Writing
The Social Club (in three parts)
by Xavier - London, England
part three
But in terms of efficiency and smoothness of operation, there was nothing that I have ever seen to rival the Social Club, not even the coffee shops of Amsterdam.
A true organisation that completely bypassed the user-dealer relationship, whilst protecting anonymity and providing both accessibility and supply reliability. It was one step short of having a drug vending machine.
The Social Club was in the heart of London, at a point as close to the core of the great grey capital as you could expect, literally just a minute from the east end of Oxford street where it meets Charing Cross Road heading to the south and Tottenham Court Road heading north. It was the epicentre of the great tourist hub, permanently alive with locals and visitors rushing in all directions. You reached the Social Club by ducking into a small alleyway between two book stores. The alley was an infrequently used short cut to a lifeless feeder road servicing the top of the West end. There was nothing down there but an old folk music club that people had forgotten existed way back in the sixties. You could browse acoustic guitars in the window or just keep walking as most did. But to those who knew of the Social Club there was a point mid-way along to stop at and step outside the loop.
The first door leading from the alley was an unlocked personnel door set next to a tin roller door that accessed an empty double car park and disused loading zone. There was no other way in to this space. On a windowless wall next to another blank door in the side of a building was a buzzer that rang silently when pressed. Sometimes it would take a while for the door to open. Sometimes the door to the alley behind you would open first while you were waiting, and for a heart stopping second you'd think you'd been nicked, but it was always just another customer coming through.
Like the traditional method of meeting a dealer, you had to be introduced to the Social Club by a 'member'. They wouldn't open the door unless somebody was showing a card. They could see outside using a security camera focused down in front of the door, but you didn't know this until they hustled you inside and you saw the operation for the first time. The first time at the Social Club was intimidating for anybody, since you didn't know who was in control; the dealers were all hidden behind the door and all that you saw when it opened were more customers, more young people standing there waiting to rush out like a pack of horses in the stalls at the start of a race. Nobody wanted to be seen so everybody moved quickly, a tide flowing in and out at the same time. When the door shut, a deep voice behind you asked for a card. If you didn't have one they would look you up and down fiercely just to stir you, then point to the corner where one of the members sat on an upturned milk crate looking strong and impassive.
They were all big black mother fuckers, probably from the poor side of Islington to the north of London judging by the accents. They would collect two quid off you and make you sign your name on a small orange piece of card, the words 'Social Club' printed on it in a plain black font surrounded by images of floating records. There was a cloak room at the foot of the stairs and nothing else on the ground floor. Each of the next two floors up were the smoking rooms and toilets and at the top of the building at the end of the long flight was where you scored.
The Social Club was mostly used by travellers and new residents from Europe who hadn't yet networked a smaller supplier. You learned about the Social Club by word of mouth, the word slowly spreading like a virus through a population, eventually becoming too large to be kept a secret. Spanish, French, American, and Japanese people, all with the knowledge, all smoking spliffs together and playing pool on one of the many tables in a large windowless room, listening to a radio. There was always a lot of smoke and noise, a lot of people traversing up and down the stairs like a mirage in an Escher painting. I never liked to hang around for too long. The whole place made me nervous, though the atmosphere and diversity of the 'international community' inside was itself relaxed. I just hated to see the dealers, the gang, whoever it was in control of the machine watching over everything with a solid, faceless scowl. It was a truly anonymous supply. No relationship entered into, no bartering or choice, only product and consumer.
The whole top floor was sealed off; you could only go as far as the landing where you were met by another huge black man sitting on a milk crate beside a door that never opened. You waited in line a few feet back to give everybody room. You ask the man what you want. Black or green. Hashish or grass. How many do you want? You hand him a tenner a piece and he whispers your order through a mailbox slit in the sealed door and passes through the cash. A few seconds later the bags appear. He takes them and gives them to you, his hands protected from leaving fingerprints by latex gloves.
Word must have spread too far as, unsurprisingly, the Social Club eventually got busted.
More than a hundred special operations police raided the old building from behind a plume of tear gas, making hundreds of arrests most of them the smokers caught in the rooms when the cops came in. Not a shot was fired as they came through the front door, the only one in the whole building it said in the papers. The mind boggles to think how much gear they kept in that room at the top of the stairs and where it all came from, enough to continually supply hundreds of people a day and all without the charade and the false relationship of a conventional deal.
