Naked City

Day Festival

11 SEPTEMBER 2021

Beckenham Place Park

£68.60 (final release)

Naked City is a day festival based in Beckenham Palace Park. Running since 2019 (with the obvious absence of last year), it has a wide range of genres, from dub to disco, jazz to techno. They describe the line up as an expression of how London makes us feel, representing the true soul of the city. Given the diverse genres, contrast in areas and 4 stages, and the fact that the festival is family-friendly, it does have a very well-rounded, inclusive feel to it. Sort of how I see London on a good day.

image not my own

First of all, I thought the journey from Seven Sisters to Beckenham Junction was going to be an absolute nightmare, but it only took us an hour. A short ride on the blue bullet to Victoria, followed by a pretty empty and pleasant 30-minute train journey and we were on the total other side of London, gotta love TFL, eh? The walk from the station to the park is a short 15 minutes, through some very fancy houses and lovely roads, so much so that we started discussing if living in Beckenham would be such a bad idea after all. The park itself is absolutely gorgeous, with a large white mansion, a swimming lake, and plenty of green space and rolling hills. Ok, so the weather really was on our side which probably helped everything seem a bit more pleasant, but nonetheless I was still surprised.

Onto the queue: of which there was none. Compared to the hour’s wait to get into Maiden Voyage, this was an absolute breeze and took no time at all. The staff were super friendly, joking about the weather as they searched my bag in a thorough but not excessive way. We arrived at around 2pm – much earlier than Maiden Voyage which probably contributed to our seamless entrance, and once we were in there were no queues for the bars or the loos in any of their 3 locations. Immediately we noticed that there were way more families here – positioned mostly around the main stage, sat down sampling some of the street food on offer – there was even a tea van… Walking further, we found the more lively crowd in the ‘Something Else’ stage – a typical, large festival tent, where Mungo’s Hi-Fi were playing an early set.

I was initially a bit discombobulated with the linear layout of the festival – everything was in one long line, on a slow incline until you reached the final stage. This is different to one large and often circular open space, typical of usual festivals – not a bad thing, just different. After some pretty poor food at Maiden Voyage, I wasn’t expecting much from the grub options here – but they were infinitely better! A choice of fresh pasta, bao buns, duck burgers, Indian street food and more, all reasonably priced, big portioned and smelling great. At around 5pm we caved and went for some duck burgers – not a patch on the legendary duck burger from the Frenchie stall at Southbank Market, but still really tasty.

image not my own

Admittedly, when we first arrived the music was a little slow and a little samey – we went from the Something Else stage to The Bunker to the Krankbrother stage and everything sounded the same. Whatsmore, whilst the entrance into the festival was so calm, we had to get into a large and pretty aggressive penguin huddle in order to enter the Krankbrother stage. They did eventually enforce a one-way system which helped a little, but the queue and stampede attitude of people in it definitely put us off. After around half an hour here we left as the bar queue was ridiculous, knowing we would probably never return. After this, we spent pretty much the rest of the day at The Bunker – a fantastic stage, set in a slight woodland with brilliant lighting and creative decoration. This stage was rich with some of the best acts of the whole day; from disco dancing to Hunee, through to the energy that Calibre and LTJ Bukem bring to Drum and Bass. Although the festival was really nice, we did definitely need some really good sets to liven things up after a slow start, to make us feel like we were actually at a festival and not a really expensive day at the park. These three acts brought it home and those last 4 hours totally made up for any doubt I had in my mind beforehand.

The journey home was easy, despite making us walk a slightly longer way around (to avoid those posh houses), we managed to get on a train with a 2-minute grace period and every single one of us got a seat. Overall, Naked City is a really good day out – the location is beautiful, the food is tasty, the organisation is well managed. Is it a place to go be as hedonistic and wild as you might do at other festivals? Probably not, but still definitely worth a visit.

OVERALL RATING: ****

https://nakedcityfestival.com/