Once famous for her debauched club night FIST, Suzie Krueger is now credited with putting the ‘funk into fetish’ with your dirty dance club Hard On.
QXMEN: Queen of Sleaze, Doyenne of the down-and-dirty, Miss Krueger, Suzie… Which do you prefer?
SK: I love the Queen of Sleaze title!
You started the infamous fetish club FIST back in 1994 at the Chunnel Club in London’s Vauxhall. Over nine hedonistic years the club grew in popularity, moving from one sleaze den to the next until it finally parked its lube-soaked arse at Imperial Gardens in Camberwell. Then in December 2002 it all came to an abrupt end… WTF happened?
An ‘anonymous’ person wrote an extremely exaggerated letter regarding the going ons at FIST and sent it to all and sundry, Scotland Yard, the
Chief Inspector of the local police station (who turned out to be a right homophobe) and to everyone on Southwark Council. Believe me, this letter (which was shown to me during the investigation) was full of lies and definitely worded in way to get us shut down.
It sparked an undercover investigation by four police officers attending FIST in their rubber gear… LOL I wonder what they really got up too?! Anyway they didn’t see much, but enough for them to put pressure on the venue’s owner to stop having anymore FIST parties.
In 2003 you dragged the fetish clubbing scene kicking and screaming into the 21st Century and started up Hard On. By doing so you’ve managed to create a club where die hard, old school fetishists and youngsters just starting out on the fetish scene appear to party in perfect harmony… How on earth did you manage this?
Oh thank you! We try to keep up with what our customers would enjoy when attending Hard On. We also altered our marketing a bit and made some adjustments to the ‘live’ shows and play areas.
A couple of years ago you altered Hard On’s strict dress code rules to include sports kit as the ‘look’ is now considered a fetish… Were you happy about doing this?
Actually it took us a while to alter the dress code to include sports kit.
It definitely had a negative reaction to our long standing customers, but in order to bring fresh new faces to the club we felt it was best to include sports kit fetishists. Yes am very happy to have done this in the end as you should see the hotties that come to Hard On in their sports wear!
So the change provoked some objections from the staunch leather and rubber fetishists who’ve been coming to FIST and then Hard On for years then?
Yes a bit, and I’m sure we lost some of those guys along the way, but we’re still going after 10 years and now with loads of new younger guys just starting out on the fetish scene.
We do try to please everyone but it’s just not possible.
Would you say that the fetish scene has changed for the better or for the worse?
Hmmm I would say that it’s much more mainstream these days than when I first started FIST back in 1994. The fetish scene though is now HUGE and all over Europe. So I would say that is a good thing!
Over the years there’s been some pretty hardcore live performances at both FIST and at Hard On. Is there one that stands out in your memory that you remember thinking ‘Oh shit. I didn’t realise he was going to do that!’?
There have been quite a few…. One in particular when we were doing a FIST party in Paris that involved a scarification on performance artist Franko B. He went on to pull the French national flag out of his arse and I then threw a bucket of piss all over him that I‘d collected from the audience. The flag bit didn’t go down too well… LOL
You’ve taken Hard On overseas to places like Barcelona, Amsterdam and Antwerp… How do our European counterparts compare to the British fetish clubbers?
I love the parties in Europe for sure, but who ever said that the British were reserved?! Not in our club J
You run Hard On at Union every month, once a year you get together with Rob Rutt and put on Europe’s biggest leather party, Hotwired, you add a touch of sleaze to London’s HustlaBall with the Hard On Playroom, there’s a Hard On online store… What next?
At the moment I’m just focussing on my European parties. We’ve just come back from a very successful closing party for Antwerp Leather Pride.
Oh, actually there is a new project! At this month’s Hard On we’re launching a new brand of sexual enhancements for men, that’s available at all Prowler stores and Expectations.
You have a reputation as being (to put it nicely) a pretty tough cookie… Tell us something that shows you have a soft and cuddly side too.
Yep, you gotta be a tough cookie in this business or people will walk all over you.
Soft n cuddly… Never LOL.
Oh, I do anything to help others.
Finally Suzie Krueger, the Queen of Sleaze, here are Your quick ones…
Debauched night out or quiet night in?
A quiet night in!
Leather or rubber?
Rubber! (it stretches).
Thigh high boots or trainers?
20 hole black DM’s.
Tequila Slammers or Green Tea?
Neither! Water or Coke.
Rom com or slasher movie?
I like a fucked up movie alright, like the French film Irreversible or
The Adjuster. That new movie The Wolf of Wall Street is brilliant!
• Hard On is on Saturday March 15th at Union, 66 Albert Embankment Vauxhall, London SE1 7TP