Islington’s oldest surviving LGBT+ bar, Central Station, is appealing for £70,000 to get through the pandemic as the financial toll of Covid-19 has become impossible to surmount alone.
The bar has remained a safe space for LGBT+ communities for three decades, while these places have gradually disappeared from Islington’s landscape. But the pandemic has kept it shut for a total of almost eight months since last March, and the impact has been crippling.
Duncan Irvine, who runs the King’s Cross bar with Martin Mason, said: “Even for the times we were open, there were more and more restrictions, and eventually we were running at a loss every single night.”
The bar houses a Bed & Breakfast, at 20% of its income, and clubs downstairs, another 30%. “So before you even open your door, 50% of your turnover is gone,” said Irvine about the impact of Covid-19, and “we have quite a lot of debt that may prevent us from reopening at all.”
The space has galvanised social and political activity since opening as an LGBT+ bar in 1992. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Switchboard, Gay Men Fighting AIDS (GMFA) and OutRage! were among those to call it home. It hosted the first public debate between OutRage! and Stonewall, headed by Peter Tatchell and Angela Mason, which sparked growing conversations about HIV/AIDS issues.
Irvine and Mason were keen to make sure trans people felt safe and included inside the bar. They hosted trans club Sweet Wednesday after its original meeting place shut down, and sometimes ran a sexual health clinic for trans people because, Irvine said, “it’s very difficult for them to go to these places”.
The bar’s LGBT+ roots had begun to take shape even before Irvine and Mason transformed it into a dedicated space for these communities. After the first demonstration for gay rights in Highbury Fields in 1970, participants attended a disco in the Prince Albert – the pub that was to become Central Station.
“We were totally unaware of that,” said Irvine, “and we actually spoke to some of the people who were there and it was quite amazing, it was a total coincidence. Martin, my business partner, had looked at a hundred possible bars, and we just chose this one.”
The bar quickly became a hub for solidarity and self-expression. This crystallised for Irvine six months into opening when a mob “attacked the pub, breaking windows, throwing in tear gas canisters, trying to enter the pub, and people resisted and they ran off”.
Returning to the bar after searching for the attackers alongside the police, Irvine found “my partner and a lot of the customers helping everyone with CS gas in their eyes, tending to them, and boarding up the windows which were broken. It was just amazing. I remember afterwards Martin and I said, ‘This is now a real community pub.’”
Irvine said: “We’re not part of social services, but we do provide a social service in being there for people. Part of the barman’s job, providing it wasn’t too busy, was just to listen.”
The bar became a space for people to support each other through the HIV/AIDS crisis. Speaking about Channel 4’s It’s a Sin, set during the height of the crisis, Irvine said: “That is how it was, it was horrible.”
He and Mason attended lots of regulars’ funerals: “To see someone who was a bouncy regular not come in for a couple of months, people would say: ‘Oh, he’s ill’, and you could almost hear the quotes.”
The bar held funerals for four regulars who died of AIDS, “mainly for people whose relatives we did not know, or their relatives were not interested in them, so we covered the costs of the funeral”.
One of these regulars was affectionately nicknamed Acid Duncan: “He died and we had the coffin onstage with a pint of Foster’s on top. That was his drink.”
i love central station so much. not only does the bar offer a queer space in islington for lgbtq people but it's also home to a number of community groups. also, the basement space, the underground club, is a vital space for fetish communities. https://t.co/d8hC5YqgE4
— ?alim kheraj (@alimkheraj) March 1, 2021
Over the years, the bar has raised tens of thousands of pounds for HIV/AIDS charities. This generous space, with its vibrant history of solidarity and compassion, is what Irvine wants to continue. He hopes to reopen in May.
“We have hopes and we have plans,” he said, “we’re in touch with lots of cabaret groups to come and fill the space”.
“Hopefully we have a future, but we do need help.”
You can donate to the GoFundMe here: https://uk.gofundme.com/f/support-central-station
