'Roast is a men-only club night for bears, cubs, chubs, chasers, muscle bears, trans men, muscle men and their admirers,' co-founder Lerone Clarke-Oliver tells VICE. Roast, a club night held fortnightly in maze-like Angel venue Electrowerkz, views its packed dark room as pivotal to its sexy image. In London, dark rooms are popping up again at buzzy queer club nights including Adonis, which has recently introduced a 'femme dark room' separate from its existing dark room for MSM. Now, if you want to visit Manchester's long-running fetish event Club Alert, a space that promises 'dark rooms, dancing and debauchery', you'll have to sign up for membership first. In March 2020, right before the pandemic hit, the situation was resolved when the local council said that fetish nights with dark rooms could continue to operate as 'private members' clubs'. Two years later, clubs with dark rooms in Manchester's gay village faced a very different threat: Visits from licensing officers claiming that they were breaking the law by allowing men to have sex on the premises. 'You can search all you want, but if someone’s pre-loaded with GHB and they're not 'up' yet, it’s very difficult for your security guards to tell,' he told Time Out at the time, meaning if they’re too wasted to enter. He also said an 'evolution in drug culture' had made it harder to keep the space safe. When UK LGBTQ+ venue Eagle London closed its dark room in 2017, owner Mark Oakley blamed dating apps like Grindr for making it less attractive to people looking for casual hook-ups. In New York, for example, dark rooms are illegal, which means queer clubs have to be subtle (or utterly brazen) in how they market them. 'During the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 80s, a lot of LGBTQ+ venues closed their dark rooms in order to help prevent the spread of HIV,' Howley explains.īefore this year, there was another 'dark room resurgence' in the 00s and 2010s, Howley says, but the long-term future of these spaces has always been pretty precarious. Cruelly, just as homosexuality was becoming less taboo, the LGBTQ+ community was hit by a devastating health crisis that made casual sex feel like a calculated risk. Similar legislation decriminalising male homosexuality in Scotland and Northern Ireland wouldn't follow until the early 80s. Until the passing of the Sexual Offences Act in 1967, sex between two men was illegal in England and Wales. When dark rooms first became popular in the 60s and 70s, there was an even more pressing need for spaces where anonymous same-sex encounters could take place away from prying eyes. Being rejected on the spot with a cursory shake of the head stings so much harder than being told 'sorry not my type' on Grindr. It's spontaneous and exciting, but can be brutal. It also means you can steel yourself with a shot or two before getting your kit off. A dark room tends to be a fun but functional space where shadowy corners and throbbing music create the right environment for anonymous casual sex with no judgement and minimal chat. This way, punters are less likely to cop an eyeful as they order a round of Tequila Rose. Typically, a dark room is located away from the club's entrance and the bustle of the main bar.

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