screaming matches over mistaken Ubers and gin-in-a-tin-fuelled loitering as clubbers realise they have nowhere else to go. If you are lucky, things might continue in someone’s living room – which is probably why there are nearly eight times more noise complaints about residential properties than there are about nightclubs.
I have just spent a few months in New York, where nightlife is accessible and relaxed – clubs have DJs playing outside in sweltering back gardens and restaurants open up into dancefloors. It means people – even, gasp, people in their 30s and 40s – have a natural disposition to stay out late, to be with each other, to throw caution to the wind. New York has many problems, but few of them seemed to be caused by bars being open later.
Hackney’s decision mirrors similarly draconian rules across the country, from the Glasgow licensing board’s forced closure of the Arches to Westminster council revoking the licence of Soho’s Madame JoJo’s to Mac’s Bar in Preston eventually closing after six years of disputes with the council and the police. If we can’t give some special dispensation to nightlife in one of the most creative boroughs in the capital, where 52 out of the 57 seats are filled by Labour councillors, many of whom will have enjoyed considerable support from young people, what hope is there for venues in Tory districts on the south coast?
After Demi Lovato’s relapse, the House of Mouse must step up
I have long been a fan of Demi Lovato, a surprising and relentlessly honest singer who has suffered from addiction and severe eating disorders on and off since graduating from her early acting career on the Disney Channel. Last week, she suffered a dangerous overdose, shortly after she released Sober, a song that contains striking lyrical similarities to Amy Winehouse’s Rehab, albeit with a more helpless tone.
Of course, some people’s demons will catch up with them whether they are a popstar or working on a supermarket checkout. But it is hard to ignore how often child stars end up having a serious breakdown in their mid-20s. After Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Mary-Kate Olsen, Amanda Bynes, Justin Bieber and Mischa Barton have battled with some combination of addiction, mental health issues and eating disorders, you wonder why anyone would let their child sign away their life to tween stardom.
The past year has reminded us how cruel Hollywood can be to women, but does there need to be a reckoning over how it treats children, too? An increasing number of former Disney stars have said they sustained psyschological trauma at the network. Selena Gomez, a close friend of Lovato’s, has said: “It’s really dysfunctional to be in this industry at a young age where you’re figuring out who you are. I don’t recommend it.” Cole Sprouse, another Disney graduate, has said he developed “horrifying” anxiety from being “raised on a sound stage” and sought to dissuade others from following in his footsteps.
Must the house of Mickey Mouse take some of the blame for what happens to its stars after they leave the channel? If the gloves fit.
Brexit Britain may be a mess, but I was homesick
I have just got back from New York, where you can order 39 different flavours of cream cheese and the streets are paved with high-fructose corn syrup. I was quite looking forward to escaping yet another glum July – yet I have apparently missed the Summer of Our Lives™. I expected a thunderstorm of schadenfreude but one never materialised. Instead, I was flooded with Instagrams of seemingly endless summer nights, grim parts of the Thames becoming emergency swimming spots and, for a while at least, a bizarre national sense of unity at the suggestion that football was coming home. It is easy to be down on Brexit Britain, but I admit I felt pangs of homesickness watching topless lads singing the Lightning Seeds on top of a suburban bus stop.