Indeed, although I can see things regressing and squat parties/huge open-air affairs becoming more common again because our clubbing scene (especially in London) is so f**ked. Half of all UK clubs have shut in the last 10 years, while London has managed the same feat in the last 5 years. There are only around 200 left in London, and that includes all the mom and pop high street affairs as well as the clubs you'd actually want to go to.ghettosynth wrote:Yeah, my sense is that the UK tolerated the push into clubs better than we did here. Of course in most of the big cities there were enough venues to at least keep things going, but this was much less so in the smaller U.S. cities, many of which had thriving scenes.cron wrote: I had no idea there was a US equivalent to the UK's Criminal Justice And Public Order Act 1994. Just reading about it now. Interesting stuff. It was framed more as a public order thing over here (open air raves in particular, a messy rave at Castlemorton in 1992 being likely the final straw) rather than a war on drugs thing though.
In London it's a mix of landlords selling off to property developers, property developers who've built luxury apartments near clubs and their tenants complaining about noise, but mostly, increasingly insane licensing conditions imposed by councils/police crippling the few left. I've seen sniffer dogs on the door, needing to take your passport to gain entry (this one is depressingly common now), minimum number of people caught with drugs to be handed to the police every night, brighter internal lighting... Any less than perfect, consider your club permanently shut down. It's just grim out there man.