A few years ago I got into a dispute over whether London is some sort of salsa capital of Europe/the world. My point was - and probably still is, from what you wrote - no matter how wonderful certain people and events may be, if there's little on on an average weekend, there's no way the scene can be considered as amazing. That's no slur on the people who do attend events and the events that are actually on, but it seems there's not much on in London.
I also can't help but notice that when I was down there and I stumbled across a great band playing live, I could see literally no salsa dancers present. Admitttedly they were only a duo and there wasn't much space to dance, but the duo are very danceable and they were trying to get people to dance. (I think when someone wants to dance they usually give off signals to say as much, and I didn't notice anyone with that look, but maybe I missed someone.)
It would be a bit daft to claim London as the Salsa Capital of the World - I suspect your debating partner was having fun with you.
We would have to be talking 'Outside the Americas' to make the case more interesting.
I am aware that the scenes in Sydney/Melbourne, Seoul and Singapore are lush but whether they are as good as London, I am not sure.
Certainly in Europe I can only think of the Parisian on2 and Cuban scene that is just as good if not better than London in terms of level of dancing - but not in terms of scale.
Scale-wise, Nordrhein Westphalia could be compared to London but the level is lower across all styles.
If you want to ignore Sunday as well as the week nights and apply your slightly arbitrary measure of 'how many weekend parties', again London offers a surprisingly wide choice in any given month (surprising because Fri/Sat are all about the money i.e. drinking):
There is Salsa Fusion, El Grande, AfroLatina, Bloomsbury, the Caramelo parties, the Salseology nights, Mambo City (ULU) and, most recently, the utterly delicious Vinyl nights.
Add to that the hardcore Cuban parties.
Add to that the Colombian party scene in SE London, including Tito's which caters to the Latino/Cali party crowd every Friday night.
Add to that the various local parties and smaller gigs e.g. in my neck of the woods you got the Pexava socials in Ealing and a variety of busy nights in places like Kingston.
So when you say there is 'not much on in London', actually we're doing alright.
Your second point about not enough hardcore dancer attending one-off live concerts, that's got some validity precisely because there is so much other, tantalising stuff on.
I am very hopeful that the brilliant success of Salseology encourages other bands and concert promoters to engage in direct dialogue with the dancer community so that there is greater overlap between dance and live music events.
My personal view is that for London to become truly a Mecca for Salsa, that dialogue would have to evolve considerably.
All in good time.
Meanwhile I am happy to gorge myself on the irresistible offerings of the Best Salsa Scene in the World.
(Outside the Americas. Probably. Helps if you know how to use the Interweb thingy.)
I don't go to London expecting a high level of Latin culture or Latin dancing, that would be silly but the thing I like about the London scene is that the British seem to really like different types of partner dancing and many of the follows I've met have experience in these other partner dances, which can make the Salsa dancing very interesting and fun. For me that's why I always seems to end up enjoying dancing in London.
