Squares Above The Rest: The Box, Seven Dials

<p>The London gay scene, much like Wayne Rooney’s hairline, has fluctuated, mutated and diminished since the millennium. A plethora of happening gay drinking-holes and night clubs have appeared, done a stint - then poof! Disappeared.</p> <p><img src="http://www.thegayuk.com/communities/8/004/009/928/388/images/4626490423.png" width="460" height="286" alt="CREDIT: Google Map (2008-16)" title="CREDIT: Google Map (2008-16)"/></p> <p>One bar that stood out, due to her lengthy sentence and touch of the David Bowie’s - her unique edge - is The Box. </p><p></p><p>The Box bar was perched on the edge of Covent Garden’s Seven Dials, a good distance away from tempting forbidden fruit trees and tricker-ous serpents of Soho. Faraway enough you didn’t end up attempting a Grey-Goose-infused suspended pirouette on the pole, attached to the plinth in the Shadow Lounge in the wee hours on a school night - we’ve all been there. </p><p></p><p>The Box had abundant fundamentals, she was an ever-changing art gallery - local and other UK based artists would cake the walls with their creative wares. She was a relaxed café during the day, somewhere you could pop by for a decaf skinny mocha, Bloody Mary or a cold-as-Sarah-Palin’s-love-organ pint of Stella - even a spot luncheon with chums, or indeed on your Jack, and without feeling as though you were sporting last season’s spring/summer. </p><p></p><p></p><p>ALSO READ: <a href="http://www.thegayuk.com/magazine/4574334751/Gay-Bars-That-Have-Closed-In-London-Since-The-Turn-Of-The-Century/10260820">The gay bars that have disappeared in London since 2000</a></p><p></p><p></p><p>At around 6pm the after-work-dollies would flock in to bitch about their colleagues, moan about their boyf’s or simply lift spirits from a hard day’s vaporising from behind the Lancôme counter at Selfridges, or boast about a successful pick-up at the gym. </p><p></p><p>During the summer said swarm would spill out on to Monmouth street thus making Seven Dials and its lagoon-life your canvas. </p><p></p><p>Thursdays to Saturdays at around 9pm the tables in the centre on the bar were whisked away, the tunes were pumped up and The Box became the first anchor-drop of the night for the beefy-singlet donors, disco-bears and glitter-ball-swinging brigade. </p><p></p><p>The Box didn’t fit the stereotypical gay bar box - she was squares above the rest. </p><p></p><p>For moi and my compadres from 2000 up until The Box closed in 2009, she was the Rovers Return of our lives.</p><p></p><p></p><p>by <a href="http://www.thegayuk.com/magazine/4574334751/tags/ThabianSutherland">Thabian Sutherland</a></p><p> </p><p> </p>