XXL (club)
Encyclopedia
XXL is a gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....

 nightclub
Nightclub
A nightclub is an entertainment venue which usually operates late into the night...

 in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 which primarily caters for the bear
Bear community
"Bear" is a LGBT slang term that refers to members of a subculture in the homosexual and bisexual male communities and to an emerging subset of LGBT communities with events, codes, and a culture-specific identity...

 sub-group. The nightclub is situated at 51/53 Southwark Street, under a number of railway arches just outside of London Bridge
London Bridge station
London Bridge railway station is a central London railway terminus and London Underground complex in the London Borough of Southwark, occupying a large area on two levels immediately south-east of London Bridge and 1.6 miles east of Charing Cross. It is one of the oldest railway stations in the...

 being relatively close to London Bridge and Southwark
Southwark
Southwark is a district of south London, England, and the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Southwark. Situated east of Charing Cross, it forms one of the oldest parts of London and fronts the River Thames to the north...

. The club was founded by Mark Ames and his then partner David Dindol in 2000. It is the largest dedicated "bear" venue in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

.

Venue

Southwark
Southwark
Southwark is a district of south London, England, and the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Southwark. Situated east of Charing Cross, it forms one of the oldest parts of London and fronts the River Thames to the north...

 and Lambeth
Lambeth
Lambeth is a district of south London, England, and part of the London Borough of Lambeth. It is situated southeast of Charing Cross.-Toponymy:...

, given their more liberal stance towards after-hours entertainment, have seen a number of clubs springing up in their areas with a number of them setting up under railway arches like a number of nightclubs throughout central London.

The club is made up of 6 railway arches with a legal capacity of 2000. The interior of the venue is very large and utilitarian - bare brick walls in place of the usual club offerings, possibly reflecting the club's patronage. It does boast one of the best sound systems in London clubland.

History

The XXL website details the history of the club through the eleven years it has been operational. Ames felt disillusioned with how little there was for the London Bear Community outside of one bar in Soho
Soho
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster and part of the West End of London. Long established as an entertainment district, for much of the 20th century Soho had a reputation for sex shops as well as night life and film industry. Since the early 1980s, the area has undergone considerable...

. He created XXL and it was a success; its brand grew rapidly as did its popularity and reputation as creating a safe, attitude-free venue for bears, cubs, chubs and their admirers. In 2003, XXL in London created bear necessities, a weekend long celebration of everything "big, gay and hairy" with events around the country. A year later this turned into London Bear Pride In 2004 this was expanded to include the leather community
Leather subculture
The leather subculture denotes practices and styles of dress organized around sexual activities. Wearing leather garments is one way that participants in this culture self-consciously distinguish themselves from mainstream sexual cultures...

 in Bear and Leather Pride in 2006. The two subcultures do have a large overlap and there are a number of leather fetishists
Fetishism
A fetish is an object believed to have supernatural powers, or in particular, a man-made object that has power over others...

 patronising XXL.

Polls
Opinion poll
An opinion poll, sometimes simply referred to as a poll is a survey of public opinion from a particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions of a population by conducting a series of questions and then extrapolating generalities in ratio or within confidence...

 in magazines such as Gay Times
Gay Times
Gay Times is one of the United Kingdom's leading gay magazine for gay and bisexual men.-Publication and content:...

, the Pink Paper
Pink Paper
The Pink Paper is a UK publication covering gay and lesbian issues. Founded in 1987 as a newspaper, since June 2009 it has been available only on the Internet....

, and Boyz
Boyz (magazine)
Boyz is a free, London-based magazine, targeted at gay men and distributed mainly through gay bars, clubs and saunas in the United Kingdom. Published weekly, it tends to focus on news about the gay scene and celebrities popular with young scene-going gay men.Boyz is relatively light on "serious"...

regularly put XXL in the top two night clubs in London. XXL was also the title sponsor of the 2006 Bingham cup in New York Bingham Cup
Mark Kendall Bingham Memorial Tournament
The Mark Kendall Bingham Memorial Tournament or the Bingham Cup is a biennial international, non-professional, gay rugby union tournament, first held in 2002...

. In 2007 the club expanded and also diversified the brand by launching new nights, extending its appeal far beyond the core audience. In 2009 Ames became the gay promoter of the year according to the london Boyz magazine readers poll and was named as a gay Icon in London's QX magazine.

Criticisms

In June 2010 the UK Gay Press reported on comments written by Mark Ames on his Facebook page, in which he stated that he would boycott Muslim Businesses. He issued an unreserved apology.
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