The Vaults
Holy crap. The Vaults in London near Waterloo. Go.
If you take nothing else from reading these ramblings, take that! I feel like I’m plummeting from cloud nine with a demented smile on my face.
(Don’t you love when someone hypes an experience whilst giving little to no context whatsoever? Buckle up…)
On February 1st, I decided to Google “Things to do in London in February”. I truly wasn’t trying to full type-A or overplan my life. In all honesty, I expected my Google search to display only a short, sad list of results that would take me mere moments to become bored with before I turned my attention to TikTok for the next hour. Alas, and to my great surprise, I was wrong.
Upon this list I found scores and scores of concerts (pun absolutely intended), food festivals, beer festivals, Super Bowl watch parties, and local shows. The latter immediately set off alarm bells in my mind. I searched through the list of shows and saw a few “one-man” comedy features at a place called The Vaults. Officially, my “Phoebe Waller Bridge” alarms were in full def-con mode. I promptly found a one-man show that spoke to me - a comedy about a drag queen’s side-gig during the pandemic - and booked a ticket.
Fast forward to tonight and my official first sighting of The Vaults near Waterloo. To an onlooker leaving the nearby Waterloo bus station, your first impression will most likely be a nighttime view of what looks like a corporate setting for a mogul movie. Also, go at night, trust me. Walking a few blocks, you won’t see much except closed skyscrapers, tall apartment buildings and heavy traffic. After about five minutes, in a hidden and slightly sketchy alley, you’ll turn and your view will drastically change. There, in the heart of The City, is an abandoned subway tunnel system filled to the brim with gorgeous graffiti art, bars, small restaurants and a theater. I. Shit. You. Not. It’s breathtaking.
The graffiti art in the vaults seems ever-changing. As I walked through, I remember seeing an older man, probably in his early 40’s, as he was sitting back with a smirk on his face, looking down at the ground. Following his gaze, I saw two small (maybe 10 years old) boys, cozied up in their winter jackets, laying belly-down on the ground, sketch pads in hand and gazing up to the wall. After a moment of watching this scene, and the mural the group of unrelated people were studying, I heard the boys asking questions about technique and color. They were learning the graffiti artists' methods. If I had had time to lie down and join, I would have!
Toward the end of the Vault tunnels was my destination - a theater festival. It was an odd and rowdy offshoot of the main tunnel, but once I grasped what was happening, it was truly epic. You enter a side tunnel and find a large chalkboard, barely illuminated by string lights, with a bar next to it and eager twenty-somethings answering questions in front of it. You choose what show(s) you want to see for the fest and hope the person in front of you didn’t snag the last of twenty tickets to said show. Each performance is about an hour long, and shows seem to replay once every hour and a half until midnight - it’s an all night affair!
Walking into the performance space was a whole new spectacle. The show I saw was in a room maybe 600 sq ft in size. Small wooden benches held groups of three and everything was illuminated by floor lamps of beautiful purples and greens or tiny, unobtrusive string lights. I spoke to the two people on my bench and got the immediate sense that most people in the audience tonight were a friend of the actor or a friend of a friend or a friend of the hairdresser mentioned in the show (etc., etc.,).
The show was amazing. I wouldn’t spoil it for the world, but it was called Wasteman, written by and starring Joe Leather. It’s based loosely on his real life. It nearly brought me to tears. His voice and sense of storytelling was so authentic and immersive that even writing this, I feel I am moved to write in his style. 20/10, would see it over and over again.
After the show, Joe came back onstage and informed us that the proceeds from the ticket sales weren’t going to him, but were going to try and keep the Vault Festival open for coming years and coming creators. He also mentioned that a percentage of all alcohol bought at the Vault bars would go to preserving this festival as well. You should have seen the immediate funneling to the bars at that.
I ended the night emerging from the graffiti lined tunnels (the kids and artists no longer around at such a late hour) and finding myself back out on the skyscraper lined streets. It was drizzling, though it feels like that never really stops here. The cars and glass buildings seemed wrong compared to The Vaults now - too noisy, too clean.
I found my bus home, shook off the rain from my coat, climbed the double-decker stairs and found a solitary seat. I texted three people immediately - Evan and two friends in London. I reported to each, “I HAVE to take you to The Vaults.”. Then, as the bus lurched from the station, heavy pitter-patters now hitting the bus roof, I opened my notes app and began to write this entry.
What a place.
Cheers,
e