The Backstreet, on Mile End Road, was a landmark of gay leather in London’s East End. It opened in April 1985 and closed for good on 17 July 2022, more than thirty-seven continuous years on that strip of East London nightlife. For decades it was the city’s longest-running leather bar. Near the end it was also London’s last dedicated leather bar.
It opened into a specific gap. Many leather rooms in the west had already closed, or had turned into more mixed, more mainstream rooms. The Backstreet was a place that could still hold boots, harnesses, and East End leather culture. That continuity carried it through the mid-1980s leather boom, the attrition of the AIDS years, the club turnover of the 1990s, and the real-estate fights of the twenty-first century.
In 2019 a redevelopment plan threatened the site. Tower Hamlets Council stepped in, saying the scheme would harm the long-term provision of a nightclub that serves the LGBT+ community. The planning win looked, at the time, like a permanent save. The reprieve was short. The bar did not keep Mile End Road.
In 2024 a documentary directed by Romain Beck premiered at Sheffield DocFest. The film treats The Backstreet as queer infrastructure: a last major London node of leather and gay SM-adjacent nightlife, past a drinks room with a dress code, and one that outlasted fashion cycles and property pressure into the early 2020s. Leather history remembers it for those decades of staying open, not for one particular party.
