Venue: Heaven
Address: 1970s was a fairly dismal place
Town: London, GB

Heaven is a gay superclub in Charing Cross, London, England. It has played a central role and had a major influence in the development of London's LGBT scene for over 40 years and is home to long-running gay night G-A-Y. The club is known for Paul Oakenfold's acid house events in the 1980s, the underground nightclub festival Megatripolis, and for being the birthplace of ambient house. Soundshaft also hosted Future, a regular night on Thursdays run by Paul Oakenfold. At the end of the night, both crowds would come together when the doors connecting Heaven and Future opened for the last couple of songs. Heaven was opened in December 1979 by Jeremy Norman in a former night club called Global Village, which was housed in the arches beneath Charing Cross railway station, once part of Adelphi Arches, a large wine-cellar for the hotel above. Norman was also chairman of Burke's Peerage, the publishers. The original hi-tech interior was designed by his partner, Derek Frost. Norman, an entrepreneur, had started an earlier club, The Embassy, in Old Bond Street in 1978. The Embassy proved to be successful and attracted a fashionable clientele; it is generally seen as the London equivalent of New York's Studio 54. Norman used his knowledge and experience of establishing and running a nightclub to create an entirely new kind of gay club on a larger scale. Heaven quickly established itself as the centre of the (then understated) gay London nightlife. Until it opened, most gay clubs were small hidden cellar-bars or pub discos. Heaven brought gay clubbing into the UK mainstream and gave London a club to rival New York's gay super club at the time, The Saint. Heaven's first resident DJ was Ian Levine, who has been credited with being one of the first DJs in the UK of the now customary style of "beatmixing". His mix of Disco and Hi-NRG became what is known as the Original Heaven Sound. Under the direction of the club's original manager David Inches and independent promotions manager K