Whitby Goth Weekend began with an ad hoc get together of some dark-clad friends in a central Whitby pub. Fast-forward a year and, unable to keep up with the swelling crowds, the Elsinore pub was literally drunk dry over the course of the weekend, giving birth to the first official Whitby Goth Weekend (WGW).
Today, over twenty years later, the festival has become a major event in the goth calendar, drawing thousands of revellers from across the world to the blustery coastal town.
It was 31 October, and, like the famous slayer Eric Brooks (otherwise known as Blade), I had originally decided to begin researching my ‘V is for…’ chapter by making for WGW in search of vampires. I had hoped that Whitby, where Bram Stoker’s Dracula first set foot in England, would be a beacon for them over the Halloween weekend. Due to some poor preparation on my part, all of the hotels had already been booked up, so a friend’s aunt and uncle (whom I had never met) were putting me up at the last minute.
Wishing I had access to the wardrobe of my fourteen-year-old self during my three-month goth phase, I crammed every dark piece of clothing I owned into my car and hit the road. Within an hour of arriving, I found myself sipping wine in the living room of my hosts, them dressed exactly as a wholesome middle-aged couple should be, slippers and all; me dressed entirely in black lace, with fake blood running from the edges of my white-contact-lensed vampire eyes. We talked about the rain and the traffic on the M1. I bloody love this country.
The first stop on my vampire hunt is RAW, a nightclub in Whitby town centre. Crippled by a familiar, anxious nausea that grips me the first time I walk into one of these new worlds, I enter the club and take in the sea of black souls heaving around me. My pathetic attempt at goth attire makes me feel like a fraud and my ears pound with the sound of death metal. Self-consciously picking my way through the alarming crowd, I make for the bar to order a stiff drink.
I take a stool next to a guy wearing a leather corset, black eyeliner and leather trousers. He looks me up and down and locks his eyes on mine, his face void of expression. I give him one of my ‘I’m being polite, but I’m actually terrified of you’ smiles. I didn’t even know I had one of those.
‘Have you ever been to a fet night?’ he asks me, without a word of greeting, pouting his lips and flicking long greasy hair away from his austere face.
‘I… erm… I don’t know what that is,’ I confess, desperately regretting my choice of seat.
‘Fetish, my love,’ he says, over-pronouncing each word and leaning in closer, as if trying to sniff my neck. I back away and shudder.
Oh God. Had I made a mistake in coming here? Gone too far outside my comfort zone this time? I stand up and turn to leave, bumping straight into a very tall, three-piece suit with an elaborately styled moustache.
‘Lee!’ I squeal, hurling myself at him and engulfing him in a desperate hug. I had only met Lee once before, at a vampire boat party where I had been doing some initial ‘V is for…’ research a month earlier (more about that later), so my greeting was a tad overfamiliar.
‘What on earth are you doing here?’ He looks dumbfounded.
I feel a strange combination of relief and vulnerability; glad to see a familiar face, but dejected to have been exposed so early into the weekend by the only man in Whitby who knows I’m not a real goth. I decide to come clean.
‘Trying to find some vampires, of course,’ I say casually.
‘Well, I am sorry to disappoint you,’ he says, ‘but you won’t find many vampires here.’
‘Why not?’
‘They fell out with the Goth Weekend years ago,’ he says. ‘They don’t come here for Halloween any more. I think they have their own thing.’
I picture a Crips and Bloods-style showdown between the goths and the vampires in a graveyard, an organ playing the Death March as mist surrounds their platform boots.
‘But what you should really be doing this weekend,’ he continues, ‘is exploring the goth community, like I told you. Now that’s a subculture!’
Lee had tried to sell me on this the last time we met, but I wasn’t convinced. Are goths an interesting enough subculture to warrant a whole chapter? I take another sweep of the scene around me, of the shadowed forms pulsating against the wall of sound, and give an inward nod. Yup.
We head back to the bar, where a giant poster informs me that this evening’s event is a S.O.P.H.I.E. fundraiser, a charity very close to the heart of the goth community. I read the poster. Sophie Lancaster, a twenty-year-old goth, was brutally beaten by a group of youths when walking through a park in 2007. They called her a ‘mosher’ and left her to die in a pool of her own blood. My throat tightens.
I suddenly feel much more comfortable here, perhaps spurred by my guilt at being so dismissive, at thinking I am so different from these people, at making assumptions based on their fashion choices. But seeing this poster has told me which side I want to be on, and I decide at that moment to be less afraid.
Pushing into the throng surrounding the stage, where a painfully awful band are screaming and abusing their guitars, I decide to try and join in the swaying dance moves. I sway a bit too enthusiastically and bump into a guy wearing a long black jacket held together by three sets of handcuffs. His black lipstick and eye make-up are immaculate. He actually looks kind of hot.
‘God, sorry!’ I bumble.
‘What is that?!’ he says in horror, eyeballing the dress I’d bought in a rush the day before, hoping that it looked goth enough for me to blend in. ‘It looks like it’s from New Look!’
I laugh and motion for him to look at the label towards the back of my neck. He finds it, and steps back, his eyes wide with horror. ‘Oh God, I’m sooo sorry’ – his face gapes further – ‘I didn’t think it actually was!’
I wake up the next morning with the familiar dry mouth that seems to follow my first night in every new subculture. After throwing myself around the dance floor in RAW for what felt like minutes, but was actually hours, I had finally rolled home at 3 a.m. I recount the details of the previous evening to my hosts over breakfast, both of whom seem remarkably unfazed by my descriptions of the elaborate scenes, presumably desensitised by the goths’ returning presence in Whitby for the last two decades.
Not long after breakfast I dress in black riveted jeans (eBay), army boots (eBay) and a flimsy leather jacket (New Look, again), and brave the long, icy walk back into town. My destination is the Bizarre Bazaar, an alternative market so big it sprawls across three different venues. Thirty minutes later I arrive, frozen to my core, and enter a room that could easily be mistaken for Diagon Alley, the experience heightened by a musty smell of old clothes, books and incense.
I peruse the various stalls offering an arbitrary collection of treasures: old pocket watches, opera glasses, skulls, brass goggles, canes, horns, pendants, leather-bound journals, corsets, wigs and PVC fetware. See, I know what that is now.
Creative energy oozes from the costumes that surround me, resulting in an ethereal atmosphere that amplifies the visual effect of the stalls and their rambling array of wares. I watch a woman attempting to try on a pair of boots. She leans down to pick them up before realising, halfway down, that she can’t get anywhere near her feet because her leather corset is far too tight. She calls her friend over to help. He tries to kneel down in front of her, but he can’t get low enough because he has a huge gas cylinder on his back to power the propeller above his head as part of his steampunk costume. The two of them give up and collapse in giggles onto a nearby bench.
If you’re wondering what a steampunk costume is, wonder no more. A quick Google search as I walk around the room, studying the various costumes, helps me to identify the multiple genres within the wider goth community.
• Steampunk goths – think Around the World in Eighty Days
• Cybergoths – We Will Rock You the musical
• Lolita or ‘J’ goths – cutesy Japanese goth
• Trad goths – traditional Gothic period dress, often Victorian
• Fetish goth – PVC, whips and chains
• Corporate goths – three-piece pinstripe suits
• Hippie goths – tie-dye, tassels and piercings
Long-haired and dressed in a three-piece suit, American Tom has already published two books on steampunk, the predominant genre at this event. He has a stall in the bazaar, selling top hats adorned with driving goggles, pocket watches, taxidermy animals, leather cuffs, items of brass machinery, and even books on how to make your own steampunk gadgets.
‘Steampunk is a bit like science fiction,’ he explains to me, ‘but it’s an adventure in a speculative past rather than a speculative future. The most important thing for a steampunk costume is that it tells a story. You can get away with almost anything, but it needs to have a scientific explanation. For example’ – he points at a costume on the cover of one of his books that looks a bit like an imperial safari outfit, complete with a brass propeller and goggles – ‘you might say, “This is my Lord Featherstone Dinosaur-hunting outfit for an expedition to Venus.” Old pocket watches might be time-travel devices – hence the dinosaurs – and other old collected items can all be explained away as important props for the journey.’
‘Why is steampunk so popular all of a sudden?’ I ask, surprised by the number of top hats and backpacks with propellers I have seen gracing the corridors of the bazaar today.
He shrugs. ‘Well, goth did what it could do,’ he says. ‘There is only so much black you can wear. So a lot of goths jumped over to steampunk because it allowed for more creativity. You dress goth, but with steampunk, you actually become your character.’
I continue my circuit of the bazaar and linger by the stall of Doctor Geof, artist and author of Fetishman, a comic-book series with a healthy following. Through a cheeky face with mad hair and bushy sideburns, he spends ten minutes trying to convince me to devote a chapter to the fet scene.
‘There are different types of fet parties,’ he explains. ‘The more experienced among us will walk through the door knowing that they are here to participate in any number of… activities,’ he raises his eyebrows theatrically. ‘But there are also parties aimed just at those who are interested in the idea and want to see what it’s all about in a safe environment.’
He pauses, enjoying my innocence.
‘You are from London, no?’ he says. ‘So you must have heard of Torture Garden?’
There I was, thinking I was worldly and unshakeable, but this place makes me feel like I have grown up in a convent. I shake my head and lengthen my lips apologetically.
‘Oh, Lucy, really?’ Doctor Geof says, shaking his head, a grin progressing across his face. At that moment, a man with a very official-looking event-organiser badge steps in to join our conversation. All smiles, he wears thick-rimmed glasses and radiates warmth.
‘Hi, I’m Matt,’ the smiley man says, extending a hand. ‘You look new around here.’
‘Is it that obvious?’ I say, tugging at the sleeves of my ‘teenage fashion’-section leather jacket.
‘I’m writing a book and want to talk a bit about what it means to be a goth,’ I say, trying to steer the conversation back to my journalistic comfort zone.
‘Good question.’ He looks serious. ‘Well, goth is all about accepting people for who they are and not passing judgement,’ he says. ‘And this event is a celebration of non-conformity, diversity and freedom of expression.’ He looks pleased with his well-rehearsed answer.
Doctor Geof drags his eye from his drawings and looks up at Matt. ‘Where’s your girlfriend?’
‘She couldn’t make it this time,’ he replies chirpily, ‘it’s her five-year anniversary with her other boyfriend.’
‘Oh?’ I presume I’ve misheard.
‘My girlfriend is polyamorous,’ he says, as if telling me she has brown eyes.
‘Poly-what?’ I ask.
‘Polyamory?’ he says again, as if it might twig something for me. I look blank. ‘It’s the preference for multiple intimate relationships. Like polygamy but without the whole marriage thing. It’s pretty widely recognised.’ He smiles sweetly, trying very hard not to sound patronising. I like Matt.
‘Oh, OK,’ I say, trying to act cool. ‘How many of you are there in your relationship?’
‘Just three,’ he says. ‘I am good friends with the other boyfriend. She was with him already when we got together. Then when she decided that she wanted to bring me in, we all sat down together and discussed it. Worked out a rota system and everything. It was all very grown-up.’ He cocks his head. ‘It might seem a bit odd to other people, but it works for us.’
I take a few seconds to process this, wondering what being in a polyamorous relationship might be like. I could definitely see the pros, but what about the cons?
‘Do you ever feel insecure?’ I ask. ‘You know… like you are being compared to her other boyfriend?’
‘I would be lying if I said never.’ He looks as if his smile is painted on. ‘But it really isn’t a big issue for me. She and I are thinking of bringing another girl in for a threesome soon, but before we do, we’ll sit down and talk about it. It would have to work for everybody.’
My hangover is really starting to take hold, so I thank the two men and head up to Whitby Abbey for some fresh air. Today the abbey is playing host to a steampunk wedding, and the entrance is crowded with middle-aged men from the local camera clubs, lying in wait to get snaps of the extraordinary costumes against the dramatic ruins. I talk to one of the photographers, who shares his business card, and discover that it’s a tradition for some of the more extroverted goths to come up to the abbey at midday to parade before the photographers, who travel for hundreds of miles to take advantage of the spectacle. It is an unwritten rule that photographers first ask the goths if they mind having their picture taken, before passing them a card with a link for them to view the photos online.
Three old women sit on a park bench nearby eating sandwiches from a Tupperware box. They wear ankle-length dresses, sensible shoes and knitted cardigans under long cotton coats. I ask them what they think of ‘all of this’, waving loosely in the direction of the goths.
One of the ladies, who must have applied her bright blue eyeliner in an earthquake, looks up at me and smiles. ‘We think it’s wonderful,’ she says, offering me a plastic cup of grey tea from a thermos flask. I accept it gratefully, blowing the steam as we take in our surroundings.
We sit together for a while in silence.
‘We come out to look at the goths every year,’ another of the ladies explains after about ten minutes. ‘There is always so much to look at. You never know what you are going to see.’
I look at the women huddled together, eyes wide, and realise I’m surprised at how happy the local community seems to be about the twice-yearly influx of goths. I am sure the positive commercial impact they have on an otherwise sleepy winter town has something to do with it – perhaps my corporate self is creeping back in here – but it’s more than that. I think it’s the exhibition of it all, and the celebration of creativity and diversity. At the very least it’s a break from Sunday afternoon reruns of Keeping Up Appearances.
I pose the question of why the goths are liked by the locals to Lee when I meet up with him for a walk around the town later that afternoon.
‘Because we are all here to enjoy ourselves, and we never cause any trouble,’ he says. ‘Goths never fight – they might smudge their eyeliner.’
Although there was trouble once, he confesses, about ten years ago, when the residents found some graffiti on a church door. Even though the goths didn’t believe it was done by a member of their community – because the ‘tag’ was shoddy, and goths take pride in their artistry – they immediately took to the streets with buckets and raised four times the amount to pay for a new door within the first hour.
We stop for an ice cream. ‘I have a theory,’ Lee says, ‘that every goth has been bullied at some point in their lives. Either because they have been different, or they felt different.’ He takes a lick of his 99. ‘I was bullied as a child,’ he goes on. ‘Sent to a strict boarding school. It made me shy, and I developed a problem with anger.’ I find it hard to imagine Lee ever being angry.
‘Then when I went to university, I joined the Rock Society, and they invited me to the first WGW. It was a pivotal point in my life, and everything seemed to get better from then on. My personality just seemed to fit. I finally felt accepted among a group of people who were all looking for the same thing: acceptance.’
As we walk down the street together, I see him physically swell with pride at every greeting, his confidence and sense of belonging growing with every acknowledgement. He is a social butterfly among the goth community, and I hadn’t yet met anybody who didn’t at least know of him.
Lee’s look seems to be a big part of his identity, especially his meticulously curled-up moustache, rendering him instantly recognisable. So far, most of the goths I have met have been quite introverted by nature, and I know it’s a rather obvious interpretation, but I wonder if the costumes might be like some kind of second identity and way of generating confidence, a mask perhaps.
As I spend another hour reapplying my exaggerated dark make-up later that evening, I reflect on how unnatural and self-conscious I still feel in my goth gear. Perhaps it is the lack of authenticity that is affecting my self-assurance. I am an outsider pretending to fit in, and so my appearance is a disguise, rather than an outward expression of myself. In some ways, this is similar to my experiences in Essex, although with comfy boots instead of heels, light face powder instead of blusher, and lace hats with real animal skulls sewn into them instead of hair extensions. But I am drawn to the goth aesthetic more than I was drawn to the TOWIE look; I value the creativity more and find the community much more interesting, perhaps because it is less mainstream. I was neither popular nor unpopular at school, but I have always been more on the alternative side of things, so perhaps I feel less threatened by a group of self-professed underdogs than I did when hanging out with the ‘cool kids’ in TOWIE. I’m sure a psychiatrist would have a field day with all of this.
My mood is lifted when I swing by the Little Angel pub en route to the formal event. I arrive knowing nobody, as usual, and manage to make a whole new group of friends within about five minutes. Goths are such friendly and approachable people, belying their often unnerving appearance, and it still surprises me every time someone who looks half dead smiles at me and offers a warm ‘hello’.
As well as the strange dichotomy of being both scary-looking and friendly, another important factor that binds the goth community together is music, and WGW is host to a series of live music events over the course of the weekend. Bands such as Diary of Dreams (‘dark wave’ – I have no idea what that means), Bella Morte (‘metal/death rock’) and Method Cell (‘dark synth-pop’ – again, no idea whatsoever) attract the crowds and justify the entrance fees.
Once inside the formal event space, next to where I’d been verbally deflowered at the Bizarre Bazaar, I found myself enthralled by the way the goths dance. The moves are free-flowing and expressive; hands wave as if casting spells and heads circle slowly on shoulders as if trying to avoid angry bees. When the guitars kick in, the spells and the bees dissipate, and everyone jumps. A lot.
The gathering in the foyer outside the live music room is as big as the crowd inside, demonstrating that music isn’t the only reason people come here. I run this observation past Crimson, a professional fire-eater and WGW regular, who nods his head vigorously, throwing his red fedora into a frenzy.
‘Coming to Whitby twice a year is like going to a family reunion,’ he tells me. ‘I always feel so loved and accepted here.’
Wearing a red three-piece suit, with long hair plaited at the nape of his neck, Crimson tells me about the various traditions that run from Thursday to Monday over every WGW.
Maffball, he explains, is played on the Sunday evening, the night of the goth beach party, which involves stripping down to your pants, lighting a paraffin-soaked toilet roll and hurling it at members of the opposing team, like an extreme version of dodgeball.
Although the goth beach party is technically illegal, police patrol the surrounding area every hour to ensure there is no trouble. Crimson explains that this is the result of some trouble a few years back when a couple of local yobs came down to the beach and threatened to kill the goths. The police came to the beach and told the goths that because they come here twice a year, cause no trouble and leave the beach cleaner than they find it, they will make sure this doesn’t happen again. Given how polite and friendly I have found this community to be so far, I can quite believe it.
Before the beach party, there is always a football match in the local stadium: Whitby Gazette FC versus Goth FC. The goths have only won once in the history of the tradition, but it is always played in high spirits, complete with heckling and printed supporters’ scarves.
Crimson tells me about a friend of his, Endel Öpik (aka Tal Stoneheart), who tragically died after catching pneumonia following one of the goth weekends. He was six foot eight with long blond hair, giving him the look of a Viking. The goth community was so saddened by the death of their dear friend that they decided to give him the first Viking funeral in the UK for 800 years. Having built a replica Viking longboat, they placed Tal’s ashes into the middle before sending it out into the ocean and igniting it with flaming arrows. The funeral was orchestrated to live music, and the party continued long into the night, just as Tal would have wanted.
His brother, Lembit Öpik, a Liberal Democrat MP, was quoted in a local paper saying that Endel’s wishes were for a traditional Viking funeral, adding, ‘He really felt a sense of belonging in Whitby at the goth festival.’
Still enjoying the imagery of Crimson’s stories, I thank him and head for the bar (as always), sliding my way to the front beside a strikingly beautiful woman.
I ask her name.
‘Zarah,’ she tells me.
Carrying herself in a modest and understated manner, Zarah has long dark silky hair that reaches her waist, flawless skin and a slight, feminine frame. To Zarah, I learn as we drink, the world through the lens of this current zeitgeist is a little disappointing. She would rather live in the world of film and literature, a fantasy world perhaps, in which society could have taken a different path, had we not become so closely wedded to science; a path in which fairies and corsets are as accepted a part of our society as maths and tracksuits.
I am beginning to understand why people like Zarah might feel a little alien in the mundane world (mundane being a word goths use to describe all that isn’t goth) and why they might instead choose to absorb themselves into a society that accepts their desire to express themselves differently. She too believes that most goths have felt in some way different or alone in their lives, which is why they seek solace in a community where they are free to be different, where creativity in their appearance is lauded and where they don’t have to look a certain way to be popular.
Having said that, despite claiming to be different and individual, I can’t help but notice that a lot of the goths I have met this weekend look very similar and tend to like very similar music. So perhaps the goth look is fundamentally a rejection of the most widely accepted aesthetic, marking them out as recognisable to one another, the rebellion taking the form of a community uniform that makes them feel safe and offers an unconditional sense of belonging.
The following morning I wake up, pack away my things and head for the road, feeling more than a little relieved. I love the people, the spectacle, the creativity, but after only three days I am already over wearing black and committing to the hour-long ritual of piling on eyeliner and trying to do something interesting and goth-like with my hair. I’m just so crap at it. I even tried buying a mini purple pirate hat with a veil at the bazaar to jazz up my look, but I couldn’t get the angle right and ended up looking like a complete twat. I’ve had a lot of fun here, but I have to face facts: I would make a pretty pathetic goth.