Trade: So Farewell Then...

“Imagine ‘Dante’s Inferno”. * That’s what it was, you’d go down the stairs and there were people dancing on every single surface. It was the most hedonistic place to be – there were people dancing on tables, dancing on the bar, they were everywhere. The place was rammed to the rafters. A lot of people that originally went to Trade were very intimidated when they walked down those stairs for the first time at Turnmills,” Malice says. They soon changed their minds, at the heart of Trade was a community of like-minded souls, passionate and in love with the place. Newly-converted Trade fans (tagged ‘Trade babies’) really got the sense of that after a few visits.Stewart Who's Turmills and Trade Wave Goodbye to the

The backdrop to the 90’s was also a time of uncertainty, underneath a seemingly hedonistic lifestyle the frightening prospect of HIV/AIDS lurked. Treatments for managing HIV/AIDS were still in the experimental stages, and you just didn’t know what the outcome might be if you got the virus. The community lived under a shadow, and places like Trade allowed people to escape for a few hours and celebrate life...

Laurence Malice recalls the good old days of Trade with Princess Julia on Attitude online.

Trade - The Final is held at Egg, London today.

25 years on what's billed as

A Fond Farewell To Trade in Vice. and Stewart Who?'s Turnmills And Trade Wave Goodbye To The Rave.

For further reading see Cliff Joannou's A Fond Farewell To Trade in Vice. and Stewart Who?'s Turnmills And Trade Wave Goodbye To The Rave.

Oh, and last and most certainly most, here's Richard Smith's classic essay from 1994, Us Boys Together Clinging'.

I guess you had to be there, really etc.

Makes a nice change to see some articles about gay men and drugs that talk about pleasure, rather than the pearl-clutching narcophobic nonsense the media normally push.

Goodbye and thank you.
x

* Not sure Dante's Inferno - where sodomites were condemned to burn in Hell's fires for eternity - is an appropriate comparison, but we'll let this pass.