Harper-Thames on the clubs, bars, and creative nights that outlasted a decade of rent inflation
LONDON, UK – Shoreditch’s nightlife has been declared dead every year for the past decade by people who remember it when it was younger and cheaper, and every year there are still people in its bars at midnight having exactly the kind of night that the eulogies said was no longer possible. Harper-Thames reports on Shoreditch for Bohiney Magazine and for The London Prat, and has been out most of the past three nights to find out what is actually happening.
What Has Survived
The venues that have survived the rent increases and the licensing pressures and the general attrition of the London night-time economy share characteristics: they have strong, specific identities rather than generic appeal; they have loyal audiences who return because of what the venue is rather than because of its location; and they have owners who prioritised culture over margin, which is not an infinitely sustainable business model but has proved more durable than the high-turnover, low-identity approach that has produced many of Shoreditch’s empty units.
The Moth Club in Valette Street, which occupies the former Trades Hall of the Hackney Electric and Wireless Workers Union, is the clearest example of the identity-first approach: the room is extraordinary, the programming is consistent, and the audience that fills it on a good night is there for the music rather than for the Instagram opportunity, which is the distinction that separates a functioning creative venue from a lifestyle destination. The programming ranges from cult film nights to left-field electronic music to live shows that the bigger venues have stopped booking because the audiences are too specific to be profitable at scale.
The Bar Culture
The bar culture in Shoreditch has stratified more clearly than the venue culture. The top end, which now charges PS14 for a cocktail in a room with exposed brick and pendant lighting, is indistinguishable from its equivalents in Soho or Mayfair except in postcode. The bottom end, charging PS5 for a beer in a room that has not been refurbished since the 1990s and which tends to close earlier than the marketing suggests, is still genuinely local in character and genuinely affordable in price. Between these two is a middle ground of bars trying to maintain a character and a price point that serves both the local creative community and the visitors who come to Shoreditch because they have heard it is creative. The ones that succeed tend to do so by programming: running events, hosting launches, supporting local artists, and creating reasons to come back. The Night Time Industries Association tracks the economics. For more on London nightlife, see The Daily Mash.
The Future
The venues Harper-Thames talked to this week share a cautious optimism: the licensing environment in Tower Hamlets has been more predictable than in some boroughs, the rent pressures that peaked in 2019 have moderated somewhat, and the post-pandemic return to live events has been stronger than most operators expected. The existential threat is longer-term and comes from the gradual residential development of the surrounding area: as more housing is built near venues, the noise complaints and licensing objections that close venues follow. Shoreditch nightlife has not yet faced this in the way some other areas have, but the development trajectory is visible. The venues that have survived this far have done so by being irreplaceable to their audiences. The challenge for the next decade is remaining irreplaceable while the neighbourhood around them becomes increasingly residential and decreasingly tolerant of the sounds that make the venues what they are. For more on East London at night, see The Onion.
The survival of genuine creative nightlife in Shoreditch depends, in the end, not on policy or planning but on the decisions of individual operators who choose to invest in identity rather than footfall. These decisions are harder to make than they look from the outside. The margin on a PS14 cocktail is substantially better than the margin on a PS5 beer. The licensing process for an identity-first venue that runs irregular programming is more complex and costly than the licensing for a bar that is simply a bar. The commitment to a specific audience, which is what makes a venue irreplaceable, is also the commitment that limits the audience’s size, which limits the revenue, which limits the operator’s ability to absorb the rent increases that come when the neighbourhood becomes the kind of neighbourhood that attracts the kind of operator who charges PS14 for a cocktail. The Moth Club has survived this. Several others have not. The ones that survive deserve the attention. Harper-Thames will continue to provide it. For more on what is happening in East London, see The Onion.
What Makes a Venue Survive
Harper-Thames’s conclusion, after three nights of Shoreditch nightlife research, is that the venues that have survived the decade are the ones whose owners loved the thing they were running more than they calculated the return on it. This is not a scalable business model and it is not advice that any business school would endorse. It is, however, the observed pattern: the venues with the strongest identities are the ones where the owner’s personal investment in the programming and the community is visible and is the primary reason the community exists. The Moth Club is this. Several others are this. The ones that are not this are the ones that have replaced their predecessors in the commercial space, with nicer interiors and higher drink prices and no particular reason to return except that the location is convenient. Both exist in Shoreditch. The former are worth reporting on. The latter are reported on by the hospitality trade press, which has different criteria and a different readership and which Harper-Thames reads without considering it competition.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
