I think I was 20 when I came closest to being arrested. Midsummer, St James’s Park and sunny for five in the morning. “What exactly,” said the policeman, “do you two think you’re doing?”
No, nothing like that. I was fully clothed. We got a stern talking to — he’d seen us sleeping at the foot of the Victoria Memorial and wanted to know what we thought we were playing at now, on the monkey bars, which struck me as a question that answered itself. “You might think this is funny,” he said, “but I think it’s trespassing.”
Nothing happened — we’d done nothing wrong — but it was a useful lesson in police ego. The other lesson we’d learned, coming in from out-of-town with nowhere to stay, was that London is decidedly not somewhere open all hours. We’d done Ronnie’s till 3am, seen some bars, and tried an allegedly all-night diner near Spitalfields. But you can’t sit somewhere for hours on the strength of a milkshake. And so we slept rough.
Amy Lamé has no useful powers, so as I see it, Khan pays her almost £120,000 a year to be a fall guy for his own failings
The point here is that even then — 13 years ago — London was not a 24-hour city. It certainly isn’t now, despite what Sadiq Khan and night czar Amy Lamé may claim (Lamé being a pitiful but also pitiable figure; she has no useful powers, so as I see it, Khan pays her almost £120,000 a year to be a fall guy for his own failings with the night-time economy).
But bedtime seems to be getting earlier and earlier. I’m too old now to actually want a 24-hour city, but not so old that I want the night to end when the pubs chuck out at 11 o’clock. And it wasn’t always this way: when I started in journalism, the job seemed to mostly involve encouraging publicists to keep their credit card behind the bar till last orders and, proving adept, I’ve had my fair share of four-in-the-mornings. Basements were a theme. But these places are harder to find now, given 1,110 bars and clubs have shut since the pandemic. In fact, a study last year reported the number of London clubs has halved in the past decade. Perhaps they were all replaced with American candy stores.
It’s hard to believe that, out of the blue, a generation just doesn’t want to stay up all night dancing
It’s hard to believe that, out of the blue, a generation just doesn’t want to stay up all night dancing (though it’s easy to believe they can’t afford the drugs to help them do so). On the other side, some in Gen Z are presumably going out and finding the clubs don’t cater to their sobriety. Or are the bars struggling because too few late licences are granted by killjoy councils? Hackney, in particular, has it hard. Or maybe central is dead after dark because only those too old to go out all night can afford to live there now. There’s a lot; there’s not one answer.
In truth, it’s not all about the party — we don’t have late-night cinemas, coffee shops, bakeries, snack bars. Libraries, even. Moving from an evening city to an all-night city means changing the approach to business hours, to how we work, and to British culture. Because, frankly, we live in a city that has long-fostered a drink heavy lifestyle of cracking on early doors, and calling time a few hours later. If New York is the city that never sleeps, London is the city that passes out.
