The Divine
I write a monthly gossip column on Queer nightlife for Sticky Fingers Publishing. For my most recent column I went to The Divine (obvs)
Two years before The Glory opened it was a music venue called Birthday’s. Birthday’s opened in 2012 where The Divine currently stands. On opening day there was an all-day festival beginning in the afternoon but as opening time loomed closer a long queue stretched along the high street. Entry was delayed due to the basement still resembling a building site. The proprietors of Birthday’s may have been concerned about whether or not the freshly dried concrete had dried in time. But there was no need for apprehension because the audience and bands alike cared very little about their own respiratory health. It was a different time.
However, once the dust from the dried concrete had settled, it was clear Birthday’s lacked soul, the basement was always a bit cold, on the precipice of damp. Overhead meat-tracking hooks from a freezer of an abattoir wouldn’t have seemed out of place. Did I mention it lacked soul? Maybe it was due to a lack of wood. I love wood. It absorbs and retains transient stories. Instruments are made out of wood. Wood retains stories. Wood is intrinsic to folklore. Wood continues to breathe after being cut from its life source. Concrete doesn’t breathe. Concrete doesn’t have a life source. Concrete was never capable of growth. Concrete rejects history. When you cut open concrete it doesn’t reveal rings of time. Concrete is poured over coffins to prevent death escaping out and to prevent the thieves from getting in. Introduce concrete into The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood and you haven’t got a story. The only place for concrete to tell stories is in a skatepark.
Sadly, The Divine isn’t a skatepark. But for the previous owners of The Glory (Jonny Woo, John Sizzle), the space was deemed the perfect venue to replace The Glory and ever since 2024, they’ve taken on the scythe of Hackney Council licensing regulations and claimed full revenance of the ground floor bar and soulless basement. But has it been a success? Define success? Is it glamorous? Define glamour! Have they transformed the space into a conduit for joy? What do you think?
Personally, despite their best efforts to inject life into the venue (the interior decorating is delightful), The Divine can’t shake the cold, barren, concrete corpse of Birthday’s. I’m not a conservative person but I do reminisce about The Glory. When The Glory opened in 2014 it inhabited a pub with a history dating back to the mid-1800s. The many nooks and crannies were already well lived in, cosy, it was a wholesome ramshackle. It was our wholesome ramshackle. Its historical significance made it the ideal replacement for The Joiners Arms or the George & Dragon before it. The warmth of wood was everywhere. Sadly, The Divine won’t ever be able to revive an imagined nostalgia no matter how hard it tries. There are little to no nooks and crannies? It only makes me nostalgic for car parks. At least I won’t be charged £5.50 for a small bottle of non-alcoholic beer in a car park.
Despite my disdain for concrete, the interior decor for The Divine (thanks to Max Allen & Kurtis Lincoln?) is sublime. I am a sucker for nick-nacks dangling from ceilings (some of us still long for the comfort of a cot) and the inflatable gold chains, oversized tinsel-tringe, queer-coded bunting, murals and posters of icons/inspirational figures brings an imagined Queer Utopia to life.
A few weeks ago I got my intramuscular T-blocker jab and re-strated progesterone for the first time in 4 years. It’s safe to say my perception of reality was slightly skewiff and it meant my social battery dwindled off into a thermal runaway. Whilst in this hazy frame of mind I attended a fundraiser at The Divine. Brilliant. Thankfully as we walked down into the basement planningtorock’s set thumped life into my tits and a borderline religious experience was felt. With a smoke machine pumping haze between bodies the headache inducing LED neon lights begun to make sense. Sweat glistened, shoulder to shoulder before dripping onto the concrete floor. The bass-heavy mix pushed us all closer, spiritually aligning, illuminating. In that moment I realised my way of thinking had been going about it all wrong. Yes, The Divine isn’t The Glory and it doesn’t have the same wholesome, nostalgic charm. But for what it lacks in pub it makes up for on the dancefloor. Maybe Charli’s got it all wrong, the dancefloor isn’t dead. Neither is cabaret, comedy, grassroots plays and much-needed community fundraisers. But The Divine is a space for us to call our own, a much needed space for Queer nightlife to thrive and for that, I am more than thankful.
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xox