An old cinema that learned to be loud
The Forum stands on Highgate Road a couple of minutes from Kentish Town station, and seen from across the road it is still plainly the building it set out to be in 1934: a large art deco picture house for a working neighbourhood, with a broad front and a name in tall letters. It stopped showing films decades ago. In the eighties it reopened as the Town and Country Club and became one of the rooms every touring band wanted to play, and under a succession of names since then it has kept that reputation. It is a listed building, it holds a little over two thousand people, and on a good night it feels far smaller and warmer than its numbers suggest.
What matters to anyone planning an evening around it is the shape of the crowd. People drift in over an hour or more from the moment the doors open, so arriving is easy. They leave all at once, when the house lights come up, and for ten minutes Highgate Road belongs entirely to them. Almost every piece of advice below follows from that one fact.
Why an hour before doors beats meeting after
The instinct is to meet outside the venue, at doors, and walk in together. It is the worst ten minutes of the evening to choose. The pavement is full of people looking for people, the station exit is a bottleneck, and the first thing you say to each other will be shouted over a tout. Meet an hour before doors instead, somewhere a few minutes up the road, and the whole night changes character.
Highgate Road is kind to this plan. The Southampton Arms, a small old fashioned ale and cider house a few minutes north of the Forum, is the sort of room where you can hear each other properly, with a scrap of garden behind it for dry evenings. Further up, close to the heath, the Bull and Last is a handsome old pub with a serious kitchen, better suited to eating early before a late start. Either way you walk down to the venue together with the conversation already under way, and arrive after the queue has done its worst.
Two practical points from the venue's own habits. The ticket gives the doors time, but stage times are often not published in advance and support acts rarely run early, so there is no prize for being first through the door unless you want a particular seat. And once you are inside, you stay inside: leaving and coming back in is not permitted, so the drink before is the drink before, not a plan to pop out between sets.
Floor or balcony
Downstairs is a flat standing floor, and it is where the energy is. It is also where you will not hear a word the other person says, and where anybody under about six feet spends the evening looking at shoulders. For a first evening with someone, the balcony is almost always the better choice.
Balcony places are normally sold as unreserved seats, first come first served, though the arrangement changes from show to show and the ticket is the only reliable guide. That is the one reason to be prompt: regulars who want to sit go straight up the stairs when the doors open, and the front rows of the balcony, with a clear line over the heads below, are the first to go. Those who arrive later tend to stand at the back of the balcony, which is still a better place to watch from than most of the floor.
Travel light, whichever level you choose. The cloakroom is small and busy at both ends of the night, and a coat checked at doors is a coat you will be queuing for at the precise moment everybody else is queuing for theirs.
Two thousand people and three stations
When the lights come up, most of the room turns south for Kentish Town station, two minutes away. It carries the Northern line and the Thameslink trains that run south through St Pancras and the City and north towards Luton, and on a full night it can be slow to get into. If you are heading south into town, the cleverer move is to walk the other way.
Tufnell Park is a ten minute walk away, straight up Fortess Road, on the same branch of the Northern line. Southbound trains stop there first and arrive at Kentish Town with the seats already taken, by you. It is a straightforward walk up a lit main road, and by the time you reach it the crowd at Kentish Town has usually cleared anyway.
Kentish Town West, on the London Overground, is roughly the same distance south west. It is the station for anybody heading across rather than into town: east to Camden Road, on the edge of Camden Town, and on towards Highbury, or west towards Hampstead Heath. At weekends the Northern line keeps going all night, and on the other five nights the buses down Kentish Town Road take up the slack, so nobody leaving the Forum is ever genuinely stranded; it is only a question of whether you spend the first half hour of the walk home in a queue or in conversation.
After the encore
This is where a gig night becomes the long way home, which is the booking this site built for exactly this shape of evening. Three hours at £700 holds the drink before doors, the whole bill and a late table or a walk afterwards. Two hours at £500 suits a shorter bill with a glass either side of it.
Uphill, towards Highgate and the heath, the road goes quiet quickly and a late table somewhere near the top of it is a pleasure. Downhill, Kentish Town Road runs straight back to Camden, a walk of about fifteen minutes that passes enough late kitchens to be useful and ends somewhere near the canal, which is covered in the guide to Camden Lock after the stalls shut. Tell the desk the doors time printed on the ticket, not the hour you hope the headliner appears, and say which way home you expect to go; if the show overruns, one message is enough to adjust the finish.
Who comes to the Forum
Danielle is anchored in Kentish Town and builds her evenings around this room. She treats the support act as part of the ticket rather than a delay, makes for the stairs the moment the doors open, and is dry company between songs without ever talking over one. She is one of the six women on the raven haired page, which also carries Angelika, who comes up from Camden, one stop south, and is happy to walk back down Kentish Town Road afterwards if the night is dry.
Lucy, the other Kentish Town name, is fast, funny and much happier eating a proper early dinner up by the heath than drinking quickly by the venue. Ask for her if the plan is food first, and she will turn the ten minute walk down Highgate Road to the doors into part of the evening. Verity on the evening desk can say which of the three has the night of your gig free.
Cross filed: most of the names on this sheet also sit in the raven haired drawer of the moodboard.