Seaside Stories: The Perfume Garden

This story originally appeared in ‘Brighton’s Seaside Stories: A People’s History’ published by QueenSpark Books in 2017.

Club Barracuda at 139 King’s Rd Arches was home to The Perfume Garden for a year at the start of the new millennium. It described itself as “monthly hard clubbing for gay men, lesbians and their special friends”.

The width of a single arch, it was rammed with sweaty over-excited clubbers (no air-con) and possibly no licence (you bought drinks with a raffle tickets).

In the early hours, spangly clubbers could be seen wandering out to sit on the beach, slowly coming down as the sun came up.

It was never going to last forever. The loved-up polysexual clubbers had to move to a more stable (legal?) venue, and it settled at Pool / Envy above Charles Street. It had monthly themes, elaborate decorations, and stunning lasers.

On Friday 23 March 2003, the club was celebrating co-founder Kitty’s birthday. Nick March and Superfast Oz kept the BPM high and ‘Perfect’ Pete Bennett (later to win Big Brother 7) was raving in the crowd with everyone else.

After the club finished at 2am, a crowd of happy clubbers headed down to the beach but were met with a not so happy sight. Smoke was billowing out from the grade 1 listed West Pier. It had been weather-damaged in the winter storms and was now a sorry sight.

The fire had been raging most of Friday and was still smouldering with small fires visible in the darkness. An eerie sight on my walk home to Hove, I sat with many others and pondered its demise. This was most definitely not the Café del Mar vibe of old.

Origins

The club first appeared in town in 1999 at the Hanbury Arms in Kemptown, aka the Sassoon Mausoleum. It was a small-ish venue but the music, camouflage netting and style was already evident.

Illustrator Andy Lambert produced the artwork for the flyers throughout the club’s life, which gave it a really strong brand and fostered a sense of community.

Loads of the hard house DJs of the period appeared on the decks at the club over the years, as well as home grown talent. The club also became known for having monthly themes with extensive decorations to match, and impressive lasers to help you navigate the darkness and dry ice.

Out of the Closet!

The Perfume Garden was captured in all its deafening UV gorgeousness in Episode 3 of the BBC series Brighton Out the Closet aired in 2001. The video below shows the night at Club Barracuda on the seafront as described in the story above.

You may need to turn the brightness up on your screen to see anything at all in the video below, but if you thought you saw a plate of fruit, you were not mistaken. To keep us all fresh and perky, fruit boys and girls would come round with freshly peeled and sliced fruit to enjoy on the spot. So refreshing!

We want more

The memories of The Perfume Garden, or PG to its regulars, were so strong that it was willed back to life in 2014 at the Boutique club off West Street. I took the video below which will give you some idea of the wonderful craziness. And yes, fruit was provided like in the good old days.