The Goldie Saloon saga gets so much weirder

Almost two weeks ago, we published one of the strangest, and most entertaining, sagas we’ve ever produced here at The Londoner. It had all come about after a reader had noticed that the Instagram page for a beloved lesbian bar and “sexy gay living room” in Hackney — called Goldie Saloon — had suddenly been taken over by a luxury dog groomer in Essex called Maison De Floof.

After months of, frankly, obsessive investigating, we were able to establish that Goldie Saloon had been backed by a silent partner. Initially opened as a bar and event space for the neighbouring Guts art gallery by two queer women, Mai Harris and Guts owner Ell Pennick, the venue had also been secretly part-owned by a man named Danny Thompson — a straight, teetotal Essex builder who had no hospitality experience. After Pennick and Harris both suddenly pulled out of Goldie Saloon, he was forced, somewhat against his will, to run the bar himself. It’s worth reading in full about the calamity of errors that ensued, including beer lines that went uncleaned for six months and staff walkouts. Eventually the bar closed, and Thompson passed its viral Instagram account over to his teenage daughter so she could market her soon-to-open luxury dog grooming business to its 10,000 followers.

I thought that was as weird as it could get. But as thousands of new readers descended on The Londoner after that story, I found out I was wrong. I was inundated with messages telling me I had only scratched the surface of the saga of Goldie Saloon, Guts and the other crazy goings on in this nondescript corner of Hackney.

Speaking to former Goldie Saloon staff, local residents and artists who worked with Guts, we’ve been able to piece together much more of the insane story that was playing out on Andre Street, the home of Goldie Saloon and Guts Gallery. It’s a saga that includes an illegal hotel full of coffin-like beds, artists trying to steal back their own art, legal letters sent to reddit moderators and a group called the “London Leatherdykes”.

Hey, it's Andrew, one of The Londoner's reporters here.

There's lots of fascinating inside details from the collapse of Goldie Saloon and Guts Gallery to come, like attempted gallery break-ins, dodgy finances and how it all links to a self-confessed "total nutter" who ran a hotel made of plywood.

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