Dan Hancox has written a great piece on 'Debunking the weird myths about London's 24-hour party people' in which he rightly takes to task some dubious claims made in the Times and elsewhere that London nightlife is in terminal decline. He rightly critiques some very dubious data, such as relying on Google Maps to show venues with late night licenses.
Specifically he skewers a map included in the Times article 'UK’s worst night out? Costly, crime-ridden London' (27 September 2024) which purports to show venues open after 2 am on Saturday nights. Using his local knowledge of Peckham’s Rye Lane he shows that in addition to three venues shown on map (Tola, the Prince of Peckham, and the Bussey Building) there are many other places: 'My raver alarm immediately went off. Just from going out dancing in Peckham, I know that this is rubbish. That list is missing the Carpet Shop (open till 4am), Peckham Audio (4am), Peckham Levels (4am, albeit occasionally) and Four Quarters (3am). There are also at least five pubs I can think of around Rye Lane which open until 1am on a Saturday night, new audiophile bar Jumbi is open until 2am' etc. etc.
As Dan points out this 'London Declinism mingles with the fog of racist myths' that London is a hotbed of random violence overseen by a muslim mayor implementing sharia law! Sometimes these kind of articles are really just snotty refusals to recognise that London actually exists beyond the centre of town - see for instance Bloomsbury resident Will Lloyd's 'Sadiq Khan’s silent city' (New Statesman, 24 March 2024) which begrudgingly admits that he 'could walk north to the Lexington (open until around 3am, but it smells), or south into London’s warm, unwashed armpit'.
There is also a well meaning but in my view wrong-headed left wing version of the argument highlighting that many venues are being squeezed out by property development and other pressures (true) and suggesting that there is no longer any grass roots/'underground' clubbing because its all been taken over by corporate giants (false).
Of course there are peaks and troughs, periods when everybody seems to be out clubbing and times when it is a bit more based around niche subcultures. But we also have to beware observer bias. We all have our peak periods for partying, the worse thing is to imagine that because you are personally not going out as much as you used to do that is not happening any more, or that its not as good or real or whatever as it used to be. People have been out dancing in London for hundreds, probably thousands of years and it is not stopping any time soon (see for instance this great account of London dancing from 1902).
Things do change but not necessarily for the worst. The demise of some of the old school high street nightclubs that hungover from the pre-rave period, some of them with long histories of racist and sexist door policies, is not necessarily a bad thing. Dance music no longer always requires specialist DJs or sound rigs, great as it is to have them. There is a more diffuse nightlife in which a pub can quickly become a dancefloor, or people can summon one up anywhere playing music from their phones through speakers. These nights might never show up on Resident Advisor or be documented anywhere but they are happening all around us in London and anywhere else with a pulse. My South London local for instance - a pub that used to be pretty much empty much of the week - is full most nights, sometimes people are watching sport, sometimes listening to a folk session, and sometimes it erupts into dancing. And of course as Dan points out there are countless actual club nights, gigs and other events of all sizes happening all the time.
Historically in London it is pub and restaurant backrooms, railway arches and other places off the mainstream nightlife map that have spawned new music scenes. Think about the emergence of the new jazz scene in the last ten years where places like Buster Mantis (a Jamaican bar/restaurant) and Matchstick Piehouse (a community arts/music space) hosted the Steam Down nights in Deptford, many of whose alumni are now internationally known. I suspect that such places are not even on the radar of many of those decrying the death of London nightlife.
