East End Localism and Urban Decay: Shoreditch's Re-Emerging Gay Scene

This paper explores the recent re-emergence of a gay scene in Shoreditch and argues that its reappraisal of British pub culture and appropriated versions of East End localism can be considered as a countercultural response to the marketed cosmopolitanism of Soho's gay village in the early 1990s. The original marketing of Soho as cosmopolitan was built around the rejection of the public house in favour of more 'continental' bars, signalling a move towards Europeanised consumption habits. In contrast, Shoreditch's gay scene evokes local working-class themes and the area's decaying urban aesthetics in attempts to market itself as an 'authentic' alternative to the 'artificial' West End. This paper begins by discussing a number of reoccurring themes in literary and media representations of East London before analysing specifically how some of these themes have been appropriated on Shoreditch's gay scene.