Prowler
Where the reading material lived
Prowler opened on Brewer Street in the 1980s as one of the first specifically LGBT retail stores in London. Before the internet, Prowler – and predecessors such as Clone Zone – were where you could find the books, magazines, films and community information the mainstream high street would not stock. It has outlasted the internet by adapting: LGBT fiction, pride merchandise, sexual-health information, community materials.
In the years before Vauxhall and Dalston drew the scene, Brewer Street was the epicentre – the Revuebar at one end, JoJo’s in the middle, and Prowler providing the reading material for the journey home. There were books in that window that said, quietly: other people exist. This is who you are.