Ghetto
For queer people who didn’t like gay clubs
Ghetto occupied a basement on Falconberg Court, a passage off Charing Cross Road near Cambridge Circus. Under various names – it ran as Substation South before Ghetto – it was London’s alternative gay night: not pop, not pink lighting, but indie, rock and electronic, a space for queer people who found the mainstream gay scene culturally alien.
It drew a mixed, queer, creative crowd from the late 1990s until it closed in 2015. It was, said its regulars, where you went when you didn’t like gay clubs but were gay. You had to find it – down an alley, off a side street. That was, somewhat, the point.