Exit, London's Most Famous Nightclub

It’s all over for London’s best-known nightclub.

Fabric, a cavernous venue founded in 1999 in the former cold storage of the city’s meat market, will no longer open to the public after its license was revoked by the local borough this week. The reason the council gave is drugs—tragically, two young men died there this summer of drug-related causes, one in June and one in August. The deaths of two otherwise healthy teenagers should of course be a cause for public concern, but defenders of Fabric, and of London nightlife in general, have nonetheless pointed out that a U.K. judge recently cited the club’s drug policy as “a beacon of best practice.” Some U.K. media have even alleged that the closure is part of a longer-term movement to free up more prime land for fresh international investment, and that Fabric’s situation is a bellwether showing the way the winds of redevelopment have long been blowing across Central London.