Monday, August 25, 2003
(In)famous places within 15 minutes walk of my house
Number 5 - the Block
This innocent looking building with the blacked-out windows used to be home to The Block, one of London's dodgiest clubs. Adventurous gentlemen would dress up in their finest fetishwear and pop down to Bromley-by-Bow to enjoy an evening of poorly-lit hardcore interactive entertainment. So I'm told. At the end of the night, after they'd had their fill of the place, many of the booted revellers would then nip over the road to the 24-hour Tesco supermarket and frighten the locals.
Last year, acting on a tip-off, the police decided to check out exactly what went on within The Block's darkened rooms (well, what did they expect, it was in all the adverts). No doubt the punters were thrilled by the arrival of a gang of close-cropped men in tight fitting black uniforms wielding handcuffs, but this particular visit was no reason to get excited. The police moved rapidly to close the club down, hell for leather, soon rubber-stamped. The management attempted to limp on with an 'oh no, nobody has sex here honest' policy but the clientele just stopped coming. Within a month the Block was closed for good.
Or so it seemed until last week. All of a sudden there's a flurry of activity here because the decorators are in. Not that they know why the place is being done up (I asked) but it appears that the cellar has a new buyer. I wonder what they're intending to reopen the place as. And I wonder if they'll remember to fix that dodgy lightbulb in the urinals.
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