As one of the co-promoters of Soul in the City I thought I might say a few words here.
We've been running SITC for 3 & 1/2 years now, in 4 different venues. 3 have had a dance floor and one didn't. At the end of our dance floorless run we got down to 15 attendees including us 4 Djs, but we soldiered on because everybody who did come enjoyed having a few beers whilst listening to some good music. At the start of the KFC adverts we were approached by Nylon, a City night club to run a weekly Northern night. We, quite rightly we felt, countered their proposal and offered to run a monthly night. We were there 7 months and attendances were very good (peaking at over 100). They closed down and we found a new venue, Vivo, just the other side of Cheapside, where we've been ever since. It has a great dancefloor and although the venue is smaller than Nylon, it has quite a lot of seating and so can look quite empty early on if no one's dancing, but once people are up on the floor the atmosphere changes completely.
Now onto attendances in general. My feeling is that, as the last night at These Old Shoes proved people will come out to a midweek do in London in numbers, but the general apathy level in London, means that a lot of people don't bother. TOS for the last year of it's life soldiered on with fairly low attendances and yet the last night was rammed. As Rbman said above, we must use our nights or lose them. Everyone you speak to regrets the demise of TOS, but how many made the effort? Clashing of dates is a cardinal sin, this must surely be a case of 'let's work together'. Travelling to and from dos can be a real pain if you don't drive or, like me, enjoy a few beers with your soul music, but it's quite often possible to blag a lift off of one of those who do drive. I got a lift home from Hatfield to Bromley, Kent the other week & to and from Brighton at the weekend, & gave 2 people a lift home from SITC on Wednesday, so it is possible.
I hope that SITC isn't considered a dead duck, as we put a lot of work into promoting the night and play a good spread of Northern Soul of all genres. As DJs, you will quite often find us asked to DJ at various other venues, both at home and occasionally abroad, so hopefully we're doing something right.
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the quite large number of Soul Sourcers who came along on Wednesday for turning up and hope that you all had a good time at Vivo and that we'll see you again soon.