Harper-Thames on bass through the floorboards, unlikely friendships, and a very specific kind of resilience
I lived above a club for two years, a genuinely formative experience I wouldn’t necessarily recommend but also wouldn’t trade, one that taught me more about this neighbourhood’s actual rhythm than any amount of daytime wandering ever could have.
Learning To Live With The Bass
The first few months were genuinely difficult, bass through the floorboards until three, sometimes later, a level of ambient noise that took real, active adjustment to sleep through at all. I bought increasingly serious earplugs. I learned which nights were worse than others, which DJs apparently favoured a bass frequency specifically designed to travel through concrete. Eventually, somehow, I adapted, the way you adapt to anything persistent enough, until silence itself started to feel slightly unsettling on the rare nights the venue was closed.
What I didn’t expect was the community that came with it. The doorstaff started recognising me, checking I’d got in safely on the nights I came home late from my own evenings out. The manager once knocked to warn me about an unusually loud event before it started, a small courtesy that meant more than she probably realised. Living directly on top of a venue, it turns out, makes you a genuine, if unlikely, part of its actual ecosystem.
A Trade-Off Many Residents Quietly Make
Residential noise complaints against nightlife venues remain a genuine, ongoing tension across the borough, with newer residents sometimes moving into areas with established venues and then formally objecting to noise that predates their own arrival, a dynamic longtime residents and venue owners alike find genuinely frustrating.
Coverage from MyLondon has documented the ongoing tension between residential development and established nightlife venues extensively, a conversation that shows little sign of resolving neatly anytime soon across several London boroughs.
What I’d Tell Anyone Considering It
Do your research on the specific venue before you sign a lease above one. Talk to current residents if you can find them. But also, don’t assume it has to be purely miserable. I left that flat, eventually, for entirely unrelated reasons, and I genuinely miss the strange, specific community that came with living directly on top of somewhere so alive most nights of the week.
More from Harper-Thames at her author page on The London Prat.
Related coverage can be found at MyLondon.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
