In the early eighties the counselling group that I’ve mentioned before, ‘Icebreakers’ was also to play a significant role in my life.
The GLF and later Icebreakers had run a fundraising disco at the Prince Albert on Wharfedale Rd (later to become and remain to almost this day, Central Station) in Kings Cross, from as early as 1974. In April 1974 a Saturday disco for the fledgling (London) Gay Switchboard was held at the pub but GLF decided to stopped running discos on idealogical grounds and by Jan 1975 a group called Gay Alliance were running gay discos at the pub, though an advert appears in Gay News issue 52 (1 Aug 1975) from the North London GLF again, who were holding gay discos there on Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. In fact London’s Gay Switchboard used to hold their regular annual and quarterly general meetings upstairs there too, of which I later attended many.
By May 1976 Icebreakers had taken over the regular disco there and it ran quite succesfully for over three years but in August 1979, after a disagreement with the landlord of the Prince Albert, they moved a mile or so north east, up to the Hemingford Arms in Islington, where they held a disco every Friday evening. Admission was 30p with the disco itself upstairs in the roomy pub. As I mentioned earlier, I had first discovered it in October 1980, when Gays the Word had a benefit there and I was on the door. At the time though, it was pretty well established and had already been running for a year or so.
A little later in the following year, my boyfriend Mark’s good friend, Ian, just happened to live right opposite the pub and so, often on a Friday, we would go to his place for a meal and a few drinks, then carry on partying at the ‘Hemmy’, as it was fondly called, just opposite. It was 30p well spent because you were almost always guaranteed a good time there. It was also one of the few venues that was truly mixed, with both lesbians and gay men dancing together, which was quite a rarity at that time. These places were a million miles from the big gay mainly male nightclubs of the time, like Heaven and Bang. The DJ generally played more alternative poppy or indie selectio of music as a change from the disco music then prevalent in the (mainly) gay clubs.I suppose it finally fitted into my perceptions of what a proper ‘community’ should be then, as it also attracted quite a left leaning, somewhat trendy, politicised crowd. Oh, why am I being so coy? The bottom line was that you could guarantee that you would probably fancy someone there and if unattached potentially meet them too and more to the point have something in common with them. That was definitely worth 30p. But sometimes we mixed up being alt left with being alt open. We talked about having open relationships but the reality could be more brutal. Oh, so many arguments, so many tantrums I saw and reader, I was often just as bad when I was on the receiving end. It is sometimes hard to accept that what we desire, others might too. Sometimes, and I´ll say it, Í guess I was just a jealous guy. I´m not proud but I´m also not perfect.
Jealous guy, Roxy Music
It was really one of the very first places that offered an ‘alternative’ to the clubs and pubs in central London, where truth be told, it was beginning to feel like you were stuck in some seventies ‘timewarp’. An alternative even, to places like the ‘London Apprentice’, which was to remain a faithful staple for many more years. But sometimes you want, you need, something different: a place to socialise, to talk, converse with all your friends.
Whilst the music was not exactly ‘new wave’, there was definitely a very different vibe to that which you might experience in a larger club like ‘Bang’ or ‘Heaven’, it was not a druggy scene fulled on poppers or speed and of course these were not mixed places. However, when Icebreakers folded in around 1983 it was to fold too. Rather marvellously however, the pub itself is still there in 2024 at 154, Hemingford Rd, N1, with people still raving about it on Trip Advisor.
