Central Station celebrates its 20th birthday…By Lee Dalloway
Picture it. King’s Cross, February 1992. A run-down, industrial part of town is awash with prostitutes, drug dealers, an abundance of homeless and more used needles per square mile than rats. A backstreet boozer by the name of Prince Albert (No sniggering at the back!) shuts down and in its place, Duncan Irvine and Martin Mason open a new gay venue – Central Station.
With its shuttered façade, late night opening and infamous ‘Underground Club’ in the basement, the freshly branded bar settled in comfortably with the area’s red light reputation, but Central Station soon proved to be about much more. At a time when the LGBT community was still living with Section 28, an imbalanced age of consent, a huge number of social inequalities and lingering spectre of the AIDS outbreak, Central Station was a hub of community campaigning and social groups. It was also part of a small but significant ‘scene’ of gay venues building up in the Islington borough.
A multi-million pound project to ‘clean up’ the area emerged in the late 1990s (Operation Welwyn), which was about as successful as England’s World Cup bid in France at around the same time. It was the rejuvenation of St Pancras station throughout the noughties that really started to dunk the grubby visage of King’s Cross into a bucket of bleach. With the opening of the shiny new Eurostar terminal in 2007, gentrification was well and truly underway.
As crack dens, pimps and hookers slowly give way to generic hotels, offices and trendy coffee shops and eateries with wifi hotspots, one can’t help but feel that whilst a good bleaching undoubtedly gets rid of the shit, it can also cause things to lose a hell of a lot of colour, too.
Central Station is one of the few ‘stalwarts’ of the area to ride the changes and find a place in this new land of the bland and the beautiful, the bar itself revitalizing its image with a refurb, a restaurant with daytime opening hours, cabaret and even a B&B upstairs. Yes, we all have to adapt in a changing world, but this is still a gay bar with a great, ‘local pub’ feel and predominantly male patronage. And, of course, there’s the Underground Club downstairs. We may be in increasingly corporate times, but boys will be boys…
We spoke to Central Station directors Duncan and Martin about their twenty years at the helm of Central Station…
Duncan: Before settling on the current venue, Martin and I had already decided we liked the name Central Station because it sounded quite modern and ‘buzzy’. We had no idea when we found it about its history of GLF discos in the 1970s; it was just a run-down backstreet boozer.
Central Station became known for its work with the LGBT and local community in its early days, would you say that campaigning spirit is still there 20 years on?
Duncan: During the 80s and 90s we were home to many LGBT campaigning and social groups as well as sports groups. Many were founded in the bar, too, and the work we did in nurturing and supporting them is one of our proudest achievements. It is noticeable that there are a lot fewer these days, partly through progress in law and social attitudes, but partly also, I think, because people just don’t feel that interested any more.
What is it that makes Central Station so unique compared to other gay bars?
Martin: Well, we try to treat customers as people, we know a lot of our regulars; many people come here of all ages because they know they’ll meet someone willing to chat to them. The variety of our customers, cabaret and clubs mean that on Wednesdays, Sandra can play to an audience of TV’s and their admirers, office people, lesbians, gay guys and students on a night out.
In November, we did an article about Islington council’s highly unjust ‘sex tax’ [new legislation to regulate stripping on licensed premises]. Have there been any further developments in that?
Duncan: I have appealed against the sex tax and have a hearing with the council on 20th February. They want to charge us nearly £15,000 a year for no extra services to do what we have been doing for 20 years. Seems outrageous, but the council has the power to waive the charge. It will be very difficult for us if they don’t – we are the only LGBT venue left in Islington now!
• Don’t miss Central Station’s 20th birthday party on Saturday 4th February at 37 Wharfdale Road, King’s Cross, N1 9SD.
