That was Palace in ’85: Part Five: The Fall Of course, it couldn’t last. By autumn, the tax man came sniffing. A rival shop called “Visions” opened down the street—clean, legal, boring. And the new Video Recordings Act 1984 meant Jules’s bootlegs were now felonies.
By 4 AM, the room was half-asleep, half-crying, half in love with strangers. Lady Caroline held Terry’s hand. Mina recited Baudelaire over the end credits.
In the neon-drenched spring of 1985, a run-down Soho video club becomes the secret temple for a tribe of London dreamers, bootleggers, and broken aristocrats—where the currency is not money, but the thrill of seeing the forbidden on a flickering screen. Part One: The Invitation The door was easy to miss. Sandwiched between a boarded-up tailor and a shop that sold only novelty ashtrays, the black-painted front of Palace Video gave nothing away. No sign, no window display. Just a buzzer you had to know existed. Pussy Palace 1985 Video
Inside, the air tasted of cigarette smoke, warm VHS tape, and patchouli. The year was 1985, and while London’s West End glittered with yuppies and Duran Duran posters, Palace was something else: a .
To rent from Palace was to enter a . Your membership was a handshake. Your password: taste. Part Three: The Lifestyle By day, Palace was a video shop. By 9 PM, the shelves rolled back, the projector hummed to life, and the back room became a salon. That was Palace in ’85: Part Five: The
Because Palace wasn’t a shop. It was a promise: that the right film, in the right room, with the right strangers, could change your life forever.
And they’ll feel it: the ghost of a time when entertainment was dangerous, lifestyle was an art form, and a VHS was not a product but a . And the new Video Recordings Act 1984 meant
The Last Frame of Excess: Palace Video, 1985