Pussy Palace 1985 Video -
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.
Jules locked the door at 6 AM. He left a single VHS tape on the counter, unlabeled. No one knows what was on it. Palace Video is gone now. The building is a Pret a Manger. But every so often, a certain kind of Londoner—too young to have been there—will find a grainy, unmarked tape at a car boot sale. Or hear a rumor of a password from 1985 that still works somewhere. Pussy Palace 1985 Video
You didn’t join Palace. You were invited. The man behind the counter was Julian “Jules” Thorne —a former art-school provocateur with a lazy eye and a genius for finding films that made the BBFC blush. He wore a Japanese kimono over a torn Sex Pistols T-shirt, and he never smiled. But when you asked for a recommendation, he’d slide a clamshell case across the counter without a word. Because Palace wasn’t a shop
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 . He left a single VHS tape on the counter, unlabeled
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.
The last night was November 30, 1985. They played The Wizard of Oz synced to Dark Side of the Moon —and then a final, silent film: Man with a Movie Camera (1929). No dialogue. Just life.