This may be true, but it’s worth remembering that right at its heart, at the cross of Shoreditch High Street and Great Eastern Street, sits a nightlife institution of such singular intensity that the neighbourhood’s new breed of bland, well-heeled residents would splutter into their flat whites if they knew what went on there.Ĭhariots is a gay sauna that’s somehow stood firm and resisted the developers for nearly 20 years. Old-school anarchist uprisings aside, the majority view is that the area has lost its edge, and is now just the playground of hipsters, tourists and hipster tourists. When protestors from Class War hurled paint across Brick Lane’s Cereal Killer Café in September, it showed how far Shoreditch had come.
