23/05/2017
Collection of photos from an illegal squat rave i attended in london in the summer of 2015.
I was already in London on a random mission at the time with no money, clothes or film and a friend was putting me up. Originally i was only meaning to be there a night, which inevitably ended up turning into a week. On n the 3rd or 4th day we ventured into harrow to get some film developed and met up with one of his friends after getting the film done. We just happened to be lurking about when he mentioned something about a squat rave which was going on that night, so i said lets go. To be honest i didn’t actually think we would end up going at all but, to my surprise everyone was on it so we headed back to my friends house where more of his friends started arriving, we ate some food, sorted cameras out and grabbed some film ready for the evening. I had never experienced a real illegal rave so i was very excited at this point and just wanted to get going.
Finally the time had come to venture out and try and find this place, once they let the phone number out with hints as to where it may be. So we started walking and jumping tubes across london trying to figure it out and after a couple of hours we seemed to be on the right track.. slowly we noticed more ravers congregating and the tube stations were a flock of half cut polo dressed wreck heads, so we knew we was heading the right way. A couple of stations later and we jumped off the tube along with a flood of 50 other people. We decided to follow the crowd and let them take us as nobody had a clue, i think everyone had the same idea in mind. We all ended up standing outside Park Royal station for about twenty minutes, every one asking each other if they knew where it was and all you could hear were phone conversations and people moaning.. until somebody shouted its down here. So we all started walking not really knowing what was going on or even if we was in the right place or direction, but we all slowly started to drift along this long road. Not long into the walk everyone seemed to get quite excited and pointing at this huge brand new looking warehouse which i didn’t think much of like surely it can’t be there but this is London i suppose so remained hopeful. To my surprise as we got closer everybody still quite confused we noticed a heavy police presence on the entrance gates, sirens, police dogs, officers plotted everywhere. I noticed a few police officers talking to somebody behind the gate of the building and genuinely thought we had been led on and the owners had reported loads of people throughout the night. Lingering around hesitantly we quickly decided this wasn’t no rave at all but we all proceeded confused and glided straight past them as if we were supposed to be there not knowing where we were walking to. We walked into a huge gated off carpark tucked around the side of the warehouse. Police followed behind rounding us up like sheep asking us what we were doing here and what we were looking for, to which we just started abusing them saying we needed a p**s and laughing they responded with “what all of you” it was jokes.
At this point i don’t think anyone thought it was on or going to happen atleast i didn’t. We all just stood on the side road at the front of the building being nosey at to what the police were doing around the gates. More and more people started gathering now and we had built up quite a force some people just walking straight past as they looked down the road thinking it had been landed on and was a no go. After a short while a small amount of us drifted back up the road, heads down deflated and let down when all of sudden some guy jumped out of a hedge from behind an acidic den of a caravan whispering quick over here follow me. Everyone had a snidey look around getting a slighlty quicker step on to get out of sight and soon as i had turned the corner everybody started running and i found myself clasping onto my camera strap chasing the crowd looking back as I’m running to see how far the police and dogs are away from me. I could not stop laughing, we had to run the length of the building before getting to this little fire exit door and around the other side where a man was standing shouting “No police, in quick, quick, in’.
Now were in, and trying to process what just happened whilst walking through the first room which was huge and in complete darkness following the sillhoulettes of the firm of people infront of me. Blue lights were beaming as the lights flashed through the windows creating a quite surreal gritty look on the room, my first contact with an illegal rave and i already knew in that instance what it was all about. We went through a set of double doors where now we had light and another set of doors as we walked through them i couldn’t really explain the feeling i felt as i looked into a ridiculous sized room, completely empty apart from about 8 lorries which didn’t have any impact on the size. People were unloading and shifted equipment from the lorries, dogs running around freely, big groups of people setting up sound systems, whilst little groups of people sitting with chairs already seshing in a festival like manor, its was nuts. People flooded the room and began to find a little space on the floor to sit with their friends and wait till it was set up and everyone had arrived. I couldn’t contain myself enough to sit down and wait so i started to look around with my friends, we found a kitchen with a pot of curry on the cooker which led onto another room where we found security uniform and cameras. Later on we found out that the security had been tricked to come outside the gates and then locked out which is why the police were there earlier on! just as we were looking around this room p**sing around with the security guys belongings. Out of nowhere a kid come running through with a huge set of keys throwing the keys around shouting "open all the doors open everything!" this is when i realised this isn’t going to be an ordinary rave and i got really hopeful about how the night was going to unfold. We proceeded to have a look around and found a set of stairs went up another stairs and another huge room opened up right infront of us leading onto about 12 little glass rooms all facing out to the big room and the stairs went up another flight to another room which was the same with a narrow corridor. All of it on a whole was nuts rooms leading to rooms and then more rooms 3 stories high, we came back down stairs to the main room and waited it out.
Slowly the sound systems went up more lorries were been sneaked in through the delivery shutters and by this point a huge amount of people had arrived dodging police and getting in through any door or gap possible. Not long after this the light went off and music began to play, the sealy bags opened and everyone was starting the bounce, thats when the fun started as i just bopped from set to set all genres integrated together and took in the people. The experience upstairs had now turned into what only i can describe as a k hole, groups of people lying all over the place, empty baggies, balloons, needles the lot people were fu***ng left right and centre the ket kids had made a k hole den for you to fester in, fully grown men were injecting he**in and smoking crack off the pipe in the little rooms on the top floor, i tried to take a shot of a dimly lit man slouched on the floor, knees to chin, burning his pipe but as i approached he flipped out on a mad one and chased me out the room, however i remained facinated and glad to be expriencing a real rave, that to me is the closest thing ill every get to the days of raving back in the 80s. A real dirty free for the people party. I decided i needed something to carry me through so i managed to get my hands on a yellow ups pill so i dropped it and waited.
After about half and hour i was pleasantly wavy and was very content with where i was, everywhere you looked there was something different going on or just something surreal happening for example at one point i noticed police had somehow gained entry and they were quickly surrounded by ravers and marched out the party, that really did make me laugh watching police been escorted out by us.
- Amerizm.
