I don't think it's necessarily _anything_ to do with the fire, to be honest. There are lots of other factors which make King's X an uneasy place to visit. Firstly, it's one of the busiest stations on the central Underground and as a result always filled with people milling around. Like Tottenham Court Road, much of it is constructed in tunnels and walkways which can be very confusing to navigate - particularly as the signs telling you where you need to go are located always just out of the line of peripheral vision and you really have to hunt for them - and most of it appears to be constantly under redevelopment. As well as being the location of the British Library and two of the most famous stations in London, King's X is a real dive - the concourse outside the tube station is frequently choked with prostitutes and violent undesirables who do little other than mill around trying to sell people travelcards - and let's not forget that it's also the place where large numbers of people who've been on boozy days out in London congregate before getting back on the train. A gang of pissed-up casuals in town for the football can make anyone feel intimidated. There is inevitably a heavy police presence, particularly following last year's tragedy, and even if you're not scared of the police you think to yourself "what are they doing here?". The tube station is also horribly lit and swamped with gaudiness and grime.
Since it's a major junction and point of arrival, the overwhelmingly large proportion of the people you'll pass won't have much of a clue how to speak English as they're not from England, which you could also say about a number of other focal points in the city, which to an outsider is really confusing (I remember when I first moved here and worked on Piccadilly, going out for a sandwich was a confusing experience as you're surrounded by this kind of Babel of languages, dialects and accents) and lends to a kind of fracture of the senses of sight/hearing. The fact that when you're abroad in a country you don't know the language of you tend to keep your head down and press on, lends to the air of people not wanting anything to do with each other. Many people who go through the tube station are laden-down and stressed after a day travelling and, London being London, nothing works properly, the tube barriers are too small, everything smells and the station is too hot or too cold compared to outside, leading to you either shivering or sweating as you're fumbling in your pockets for the vast amounts of cash needed to get on the Tube.
I don't think that there's any residual marker left from the tragedy in the eighties but I do think that everything about the design and management of the place grinds away at the consciousness leading to a palpable air of annoyance, menace, ennui, discomfort and anger.
