# The London Alternative Market (LAM) and Torture Garden > The London Alternative Market, known as LAM, and Torture Garden or TG: what each one is, the dress codes, the etiquette, and which suits a first-timer. - Canonical URL: https://consensualspanking.co.uk/uk/london-events/ - Section: UK - Updated: November 2026 (2026-11-01) - Audience: consenting adults over 18 only. Everything on this site concerns consenting adults over 18. People ask which event to try first, and the honest answer is that these two sit at opposite ends of the scale. One is a daytime market and evening play party where you can turn up in jeans. The other is a nightclub that will turn you away at the door if you do. --- ## In short - The London Alternative Market, universally called LAM, runs monthly on a Sunday afternoon, needs no fetish dress, and is safe to attend alone. It is the gentlest first event in the country. - Torture Garden, usually shortened to TG, has run since 1990 and enforces a strict dress code at the door. Ordinary clothes will not get you in. - LAM's evening afterparty is a separate ticket and a play space, with strict published rules, no photography, and immediate ejection for unwanted advances. - Neither is a spanking event specifically, and details change constantly. Check the current listing before you go. A word about what I can and cannot tell you first, because it matters here more than on most pages. I have attended the London Alternative Market for years and everything I say about it is first-hand. I have never been to Torture Garden. What is below about that one comes from people I trust who go regularly and from what the organisers say publicly, and I have kept it to the things several of them told me independently. > **Check before you go.** Venues, prices, dates and door policies all change, and a page like this ages badly. Everything here was true at the time of writing and none of it is a substitute for the current listing. If you are travelling any distance, check that the event is running on the day you think it is. ## The London Alternative Market, or LAM Almost nobody says the full name. It is LAM, and it is a market, in the daytime, on a Sunday. It has run monthly since 2006 and it is the event I send people to when they have never been to anything and are frightened of the whole idea. The shape of it is stalls, and the stall holders are mostly people who make the things themselves. Canes, straps, paddles, leather, latex, restraints, and a great deal that has nothing to do with anything on this site. You can pick things up, ask what the difference is between two canes that look identical, and get a straight answer from the person who cut them. Several traders will make something to your specification if you ask. There are workshops through the afternoon, and they are a large part of why I keep recommending the place. Beginners' sessions run regularly, and the programme has covered mental health, safe practice and consent, along with introductions to rope bondage and shibari. They are taught rather than performed, you can sit at the back and say nothing, and an hour in one is worth a great deal of reading. Rope is not a subject this site covers, and a beginners' session run by somebody competent is the sensible way into it rather than a video. Book early. The workshops in particular fill up quickly, and the beginners' ones go first because they are the ones everybody wants. Buying for both the event and any workshop well ahead of the day is the difference between going to the thing you wanted and standing at the back of something else. It is also cheaper in advance than on the door. The afterparty in the evening is a separate ticket and a separate decision, and you can choose to attend or to leave when the market finishes in the early evening. It is a play space, so things do happen there, but it runs under strict published rules on nudity and on sexual activity, and those rules are the reason I am comfortable pointing a beginner at it. Knowing in advance that there is a firm line, and that the people running the room will enforce it, takes away most of what makes a first play space frightening. The general etiquette is on [play parties and clubs](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/uk/play-parties-and-clubs/), and it applies here in full. You can play in public there if you want to, and if the idea of being seen does not put you off, it is one of the better places in the country to meet somebody and have a first spanking. I have taken a good number of people to LAM who had never done any of this, and given several of them their first one. It is not a dramatic business. It usually happens in a corner of a room with other people getting on with their own evening nearby. The bit that sounds strange until you have seen it is the asking. It works roughly the way asking somebody to dance worked at a function two generations ago: you go over, you say something direct and slightly formal, and the answer is yes or no and neither one is a drama. Would you like a dance, and would you like a spanking, occupy the same social slot. A first-timer reads that sentence and assumes I am joking. I am not, and once you have watched it happen a few times it stops seeming odd and starts seeming sensible, because saying the thing out loud is exactly what stops anybody having to guess. Two things make that possible. There is a strict no photography policy, which is standard at kink events everywhere and is enforced. And there is a discretion norm that everyone takes seriously: what happens at LAM stays at LAM, and you will not be discussed on Monday by people who saw you on Sunday. A great many of the people in that room have jobs that would not survive being talked about either, which is why the rule holds. The evening runs to about eleven, and it usually starts winding down half an hour or so before that, because a good part of the room is travelling. People come from all over the country for it and a few come from other countries entirely, which is worth knowing for two reasons: it is why booking ahead matters, and it is why the crowd is broader than a London event has any right to be. Three things make the market itself the right first event. There is no dress code, and plenty of people, including me, are in ordinary clothes, so nobody is looking at you. Nothing sexual happens, indeed it is not allowed to, and it is not that kind of event. And the market part is over by the early evening, so you can do the whole thing, buy something, talk to people, and be on a train home before the play space has even opened. Nobody notices you leaving and nobody asks why. The other thing I would say, having watched it for years, is that the crowd is genuinely welcoming to people who have never been to anything. Nobody is assessed at the door and nobody is quietly ranked once they are in. It is entirely safe to go on your own whatever your gender and whatever your orientation, and a good number of people there are on their own, which is why turning up alone attracts no attention at all. It is also about as inclusive a room as I have been in. Ages run from people in their twenties to people well into their seventies, every body type is present and unremarkable, and gender and orientation cover the full spread without any of it being a topic. Disabled people are there and welcomed rather than grudgingly accommodated. Couples, singles, people who came with a friend, people who came to buy a hairbrush and go home. The fear that it will be a room full of beautiful twenty-somethings in latex, and that you will be the wrong age or the wrong shape or the wrong sort of person to be there, is the commonest thing newcomers tell me afterwards they had wrong. Nor is everybody there a practitioner. A good share of any afternoon is people who are curious and have not done anything, and a fair number are straightforwardly vanilla and come for the atmosphere and the company: partners of people who are into it, friends who got dragged along and now come anyway, people who like the craftsmanship on the stalls. Nobody is checked at the door for sufficient interest. If you are worried that you are not into it enough to have earned a place in the room, you can put that down. The worry I hear most from women who have not been is about unwanted advances, and a general reassurance would be no use. That sort of thing is taken extremely seriously. The security staff are numerous, visible and good at the job, and somebody who pesters people after being told to stop is removed on the spot rather than spoken to and given another chance. It is not a warning and it is not a quiet word. They are put out, and they do not come back: a transgression of that kind earns a lifetime ban, and everybody who goes regularly knows it. Here is the comparison I use, because it turns the intuition the right way up. Think about your odds of ending up in an unwanted confrontation in a busy London pub on a Friday night, and then think about your odds of the same thing in a boxing club. The boxing club is full of people who could hurt you and the pub is not, so the pub feels safer. It is not. The boxing club has rules, protocols, somebody in charge of the room and a shared understanding of what is and is not allowed to happen. The pub has none of those, which is precisely why things go wrong there. A kink event is the boxing club. Consent is the entire subject matter, everybody present has thought about it more than the general population ever has, and there is a structure for dealing with the person who does not. That is counterintuitive if you are new, and it is the single most useful thing I can tell you: you are considerably less likely to be put in a bad position at LAM than at your local on a Saturday. There is normally a short orientation early in the afternoon for people who have not been before, and I would take it. Not because the place is confusing, but because it gives you a reason to be standing somewhere with other newcomers rather than working out what to do with your hands. What I would actually tell you to do on a first visit: go alone if you have nobody to go with, buy one small thing so you have had a conversation with a stranger about it out loud, and leave when you have had enough. Nobody will notice you arrive and nobody will notice you go, which is the best thing about it. ## Torture Garden, or TG A different proposition entirely, and the one everybody has heard of. It has run since 1990, it is the largest fetish club night in the country, and its London events run to hundreds and sometimes a couple of thousand people across multiple rooms: dancefloors, stage shows and cabaret, with play areas as part of the picture rather than the whole of it. The dress code is the thing to understand before anything else. It is fetish, rubber, latex, leather, PVC, body art, drag or serious fantasy costume, and it is enforced at the door rather than suggested on the website. Street clothes, ordinary club clothes and a t-shirt will see you turned away, having paid for a ticket and travelled. The way the organisers have put it over the years is that if you could wear the outfit to another event without being stared at, it is not enough. Plan the outfit before you buy the ticket, and if you are borrowing or hiring, do it early. The thing my friends say most often, and they all say it, is that a large share of any TG crowd is there to look. It is a spectacle as much as a play space, and people who arrive expecting a room full of negotiated scenes are surprised by how much of it is a very well dressed nightclub. That is not a criticism. It is simply worth knowing so you can decide whether it is what you want. The published rules are strict on consent, with explicit permission required before touching anybody and a zero tolerance line on harassment that ends in ejection. Everyone I know who goes says the staffing is taken seriously. That said, a dark, loud, crowded room is a harder environment to negotiate anything in than a market on a Sunday afternoon, which is the practical reason I would not send a first-timer there. ## Etiquette, which is the same at both (and should be obvious if you think about it) - Ask before touching anybody, and that includes their outfit, their hair and anything they are carrying. The rule is absolute and it is the one newcomers break. - Never interrupt a scene, never comment on one, and do not stand close enough to be part of it. Watching from a reasonable distance is usually fine and joining the audience of somebody who has not invited one is not. - Phones away. Photography is generally forbidden and the reason is that half the room has a job that would not survive a picture. - Take no as a complete answer, first time, without a follow-up question. See [red flags](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/red-flags/). - Do not negotiate anything serious in a loud room. Agree it somewhere you can hear each other, or agree it another day. See [negotiation](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/negotiation/). - Drink lightly or not at all, particularly if you might play. See [drink and drugs](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/drink-and-drugs/). The fuller version of how parties work, including dungeon monitors and the business of aftercare somewhere with nowhere quiet to sit, is at [play parties and clubs](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/uk/play-parties-and-clubs/). ## Which one, if you are choosing If you have never been to anything: LAM, without hesitation. Safe, incredibly beginner friendly, starts during the daytime, no costume, no pressure, nothing sexual, and you can leave after twenty minutes having still achieved the thing, which is finding out that these are ordinary people in an ordinary room. If you want a night out, you like dressing up, and the spectacle appeals: Torture Garden, once you have sorted the outfit, and ideally with somebody who has been before. And if what you actually want is to meet people who are specifically into spanking rather than kink in general, neither is the shortest route. That is what [munches](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/uk/munches/) are for, and there is more on finding people at [finding a partner](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/uk/finding-a-partner/) and [the scene outside London](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/uk/outside-london/). ## Read next - [Munches and meeting people in person](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/uk/munches/) - [Play parties and clubs](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/uk/play-parties-and-clubs/) - [The London scene](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/uk/london-scene/) - [Meeting safely](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/meeting-safely/) - [Fiction: the first Sunday](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/fiction/the-first-sunday/) ## Common questions ### What is LAM, the London Alternative Market? LAM, short for the London Alternative Market, is a monthly daytime fetish market in London, running since 2006, where mostly independent makers sell gear from stalls alongside workshops and a social crowd. Fetish dress is not required and nothing sexual happens on the market floor. There is a separate evening afterparty where play does happen, run under strict published rules on nudity and sexual activity. For somebody who has never been to anything, it is the least intimidating way into the scene in this country. ### Do you have to dress up for Torture Garden? Yes, and the door staff enforce it. The dress code is fetish, rubber, leather, PVC, body art, drag or full fantasy, and ordinary club clothes or a cotton t-shirt will not get you in. The organisers have put it as: if you could wear the outfit to another event without being stared at, it is not enough. ### Are these events about spanking? Neither is a spanking event as such. The market is where you buy the implements and meet people, and Torture Garden is a large fetish club night where impact play is one thing among many. If spanking specifically is what you are after, a munch or a specialist party will serve you better, though both events are perfectly good places to meet people who are into it.