Memory lane: 25 years of Propaganda, Hong Kong gay nightlife bastion

It’s a midweek afternoon in Central and Lawrence Ho and Steven Hui are picking their way through the rubble that surrounds them and it's bringing back half a lifetime worth of memories.

“It does feel strange,” Ho says as he stops for a moment to take in the scene. “Over there was where we danced, and then you’d come over here when you felt like being a little bit more quiet. It’s a bit sad in here now with all this rubbish everywhere. We always made sure the place was so glamorous.”

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We’re inside the space that was formerly Propaganda, the gay club that became a local institution. Through two incarnations over 25 years, the club was never less than flamboyant until it closed on February 13.

Workmen moved in the next day, so the memories of that former life are all that remain in the basement of 1 Hollywood Road. But in their minds’ eye, the two club owners still see the venue in its heyday – packed to the rafters and thrilling to cameo appearances from the likes of Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing, Boy George and Faye Wong.

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“We were both young when we started – 25 and fresh out of college. If you want to know what I’m most proud of, it’s the fact that we gave people a place to gather with their friends,” says Hui. “Everyone wants to feel like they belong somewhere and we always worked hard to make people feel that.”

In Hong Kong’s transient nightclub scene, there were few clubs as long-lived, and fewer still that catered to a specific community.