A popular Moscow gay club that shut down earlier this year after a series of threats and attacks will reopen at a new location outside the city centre, The Calvert Journal reports.
Central Station will now be located south of the city, near Avtozavodskaya metro station, and will feature a large dancefloor, a lounge area and a summer terrace. In a statement about the reopening, Club CEO Andrei Lischinsky says the “concept of the previous Central Station is not lost and is even more clearly embodied in the new project. The goal is to give everyone what they want.” The club will keep its original name.
Lischinsky had resigned in February, noting that the previous venue had been raided several times in a bid to intimidate patrons and that he was “tired of fighting.” In November, Queer Russia reported that shots were fired in one attack on the club. A week after that incident, Central Station came under attack again with the release of an unspecified “harmful gas” on the premises. Many of the 500 people who were in the club at the time required medical attention. In one of the last incidents before the club’s closure, about 100 men broke in, damaged the ceiling and stole equipment.
Lischinsky said he had lodged dozens of complaints with city police about homophobic attacks on the club but claimed authorities failed to investigate them.
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