Where illegal acid-house parties began: 1 Thrale Street, London SE1
At the fag end of 1987 this low-ceilinged basement, a gym by day, saw the genesis of a controversial British youth culture: acid house. It was here that a young DJ, Danny Rampling, and his fiancée, Jenni, began throwing unlicensed parties. Rampling had visited Ibiza months earlier, where he was introduced to the drug ecstasy, then the preserve of the European jet set, who enjoyed it while listening to a cocktail of synthesiser-heavy dance music (acid house) and European pop in bacchanalian open-air clubs. Keen to re-create the experience in London, albeit in a dank rented basement in Southwark, Rampling cleared the gym and installed a sound system, smoke machine and strobe. He hung canvas on the walls, onto which an artist friend daubed yellow "smiley" faces in UV paint.
The parties, called Shoom (a reference to the ecstasy "rush"), became the talk of the town. Guests included Boy George, Patsy Kensit, the fashion designer Patrick Cox and the performance artist Leigh Bowery. By summer 1988, clubs all over London and Manchester (where a similar trend began around the same time) were offering "acid house" nights — the smiley-face logo had become synonymous with the craze. As the year wore on, stories of police raids and drug seizures at acid-house parties around the country filled the papers. After changing venues, Shoom closed in early 1990; Rampling went on to enjoy a successful DJ career, including a stint at Radio 1. Today the venue is, aptly, a holistic "flotation" centre.
LOST IN TRANSLATION
"[It's] a very large, potentially disruptive re-entry system."
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Translation: "It's a Titan II nuclear missile, more than 600 times more devastating than the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima."
The Pentagon's official 1980s description of its Titan II missiles downplayed the devices' full power. The US completed its first successful test of Titan II in 1963, but by June 1987 the missiles' service life had expired, and they were all deactivated.
LISTOMANIA
Famous insomniacs
Marlene Dietrich (actress) would eat a sardine-and-onion sandwich on rye bread to lull her to sleep.
Amy Lowell (poet) hired five rooms when staying in a hotel — one to sleep in, and empty rooms above, below and on either side — to guarantee quiet.
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Alexandre Dumas (author) was advised by a doctor to get out of bed when unable to sleep. He began to take late-night strolls; eventually he started to sleep through the night.
Judy Garland (actress) took amphetamines for weight control which could keep her up four days running. She started taking sleeping pills and eventually died of a drug overdose.
Tallulah Bankhead (actress) hired young homosexual 'caddies' to hold her hand until she drifted off to sleep.
Franz Kafka (author) wrote: "I fall asleep soundly but after an hour I wake up, as though I had laid my head in the wrong hole."
Theodore Roosevelt (American president) took a shot of cognac in milk as a cure for his sleeplessness.
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Groucho Marx (comic actor) became an insomniac when he lost $240,000 in the 1929 stock-market crash. When sleepless, he phoned people in the middle of the night and insulted them.