As part of an occasional series delving back into clubbing history, I’ll try and dredge up some memories of events that don’t seem to have been written about anywhere on the web. The Scala cinema in London still stands, in a souped up foofier version of the one that drew crowds to occasional gay all night parties in London circa the mid 80s (84/85/86). After paying in the foyer you made your way up into the lobby area which got converted into a dancefloor with DJs playing; there’d be a table near the toilets with someone selling cans of lager (the orange cans of Pils that were ubiquitous at one-offs and warehouse parties at the time). They’d show movies all night in the big old cinema; the first time I remember walking in and being confronted with a monstrous sized David Byrne, they were showing Stop Making Sense and people were dancing in front of the screen with Byrne looming over them. John Waters movies and Cabaret are among the others that got shown, although if you went up to the very back of the cinema, you realized that not everyone was watching…

Went to several of these parties, which I’m pretty sure were called “The Mix” or something like that, wish I could remember who ran them. They drew a lot the same crowd that went to The Bell, a gay pub just around the corner which did a sort of cheap indie night on Sundays that was popular with North London queens. I’ll save more on The Bell for another post. If anyone finds this and knows more about who ran these Scala all-nighters and who DJ’d, post a comment and let me know.