Thursday briefing: Pride is nearly over – and so might be the golden age of London’s queer nightlife

Regent Street in central London. Photograph: Guy Bell/REX/Shutterstock

Good morning. In case you haven’t noticed from all the rainbow flags that businesses have been draping their shops and logos with, it is Pride month. But as we celebrate lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and other queer people on the 55th anniversary of the Stonewall riots at the LGBTQ+ bar in New York, just how healthy are today’s queer venues?

On Sunday, the arches near Embankment tube station will be shaking to the beat of Lana Del Rave for the closing party of Pride in London weekend at Heaven nightclub. The club – equally loved and hated by different parts of the queer community – has been an almost inescapable part of LGBTQ+ life since it opened in December 1979, but its owner has warned that this could be its last Pride party as it is facing a £320,000 increase in its annual rent.

If Heaven closes it will join a growing list of culturally important LGBTQ+ venues lost across London, the UK and the world. As well as rising rents, venues are also disproportionately falling victim to gentrification. The cost of living crisis is also crimping people’s ability to go out, and there’s also the impact of “the apps” making “partying” at home more appealing.

While traditional bars may be struggling, underground queer club nights are popping up “in the cracks of capitalism” on the edge of our cities, with parties tailored to often-marginalised parts of the LGBTQ+ community. These include Bollywood- themed Hungama; Cocoa Butter Club, a people of colour performance troupe that stages shows at pop-up festivals; and Gayzpacho, a Spanish-inspired night that includes wrestling in a paddling pool full of tomatoes.

For today’s newsletter, gender and sexuality anthropologist Olimpia Burchiellaro outlines why LGBTQ+ spaces are under threat. And sociology professor Amin Ghaziani relives the three months he spent visiting 42 of London’s underground queer spaces, and explains why helping them continue to thrive should matter to all of us – queer or straight.

That’s after the headlines.

Five big stories

General election 2024 | Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer have clashed over their responses to the gambling scandal, as it emerged the Met is to widen its role in the investigation into bets placed on the general election. In the last head-to-head debate before voters go to the polls, the Labour leader launched a fierce attack on the culture at the top of the Conservative party.

Bolivia | Bolivia’s President Luis Arce appears to have seen off an attempt to topple his leftwing government after a dramatic afternoon in which heavily armed troops, seemingly commanded by a top army general, stormed the government palace before beating a retreat.

Health | Professor Carlos Monteiro, the nutritional scientist who first coined the term ultra-processed foods (UPFs), has said that they are are displacing healthy diets “all over the world” despite growing evidence of the risks they pose and should be sold with tobacco-style warnings.

NHS | Junior doctors in England will strike today for the 11th time over pay, amid concern in their union that a stoppage so close to the general election is an “own goal”. Senior figures in the British Medical Association (BMA) believe the strike is pointless and “naive” and risks irritating Labour, which looks likely to be in power by next Friday and asked the union to call it off.

UK news | Failures by the police and prison and probation services contributed to the death of Zara Aleena, who was murdered as she walked home from a night out in east London, an inquest jury has found.

In depth: ‘It’s not about more queer people going to mainstream venues, it’s economics’

In 2016 there were 125 LGBTQ+ venues in London, but by 2022 the number had fallen to 50, according to the Greater London Authority. More have closed since, including the garish G-A-Y Late club in Soho and more laid-back queer pub The Glory in east London. New venues have also opened, including The Divine in Stoke Newington (run by the same team as The Glory) and lesbian bar La Camionera in Hackney.

“The key thing this month is the contradiction,” says Olimpia Burchiellaro, the author of The Gentrification of Queer Activism. “There’s all the gay flags and the celebrating of otherness, but is it just performative if the queer spaces we are celebrating are unable to continue in the face of the violent economic landscape?”

Burchiellaro says the “main narratives” surrounding the closure of so many queer venues are “society is more accepting now so queer people can go to all venues”, and “everyone’s at home on Grindr”.

“But it’s not that – the main factor is economics,” she says. “Our places are being redeveloped by property developers, or the owners are massively increasing the rents. That means the only way for places to survive is to sell shitloads of alcohol, which limits what sort of activities you can put on and what sort of people can afford to come.”

Burchiellaro, who is part of the collective that persuaded planners to force the developers of the Joiners Arms in Shoreditch to include a queer space in the redevelopment, says smaller independent queer venues, and those that also try to put on daytime events or for people who don’t drink, are facing the toughest challenges. “And it’s those spaces that try and provide vital networking spaces, and information about where to access HIV services, work and housing,” she says. “Focusing on drinking and dancing is all very fun, but it’s important to remember the important cultural and community role queer spaces play.”

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‘A refuge from the refuge’

Amin Ghaziani, a professor of sociology and Canada research chair in urban sexualities at the University of British Columbia, has been thinking about the future of queer venues for some time. In 2014 he wrote There Goes the Gayborhood? , an academic study of America’s changing gay neighbourhoods.

Then, when on sabbatical in the UK in 2018, he kept hearing about “the death of London’s gay bars”. “Every other person I met was talking about it. It was alarming,” Ghaziani says.

A couple of weeks later he was invited to a party on the outskirts of London. He’s not quite sure where it was “but this was definitely not in Soho”. When he walked into the “underground” party, which was organised solely via WhatsApp and Instagram, he thought to himself: “This doesn’t look like nightlife is dying … There were thousands of people in the warehouse.”

It was also the first queer space in which Ghaziani found himself “at the centre of a dancefloor that centred me in return”. This wonderful experience, he says, was because the party, a Bollywood-themed night called Hungama (which means “a celebratory chaos” in Hindi), was designed specifically for queer South Asian people like him.

“I’m a queer man of Indian background from Chicago,” he says. “This night really spoke to me. [In other queer venues] I have experienced moments of being discriminated against for the way I look, or sexually fetishised for the way I look.

“These kinds of experiences have occurred across my entire life and have been challenging for me. When I was in Hungama no one asked me, ‘But where are you really from?’, when I said I was from Chicago. That question might seem benign, but it makes you feel like you don’t belong.”

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‘Uniquely liberating and impactful’

He found his night at Hungama “so uniquely liberating and impactful”, that he immediately embarked on a new adventure: to go to as many queer club nights as he could “in the cracks of capitalism” in and around London. He made it to 42, but believes there are far more. His club night odyssey became his new book: Long Live Queer Nightlife.

“These events teach us a lot about what’s happening in LGBTQ+ communities and nightlife scenes in London and around the world today. Club nights are becoming more visible in the context of a closure epidemic of mainstream venues like gay bars,” he says. “They are set up by segments of the LGBTQ+ community that have experienced repeated experiences of exclusion and non-belonging in gay bars.”

Ghaziani says that while LGBTQ+ people and relationships are protected by the law, and more welcomed by society as a whole, “knowing that there’s a door that you can walk through and be yourself and surrounded by others like you is a source of unending power”.

“Historically, that power derived from experiencing the gay bar as a refuge from the wider heteronormative and homophobic world. But today, there are some people who need a refuge from the refuge.”

What else we’ve been reading

To many, the beach is a place you go a few times a year whenever the weather decides to treat us to something other than rain and clouds. To some though, the beach you can’t live without. Donna Ferguson talks to Steve Backshall, Helen Wilson, Michael Morpurgo, Anita Sethi, Jayson Byles and Alys Barton about how our coastlines have influenced their lives from childhood to adulthood, and what beaches mean the most to them. Raphael Boyd, newsletters team

What drives millions of people to spend their leisure time virtually mowing lawns? Rich Pelley attempts to find out why Lawn Mowing Simulator became a hit. Toby Moses, head of newsletters

When the Tories came to power, they promised “a golden age for the arts”. Now, 14 years and a dozen culture secretaries later, the arts in this country are underfunded, underrepresented and under threat, John Kampfner writes. Raphael

The evidence for the collapse in the social contract is all around us, from the mounds of dog waste left strewn on pavements to casual instances of rudeness in the queue for a bus – and Leah Harper looks at another glaring example, the rise of dine and dash, where people up and leave a restaurant after eating without paying. Toby

The Isle of Man can feel like a foreign country. Sitting in the middle of the Irish Sea, the small island is overlooked by many, but they’re missing out. Sarah Baxter takes us on her journey around the island as she discovers the magical, enchanting areas that she wishes more would explore. Raphael

Sport

Euro 2024 | England have been left with a selection dilemma before their last-16 match at Euro 2024 after Phil Foden left the team’s base to attend the birth of his third child. England will play Slovakia in the last 16 for a place in the quarter-finals, where Switzerland or Italy awaits.

Cricket | England’s women ran rampant at Durham in their opening one-day international against New Zealand on Wednesday, bowling their opponents out for 156 within 34 overs before reaching the target with nine wickets and 172 balls to spare – their biggest win against New Zealand in terms of balls remaining.

Rugby union | Ardie Savea, the reigning world player of the year, says the All Blacks want to settle a few old scores when they meet England next week. The New Zealand No 8 has made clear the home side have not forgotten the “smack in the nose” they suffered in the semi-finals of the 2019 Rugby World Cup.

The front pages

The Guardian leads with “PM and Starmer clash over betting scandal in tetchy final TV debate”. The Times has “Sunak rams home tax message in final debate”, while the Telegraph covers the same story with “Sunak’s plea to voters: Don’t surrender Britain to Labour”. The Mail reports on Sunak’s “furious blast at Starmer”, under the headline “You are taking people for fools!”

The Financial Times headlines “French far-right leader vows to fight a ‘cultural battle’ against Islamism”. The Mirror has the latest on the trial of the man accused of plotting to kill Holly Willoughby, with “Holly ‘kidnap kit’”. Finally the i carries an exclusive, under the headline “Revealed: Russian hackers behind NHS attack are part of cyber army protected by the Kremlin”.

Today in Focus

Returning to Leigh: can Labour rebuild the red wall?

The Greater Manchester town was a Labour stronghold before 2019. Will it be once again? Helen Pidd reports.

Cartoon of the day | Nicola Jennings

Discover and buy the latest cartoons now in The Guardian Print Shop.

The Upside

A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad

As the sun shines on Britain this week, many of us have been spending our free time in our gardens, among nature. Summer wouldn’t be the same without the animals we can find in our back yard, and from installing a birdfeeder, planting a small tree or maybe just letting your grass grow a bit longer, there’s plenty we can do to make life better for ourselves and the small things around us.

Rachel Dixon takes us through 33 ways that you can add a bit more nature to your garden.

Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday

Bored at work?

And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.