Caps Off

On Monday two weeks ago the Black Cap closed.

The Gay community was up in arms. I, personally, was somewhat devastated. I spent Eurovision 2014 in the Black Cap, together with a number of other football related events (the gay football team Leftfooters were sponsored by the Black Cap). (oh, and just bye-the-bye, that is one of the better Buzzfeed longform articles you will read. But then you know I don't really hold them in that high regard suffering somewhat from Myspace syndrome. But it's still worth the read).

And there has been a lot of noise as to the hows and the whys around it - that it was done callously to avoid being defined an Asset of Community Value (as shut, it can't be an asset); that - similar to the Carlton Tavern which had just been listed - the closure is a pre-emptive strike to such a measure; that it is purely bastardistic capitalistic nastyism.

Every day the papers, particularly the London ones, are up-in-arms about the housing shortages, the sky-high prices or the astronomical rents. So what do Londoners want?

MORE FLATS

Only ... well ... maybe some of them don't. On the BBC's PM programme this evening, it was rather lovelily summed up - we want, no NEED, more housing, just not in our back yard.

The Black Cap was bought by Faucet Inns Ltd, who applied for planning permission to retain a bar but lose a couple of upstairs bars (some of which barely used) to create new flats. And lose the whole of 8 square metres on the ground floor. Think of a normal bar: 8 square metres is probably less than a gents toilet comprising one broken seated pan and a couple of urinals.

This - if you believe the gay press - is an epidemic. But, so is homophobia - any injury to a gay person is a "gay bashing" regardless of whether the person doing it knew the sexuality. We live in fear, not just of our lives, but of our bars. Someone I follow on Twitter recently tweeted questioning whether a particular publication was just there to call out every single assault on a gay person as homophobic. I have been assaulted - my jaw broken - there was no aspect about my sexuality that pre-empted that. They were just drunk. It was as much a part of their Friday night as the beer and the kebab at the end.

So,back to the epidemic....

Madame JoJos, the Green Carnation, the Joiners Arms, the Black Cap, the Yard, the George....

Only, that's not really true.

The Joiners Arms was due to close on 15th January 2015. Only it didn't. I was there on 7th February. Indeed, if you look at the Time Out article update, it states that as at 26th March the Joiners continues.

The Green Carnation is being redeveloped into a new venue. Quite possibly a new venue that either the gays will adopt; or that even may actively encourage them into.

The Yard was an odd one. It was shrieked that the planning permission about the Yard. It actually affected far more businesses than the just the Yard. A hell of a lot more businesses. Hence it got rejected.

And the threat against the George really is a kind-of-a-non-threat. The George is - as contrasted to the others - owned. I - as a lawyer - have always, repeatedly, until I'm blue-in-the-face repeated and reiterated my clients that IF IT IS LEASED, YOU HAVE NOTHING. You have occupation until the end of the lease. After that, you have nothing. You may have been there for thirty years, but if your lease is for thirty years, you have no rights after that (subject to a very few statutory provisions). There are too many people who wail "but we've been there so long!" - then, why didn't you buy? If you lease, you lease. You gain the benefits of being able to move out; you bear the risk of having to move out. I've heard people - indeed, my colleague (also a solicitor) - spending ridiculous amounts of money on a rented home only to then decry when the landlord wants it back about "how much they've spent"on it.

One of the threats against the George which is real, and which has occurred in a number of places including Manchester, is that an existing venue gets shut down by a neighbouring new development because of noise. And this is the problem the George faces - its immediately neighbouring site has been acquired not for "entertainment" as was the previous planning permission, but now for residential use.

Now, this really is a problem, and a wrong-un. We've seen before so many times how clubs (yes, straight clubs) get shut down despite many, many, years of use, of taxes and of rates, of income to the cities; purely because a very new housing development next door which fully well knew of the club and the noise, then complains about the club and the noise once the development has been built.

In my view, these challenges should not be allowed. If the bar is there, if you know about the bar when you buy your flat, you buy knowing that. Only if the bar changes its established behaviours - opening later, playing louder music - should you be (and are under planning/licensing rules entitled to challenge. Otherwise your housing developer should factor in noise protection in the same way as they factor in foundations and roadways when building.

But anyhow, it's being included in the threat to the London gay scene. The New Statesman handily compiled a list of gay venues that have closed since 2008. What struck me is - how few there were. 12 in six years. It doesn't list those that have opened - this weekend I went to Glory, Jonny Woo's new bar. As I've said previously, in Nottingham as one bar has shut one has opened (or vice versa).

I think possibly my main problem with this is how it is being presented as an almost exclusively gay issue. Or a gay issue at all.

What do I mean?

Well, "straight" pubs are closing all the time. I've mentioned this before. When I used to walk to the train station I walked past well over a dozen pubs. In one area alone there were so manywithin a minute walk of each other - the Duke of Devonshire with the White Lion just over the road, the Vines opposite, the Bath Inn at the bottom and the Market Bar round the corner, the Moot Hall and the Earl Howe finishing the little block. Further up the road there were the Lord Alcester and the Duke of Cambridge and then another little cluster - the March Hare, the Red Cow, the Smithy. Most of these have gone. Nottingham doesn't have a cronic housing problem, yet still the Earl Howe, the Lord Alcester the Duke of Cambridge and the White Lion have been converted into multiple flats.

And whilst you will hear of the "gentrification" of the gay scene in all of the London pieces; the gentrification of "non-gay" areas is being protested (literally). You just don't hear about it because there isn't the same agenda. Probably the most vocal that people got was when it threatened that year-dot of clubbing, the Ministry of Sound. The deal has been reached, but the threat hasn't gone away that it could still face noise complaints.

And lets face it, this isn't a new thing. It's been blamed on everything from supermarkets, the housing crisis, digitisation and 'dating' apps, everything. Both within the gay and straight communities. Only the gays shriek louder that "it's because we're gay, isn't it" (in the style of Little Britain's Daffyd).

One of the real issues is fashion. Or lack. A horrendous number of gay bars rely on an old, tired formula - usually involving drag and/or cabaret - and what they assume is a captive (nay, hostage) audience. Gays don't want or need drag like they used to in the 50s where it was a natural progression from the musical hall revues and such like. Drag these days is grotesque, gaudy, aggressive, repetitive, discriminating. And yes, I've spent a Saturday night in the Two Brewers in Clapham and loved every minute of it but for the cabaret. What we want is a bar that plays the same homogenous playlist as every other bar, we just want it to be a gay bar so that the only knock-back we get from asking a guy for his number is that he doesn't fancy us; not a threat of a punch in the face if I question his masculinity. We don't need to differentiate ourselves any more than making clear the only difference that makes a difference.

And this is where Nottingham - surprisingly - leads the way. In my earlier post I mentioned how our bars came and went; and a lot of that is down to the more volatile nature of our clienteles. Nottingham is a young city - we have two universities; and so many of those dwindling locals that when the centre gets to busy you simply stay local. You have to. There's no Underground and we've only had night buses for a few years. London is different. You stay. You may move around, but you can get around because the Underground is just such a thing - you have a season Oyster so don't fret about paying the £3.70 it will cost you to get two buses taking well over an hour to get the other side of the city.

These means there is less bar loyalty. If you don't like it, you vote with your feet. And surprisingly, actually, Nottingham is a very liberal city. Gays feel safe in "non-gay" bars. We go where we like the music rather than the cock. This comes about because of the youth of the city - the students are more accepting, more equality and diversity aware (indeed, engaged) but also because the venues support the bands that we want to see - whether that's your new student band; or the bands "that the kids these days are listening to". We have the audience, the demand.

@d2 used to have a drag cabaret performance on a Sunday night. I think the low point for me was when they performed Springtime for Hitler and a couple of Cabaret songs on Remembrance Sunday. But the venue was on its arse with the Sunday nights being the best attended of nights. And they weren't that well attended. People realised that they don't need, want, or like drag. We want cock, not cock in a frock. It shut and whilst the Foresters keeps a token finger in the pie with the occasional show, it relies much more heavily on karaoke (though often hosted by a drag artiste who seems to do it more because it's what he wants to do rather than because it's what people want him to do).

When I went to the Two Brewers a few months ago they had drag on. On a Saturday night. When people just wanted to dance. Fortunately for the Two Brewers they have a back room where people can dance (it gets very busy in there when the drag is on) and the only 'local' competition for the devoted gays is Kazbar. The drag cabaret act there performed and what I was massively struck by was how none of the songs were younger than 20 years. They were songs from the shows. This is probably the same performance set this guy has done for the last ten years. And that's a shame. In fact a lot of cabaret is a shame. It's either people miming and all you're expected to do is applaud their make-up; or else they do genuinely sing the song, but that's it. It's karaoke. I long for the day where you have a proper creative artiste who re-lyrics the songs to thrust into them every innuendo she can get her hands on.


Indeed, when you look at the reports on the Black Cap, they all eulogise about its glory days. Very few of the revel in what happened last week. Whilst I was in Dalston Superstore with my friends on Saturday, two of them confessed that - despite living in Camden - they hadn't been to the Black Cap in years. One who had a month or two prior to it closing reported that - on a Saturday night - it was practically dead.

And this highlights a further problem - that bars are businesses. Pride simply doesn't pay. You need more than a pink pound - you need real pounds; and lots of them. Not just to pay the staff, the drag, the dray; but to buy the place, so that the end of the lease isn't such a massive surprise. And to attract the money you have to stay fresh, dynamic, relevant. You have to be a venue - a destination - in your own right. You have to be somewhere that people want to go to, not have to. Because equality came to all bars equally, not just the gay ones.