‘A new cultural hub for the queer community’: BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! Gallery Café in London, in 7 images
The fabulously named Fitzrovia in London has served as a stomping ground for many of the gay, great and good of eras past, from writer Quentin Crisp to artist Francis Bacon to filmmaker Derek Jarman. If they were still alive, one could imagine them bumping into each other at the resplendent BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! Gallery Café London, united by their commitment to queer sensibility and their love of handsome men — two characteristics that are central to the café’s existence.
The café claims to be the first fine art gallery dedicated to queer photography. And as the name suggests, it’s an offshoot from the BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! programme from The Little Black Gallery — including its infamous BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! magazines and books, photographs from which have driven heavy traffic to Attitude’s website on more than one occasion.
“It looks like a room in Joan Collins’s mansion — not her bedroom or living room, but a room for entertaining and being generally fabulous in”
When I stop by on launch night in October, the small but enticing venue is still box-fresh and gasp-inducingly flawless. The gleaming pink onyx marble bar and table-tops, groaning with gorgeous white roses, catch my eye from across the street, as does the arresting pink neon window sign by Cig Harvey. Not to mention the numerous blown-up pictures of bums and bulges, naturally.
Mere months before, it had the air of a sterile-looking, run-of-the-mill opticians; now, it’s all soft pinks, mirrored surfaces and gorgeous lighting. Inside, walnut-panelled walls and an Italian marble mosaic floor emanate classic luxury. It looks like a room in Joan Collins’s mansion — not her bedroom, nor her living room, but a room for entertaining and being generally fabulous in.
I am initially apprehensive to put my drink down for fear of scuffing something — and avoid getting drunk for fear of crashing into one of the huge, framed prints tilted against the wall — but I soon relax, not least because of the team of smiley, personable waiters with cool haircuts who go the extra mile to make all feel welcome.
Pumping bars and clubs have their place, as do sober spaces. What’s refreshing — and dare we say it, novel and nuanced — about this gear shift is that, while the café’s daylight hours mean it’s not a place to get wasted, the social lubricant that is alcohol is served here, including a refreshing BOYS! BOYS! BOYS!-branded sparkling French wine. It’s a café, and as such, in a city overrun with overcrowded Pret a Mangers, makes a compelling destination for a Colombian roast and an actual conversation. Or, if you’re heading into Soho afterwards, a place for pre-drink drinks.
It opened as a new cultural hub for the queer community, and we can visualise it as a place for the next generation of queer thinkers, artists, movers and shakers to hang out and plan world domination.
Founder Ghislain Pascal tells Attitude, “Galleries have become such boring, alien, elitist and unfriendly white boxes that nobody wants to visit. We’ve tried to create a friendly, welcoming environment where people can enjoy visiting, get a cup of coffee or glass of wine, whilst picking up a copy of our latest BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! magazine, book, zine or artwork, whilst chatting to our friendly front-of-house team.”
The photographs of often-naked men that surround us on the night of Attitude’s visit and that so epitomise the BOYS! M.O. are first and foremost intellectually stimulating. Absent-minded dissemination of artless nudes is par for the course in our community — is there anything worse than an unsolicited dick pic? — but here, the careful curation of imagery is palpable. Every picture tells a story and has an innately soulful touch.
Indeed, in different hands, a queer-focused venue with a sense of eroticism would have fallen at the first hurdle labelled ‘trashy, porny mess’, but the café keeps things effortlessly elevated, not least through the BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! MEETS programme, whereby every Wednesday night, influential people from the queer art community will give talks. We can feel our brains expanding already.
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