London nightlife is gasping for air, and it seems everyone wants to get on the guest list. This city, once famous for its sticky floors and nocturnal stamina, is dotted with the shipwrecks of venues that couldn’t survive our collective shrug. There are only a handful of medium-sized clubs left blinking in the dark and instead of throwing them a rope, everyone keeps asking if they can get on the list — for free.
There is a new entitlement culture. It doesn’t just seem to be friends and family trying to blag their way past the steel barrier, either. I have access to a couple of club-night Instagrams and the DMs are loaded with messages like: “It was my birthday two months ago, can 15 of us get in free next Saturday?” Bar staff are hounded, security are flirted with.
The problem is, a party can’t survive on vibes alone. Rents are feral. Electricity has gone up. Small and mid-sized venues are fighting rising costs with margins so thin they’re practically theoretical. Licensing, staffing, insurance, sound restrictions — the UK makes it actively difficult for a dancefloor to exist, then acts surprised when it dies. Night-time industries generate roughly a quarter of the UK’s economy, yet it treats the people and places holding it together like an inconvenience.
Jodie Harsh has worked for two decades as a promoter and a DJ
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I’ve club-hopped from Hackney to Kensington since the age of 15 and have worked for two decades as a promoter and a DJ — I know what it takes to get people in a room and keep them there. I also know how fragile the maths is, how a slow door can tip the whole thing from viable to never again. When I was in my early twenties I put on a night at Bloomsbury Ballroom that was so disastrous, my mum took out a loan against her house to help me pay off the debt.
Nightlife is not a charity
It drives me mad when everyone wants to get on the guest list, as if clubs should be grateful for their presence. You would never walk into a theatre and ask for a discount because you “really love plays”. You would never go for a meal in a restaurant and ask for half off your bill because you’re “supporting the chef”.
And yet, when it comes to dancefloors, the rules switch. Nightlife is not a charity, and it is not a birthright. It is culture — and culture costs money. Before anyone sharpens their nails, I know the cost of living has changed everything. I am not writing this from a posh office above a dancefloor declaring “let them eat entry fees”. Times are hard, so the joy of the dance has become something you schedule and budget for rather than stumble into. Drinks have gone up. Drugs have gone up — apparently pills and cocaine are wildly more expensive than the last time I did them.
London is not a 24-hour city
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With torturous night-time transport links, even getting home after a dance often doubles the cost of a night, which adds to clubbing’s repositioning as a luxury hobby. (I laugh when London is described as a “24-hour city” — it’s not Berlin.) We’re lucky in London — our price points are much lower than other metropolitan cities, which helps to keep our night culture interesting, diverse and accessible. I recently went to a club night in New York that was charging $150 for entry — London clubland wouldn’t dare price people out like that.
If you can’t afford to go out all the time, go out less and choose your nights wisely. Treat clubs like something that matters. And when you do go out — pay. Buy the ticket, buy a drink. If that feels impossible, then support the incredible bars the UK still has. Yes, I am saying it — if you’re unable to support clubbing, go to the pub. Pubs are great, too.
If this isn’t culture, what is?
I believe the dancehall deserves the same reverence as the opera house or the art gallery (both receive tons of funding). The club is where music is stress-tested, where fashion is experimented with and trends are born, where queer people, and anyone else on the edges, rehearse survival. It’s where we move and let off steam. It’s where strangers learn how to exist together in the dark. If that isn’t culture, I don’t know what is.
The places where we fall in love with music — and each other — are worth sustaining
If nightlife isn’t supported structurally, the least we can do is support it economically.
My favourite message to receive from my friends is, “I’m coming to your night and I insist on paying”, or “I’m out on Friday, I’ve bought a ticket”. Culture survives when the people who care about it don’t try to get it for nothing, and when they realise their presence alone — however fabulous — is not what keeps the lights on. When someone pays to get into a club, even when they “work in the industry”, what they’re saying is: “I see the work, I see the risk, I don’t want to be a drain on the thing I love, I want this to exist again.” That’s partly how nightlife stays alive.
The places where we fall in love with music — and each other — are worth sustaining. It’s deciding that the rooms where subcultures are born shouldn’t be replaced by an M&S or luxury flats named after the dancefloor they killed. If we don’t pay for nightlife, we won’t have any left, and London is already quieter than it should be.
The next time you type “Can I get guest list?” — please pause. Ask yourself who you’re asking to work for free. Ask yourself why this is a corner of culture where payment feels optional. Ask yourself what kind of city you want to live in when the music stops and the lights come up.