According to the alt gospel of spent Watering Holes, before the famous Bell was the Pied Bull and before that the Carved Red Lion
But along with all those and just as off the beaten track, but in another special groove, was Traffic. So close to the ‘Prince Albert’, those GLF and Icebreakers discos- and yet so far. On the ‘Cally Road’ by the canal bridge. Now, that was a place that you’ll hear the old timers talking about. Those left and those that care to remember. Owned by a guy called Jim Baker I heard, much later. I took my gorgeous German boyfriend Andreas from Hamburg there and he went into a shamanic rhapsody. And him from exotic Hamburg, mind you. But this was evidently better –though to be fair he was a London groupie through and through.
It was a small, hard club with black walls and men in black boots and soft black leather. Leather was definitely ok here. You could melt in there and I don’t mean from the heat. Men dancing hard to indie and techno music, in leather. That was pretty much unheard of anywhere else in the early 80’s. You never actually danced in leather. It smelt of that warm fuzz of chalk, talc, sweat, paint and beer. Maybe they streamed dope, poppers or pheromones through the air conditioning. Who knows, it was intoxicating, with a rhythm divine. If that’s what did it for you, you’ll know what I mean. It was an absolute keeper.
Traffic though, had an extra secret, an ‘after hours’ special that -if you were in the know -made it more of a finders- keeper. I stumbled into it by pure accident, one semi-moonlight, balmy summer night. 1am was lights up time at Traffic in those days. Out the door & over the canal bridge, back towards Kings Cross and right, into Somerstown, where I lived. I urgently needed to pee. Steep steps led down to the banks along the canalside. Under the bridge was the Grand Union Canal and the Camden Towpath. Almost pitch black, stumbling down I could see other shadowy figures walking the tow patch. Perfectly quiet, except for a few muffled distant city noises. A flash, just ten yards away, of a cigarette inhaled. Another lit. The moon came out. There were dozens of men down there! And they certainly were not down there just to pee. It seems odd to describe this as a religious experience and yet it had something of that in it. The silence, the signs, the stigma, the sin, the smells, the sweet small success of contact. I thought of my catholic gay friend Mark Ashton, who loved the same things and wondered if he had discovered it yet.
It had me trapped in its spell, almost as soon as I realised what I had found. The drug was intoxicating, mesmerising and perfect. It involved delicious risk and delicate rhythm. And so I embarked on a regular dark journey down to that grand, Union canal, each Saturday night after Traffic’s clientele had spilled out. Even in the winter it had its charms, frost crunching underfoot, breath steaming out, the tight embracing warmth of leather, doing its rightful job. They used to say it was safe down there, as it wasn’t patrolled by police.. British Waterways territory you see. Who knows? Maybe they just thought better there than on some city street. You’ll scoff at me but I used to go as much for the atmosphere in the end, than anything more carnal. That other-worldliness of pure ritual, alternative routine and changed boundaries. Forty years on, thinking about it can still send a shiver down my spine. And that shiver is not cold, or a chill or anything fetid but one of delight, of anticipation, of yearning for that other world. The notion that this was an alternative place we had all entered of our own volition, for consumption and pleasure, unfettered by the boundaries of the humdrum and everyday.
And always above us, Traffic, and the traffic flowing on over the bridge, as the night taxis carried people to their warm, safehouses.
One night, I was down there with a friend, we were stood looking at the little cigarettes lighting up all along the bank side, like little fairy lights I thought; catching the faint sweet smell of a joint, drifting from way downstream and a suited policeman with cap walked past, giving me the fright of my life. Don’t worry about him, my friend said, he just dresses like that for the kick. Everyone down here knows him. Just on some big power trip: some guys love it.
There were codes of course. Unwritten rules, etiquette and procedures. You never asked for what you wanted, you never said anything much. You never took the piss out of anyone else. You never asked to go home with someone, well at least not before trying a few things out.
‘Traffic’ got watered down after some years and less exclusive, though still gay but eventually closed. I went back to that stretch of the canal at night, a few years ago now, before Kings Cross got itself all tarted up again, for the craic. Still as a grave down there, bar a few caught short from the pub. ‘Traffic’ went the way of so many others, turned into an Aussie backpackers club. People moved on. Then it was renovated, refurbished, turned into new flats. Sad really, the way these things go. No-one was even smoking down there anymore.
We all moved on as well of course; we always did.
Leave a Reply