Bromptons gay bar london
The venue also boasted its own lighting engineer, opening up the possibility of a string of dramatic lighting effects. Held at The Sundowner on Charing Cross Road every Monday night and subsequently opening on Thursdays as the night’s popularity grew, Bang had a 1,000-plus capacity, a good, loud soundsystem, all the hot, new disco imports played by experienced DJs including Gary London, Talullah and Norman Scott. But Fangs, although not one of Tricky Dicky’s longer-lasting nights, demonstrated that the scene had enough dance-hungry punters to fill even the bigger clubs.ġ976 was a groundbreaking year for gay disco in London, thanks to the arrival of Bang, London’s first gay superclub. The night didn’t last long due to interference from the venue’s owners, who were none too happy about homos taking over their space.
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In 1975 Tricky Dicky held a one-nighter called Fangs underneath a hotel in Paddington and, much to his surprise, the place was full to capacity, with 600 dancing queens lapping up every minute.
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With his pop and soul music reviews and disco chart in Gay News, Tricky Dicky received coverage from a gay press more interested in politics, cinema, theatre and opera than the commercial gay scene. His Dick’s Inn Gay Disco operated out of straight venues as far afield as Croydon, Ilford, Bishopsgate and Euston, packing in a few hundred gay boys and girls at a time. And there were the small dives with postage stamp-sized dancefloors where young queens would boogie their tits off to the latest 7-inch soul, funk and proto-disco imports provided by DJs such as Talullah, AKA Martin Allum, at Shanes in West Hampstead (where the DJ frequently doubled up as cloakroom attendant) and Chris Lucas at The Catacombs in Earls Court.ĭJ Tricky Dicky was one of the first promoters to grasp the idea of the one-nighter – hiring out a pub or bar for the night, just to put on a gay night.
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There were the members’ clubs that provided dinner and dance, plus cabaret, for the stately-homo set. The gay community flourished in Earls Court and many international tourists joined the locals.Before 1976, gay venues in London came in two categories. The Coleherne was known internationally as a leather bar by 1965. Leather men wearing chaps and leather jackets with key chains and colour-coded handkerchiefs formed the clientele. In the 1970s it became a notorious leather bar, with blacked-out windows, attracting an international crowd including Freddie Mercury, Kenny Everett, Mike Procter, Rudolf Nureyev, Anthony Perkins, Rupert Everett, Ian McKellen and Derek Jarman.
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Originally it was segregated into two bars, one for the straight crowd and one for the gay community at a time when homosexuality was illegal. A lifelong resident of Earls Court Square, Jennifer Ware, recollects as a child being taken there to Sunday lunch in the 1930s, when drag entertainers performed after lunch had finished.
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It had a long history of attracting a bohemian clientele before becoming known as a gay pub.
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In 2008, it was rebranded as a gastropub, The Pembroke.HistoryThe Coleherne Arms began life in 1866, at Old Brompton Road in the heart of the west London Bohemian Quarter. Located at 261 Old Brompton Road, Earls Court, it was a popular landmark Leather bar during the 1970s and 1980s. The Coleherne Arms public house was a gay pub in west London.