“It feels like we’ve gone back in time!” my friend shouts in my ear over the blaring techno remix. Instead of our usual stomping grounds of Hackney, Peckham or Tottenham, we’re spending our Saturday night in — god forbid — a postcode that starts with WC. Specifically, we are standing in what used to be the Odeon cinema on Shaftesbury Avenue, which for the past six months has been transformed into a nightclub called Lost.
We’re here because, since the end of last year, Lost has been the club on everyone’s lips but on nobody’s camera roll. It’s strictly a phone-free zone — and I’m not talking about a sticker placed over the camera à la Fold or Fabric. Devices aren’t seeing the “multi-layered venue” — a playground for live music, cinema, performances and dancing — at all, thanks to the magnetic pouches they are placed in on arrival and released from during departure.
