Considering the recent club closures, and the increasingly identikit options that are left, that an ordinary night out in London might entail club-hopping around Soho, scooting across the central line to an east London warehouse rave and then ending up at a club in a disused toilet until lunchtime the next day feels like something from an alternate universe. Or just plain made up.

But that’s exactly what used to happen when Trade began in November, 1990. It was London’s first legal carry-on party, which raged at the now-defunct Turnmills in Clerkenwell from 3am every Sunday, and kickstarted an intrepid after-hours clubbing scene that would last two decades. Masterminded by Laurence Malice, it was billed as a gay club but it attracted a diverse crowd and, thanks to its DJs like Tony De Vit, became famous for pushing the breakneck hard house sound (“he took techno and basically camped it up a bit,” says Malice).

At the time, most clubs ended at 2 or 3am and after-hours parties were illicit, even dangerous. The Aids epidemic had also erupted and Malice wanted to create a safe environment for gay men – with a pumping soundtrack. “It was a ridiculously homophobic time,” says Malice. “No one knew what Aids was about so you would have guys leaving clubs at 3am and they wanted to meet, get off with people, whatever, and they were being attacked.” It’s why Trade’s assorted audience was so important. “I wanted straight people to show that gay people are not a problem – that we can mix.”



Trade was billed as a gay club but it attracted a diverse crowd and became famous for its hard house sound. Illustration: TradeMark aka Mark Wardel

This inclusivity is one of the most significant aspects of Trade’s legacy, inspired in part by acid house’s togetherness rather than the attitudinal, fashion-focused clubs of the 80s. “It was a crazy group of characters from different walks of life: rent boys, trannies, working girls, muscle marys, industry people,” says regular Trade DJ Smokin Jo of the club’s clientele. “It was such a mixed bag and that added to the fun. It wasn’t a serious night full of musos, it was everyone there with their hands in the air going crazy.” An article first printed in 1994 in Gay Times, now republished on digital dance music anthology DJ History, perhaps sums up Trade’s significance best: “Here there’s a real sense of belonging, of community,” says its writer Richard Smith. “Coming here did me at least as much good as coming out.”

Among the heaving dancefloor and hard and fast soundtrack, Smith was no doubt taken with Trade’s sense of fun. Malice would often dress the venue in lurid decoration: once they built 20 of their own flame lights to get the setting of their themed party “Disco Inferno” just right. He would also bring in celebrity lookalikes like Grace Jones and Princess Diana, to “disturb people, I wanted them to stop and think for five seconds”. Real-life celebrities would often try to join in, too: the Beckhams, Alexander McQueen and Björk are just some of the name-drops, though Cher and Axl Rose were turned away for being demanding, or in the case of Rose, homophobic.

Unsurprisingly, the Trade concept ballooned. A 1997 Channel 4 documentary, titled The All Night Bender, sealed its notoriety and events at the 2000 Creamfields festival and Love Parade in Leeds followed. Eventually it went international, launching in Ibiza, LA and New York: Carrie and co visit Trade in a 2002 episode of Sex and the City, while the club’s equivalent of flyerers, The Trade Police, featured in the film Kevin & Perry Go Large. In the end, Trade ran more or less every week at Turnmills for 12 years and some see its wild ways as a precursor to Berlin’s Berghain.

By then, London’s after-hours scene was in rude health. The 2000s had brought with it later licences and, as club end times shifted to 5 or 6am, a new wave of parties sprung up to help punters bounce from dancefloor to dancefloor, many of them less gay-centric but still with a cosmopolitan, mixed crowd. Afterhours night Jaded, which started in 2004, helped to usher in a new wave of clubber, too: among the Italian throngs and K-heads, it drew dedicated, music-focused regulars who flocked for its deep and dark techno.

“There was an old joke about Saturday being amateur’s night as far as clubbing is concerned and the after-hours was, if you like, for the pros and the people who really wanted to party properly,” says Dave Swindells, who was Nightlife editor at Time Out from 1986 to 2009, of after-hours events like Jaded. “And so the after-hours were where things got more interesting, because people had already been to one, two, three places already and they had stories to tell.”

After-hours aficionado Liz Mendez concurs. Her club Kubicle began 10 years ago in a former public toilet in east London – which held just 100 people – and had regular guest DJ sets from now-huge house stars like Jamie Jones. “The summer we started we did every Sunday and Monday morning from 6am,” she says. “We would do Kubicle and then we would then all move on to T Bar or The End to finish Sunday, then go back to the toilet on Monday morning. It really was never ending.”

In a constantly shape-shifting clubbing landscape, though, all good things come to an end. As permanent nightlife spaces have dwindled, the need for definitive after-hours parties to bridge the gap at dawn has dwindled, too. Instead, says Swindells, we now have a “binge club culture” where clubbers can get their 24-hour party fix at music festivals instead of every weekend. Mendez, meanwhile, now focuses on all-day fashion and music events in Hackney Wick and daytime, more festival-esque parties like this, usually on a Sunday, have also eclipsed after-hours events. “Daytime is the new after-hours,” Malice concurs.

Of the regular after-hours parties that sprung up in the wake of Trade’s success, only Jaded still soldiers on, fortunate and respected enough to have a permanent weekly Sunday slot at Corsica Studios in Elephant & Castle. Legal ones still occur but they are rare – see the adhoc (and aptly titled) Keep On Going, or nightclub Fabric, which opens for the weekend uninterrupted for its 16th birthday party this Friday (16 October) and where you don’t have to leave.

Rocket fuel … A Trade flyer. Illustration: B-Art

For Trade, it’s time for the last hurrah. Its 25th birthday party next week is the final one after years of one-off anniversary and special events (as well as acting as a sort of unofficial relaunch for its most recent home, Egg on York Way, which Malice opened in 2003). It’s coupled with a commemorative exhibition, called Often Copied, Never Equalled, assembled by one of the dedicated “Trade babies” at the Islington Museum from Friday and which will feature flyers, the late Tony De Vit’s record box and other assorted memorabilia.

Trade’s demise spotlights not just how after-hours events have gone the way of the dinosaurs but also how gay nightlife on the whole has changed. “I don’t think clubs are as diverse as that anymore,” says Smokin Jo. “I think everyone’s sectioned themselves off a little bit, especially on the gay scene: you get ‘this is the twink night’, ‘this is the hipster night’, and it’s a shame because mixed/gay crowds aren’t really getting together like they were.”

Malice says that this tribal approach to clubbing has put a stranglehold on Trade’s music policy. “I can’t live up to the expectations of those that just want hard house and not being able to introduce quality new music to the younger gays because they’re not interested,” he explains. “The young gay people who are into contemporary DJs go to straight clubs. Trying to get young gay people to go to a gay club where they have a decent music policy is just impossible.”

Clubs like Trade rarely exist in London, let alone the UK, anymore. They catered for clubbers who were looking for something different. Afterhours parties were underground, outside of restrictive hours and music policies, and above all maintained the ideal that fuels the quintessential side of nightlife: “It wasn’t just ‘let’s go out on a Saturday night with our mates and have a laugh’,” summarises Swindells; “It was ‘let’s have an adventure’.”