Astoria To Close

Cult music venue - and home to the infamous G.A.Y. - Astoria Theatre is to close. The club is a victim of Crossrail, the multi-billion pound rail project linking Maidenhead and Heathrow in the west right, across central London, into Essex and Kent in the east.

Mayor Livingstone had this to say: "The construction of Crossrail means that the Astoria can't be saved. We're basically putting in a vast train station but the developers that have actually drawn up the scheme for the area are replacing it [the Astoria] with a larger live music venue."

The venue has been under threat for some years, with developers keen to sweep away the pound shops and low rent fast food joints that characterise the area. The crossroads of Oxford Street, Tottenham Court Road, New Oxford Street and Charing Cross Road is notoriously scruffy and rundown, and it seems a shame that it's going to be "re-developed" (i.e. sanitised). Give me a bit of scruff and ruff and tumble anyday - luxury flats and yet more American multinationals are a bleak prospect. Take your Abercrombie & Fitch and shove it where the sun don't shine, Yankee scum!!