Culture Shunt

In the middle of London Bridge train station, (one of the busiest in the UK), is a small, unmarked door, passed and ignored by thousands of people every day. Without warning, at around 8pm on Fridays, a large queue forms outside, and after a tantalising wait, the door opens, and people are slowly granted entry. The queue can be extremely slow (an hour to travel 10 metres is not uncommon), and people often don't get in at all. But if they do, they will experience the weird and wonderful world of Shunt.

I went last weekend, and took my Tajik friend, Tonya, who's in London studying. She's never been to a nightclub until a few months ago, and I wanted to show her what I think is one of the best, most interesting clubs in the city. I was curious to see what she made of it.

The space is phenomenal. It's a huge complex of underground vaults and passages, eerily lit and filled with bizarre and wonderful items. It has a large cinema continuously screening strange cartoons, as well as a huge bar with DJ and dancefloor, and a large stage for bands. Often there are additional intrigues - last weekend there was a large maze filled with obscure quotes from well known figures, and a room of people dressed as victorians, sitting around a large, lavishly laid dining table, offering people charcoal and paper to sketch with, and pinning the various works on the wall.

But the most interesting part are the various happenings. I was drinking in the bar when the music suddenly stopped, the lights dimmed, and I turned to see a woman, replete in stunning robe and ornate mask, begin a slow, hypnotic dance involving enormous flaming pronged paddles attached to her hands, as gentle waltz music drifted into the room. The revellers, beer bottles in hand, stood stunned while she performed, before she finished with a heart-wrenchingly delicate flick of her hips, and extinguished her talons. The previous music returned as she drifted away, and I wondered whether I had seen a ghost.

It's a pretty surreal place, but it's not always subtle. Tonya and I were watching a mind-bending cartoon when a band suddenly began crashing out a jarring synth beat in the next room. As we walked towards the stage an enormous black man, dressed like a stripper (i.e. wearing trousers, cuff links and bow tie, but no shirt) jumped onto the stage and started stalking around the mike stand. He squared up to it and started chanting 'Super-thriller, mother-fucker', as the beat grew in intensity. Tonya was stunned, and positively aghast when I explained what he was saying. Her only response, as her shock gradually softened into a cautious, mischievous fascination, was "in my country you could be arrested for this".

The band then proceeded to sing a series of bizarre and wonderful songs with strap lines such as "I bet you got high with your hairdresser last night", and "my girlfriend's got a fat ass, fat ass", while the synth pop rhythms seduced the sizable crowd. The uncomplimentary song about the girlfriend's behind, a duet with a slim lady responding with gusto to the lead singer's slurs, ended with her lifting her dress to flash said behind.

Shunt will be closing down in a few weeks, to make way for the Shard, which will be one of Europe's tallest buildings. They are hoping to re-locate but will surely struggle to find another venue as cavernous and labyrinthine as this. 

Walking home, Tonya and I mused over the various insanities we had witnessed, and she asked if all clubs in the UK are like that. I'm not sure if there are many in the world like that, and in a few weeks, there may be none. The world will be slighty less interesting as a result.