Punk review

Punk interior shot

SOHO

PUNK

VENUES, APRIL 2007, COMMENTS

If there’s a unifying theme that runs though The Breakfast Group’s venues, it’s personality. Which in the increasingly bland environs of London’s cash rich but creatively stunted West End late night scene, where its ventures are almost exclusively located, makes them all the more special.

Quirky Soho basement bar Pop was a perfect case in point. The site was originally bought in 1991, and given a quick Shaun Clarkson makeover to keep it trading whilst the Group developed the real deal design scheme for the premises (company MD Eric Yu initially planned to locate his slick style bar/restaurant Opium into the space). But the tongue in cheek retro interior– all bright colours and 70s graphics - struck such a chord with the media and fashion crowd that what was supposed to be for three months ended up lasting years.

It finally closed in November, which Eric describes as “the right time to end it”.

“Pop was still doing well, but not as well as the licence and location warranted,” he explains. “There are times when you look at your car and think, can I get a few more years out of it. And the answer was yes, we could, but at some point you know you’re going to buy a new car, so you might as well buy it now rather than run it into the ground.”

And so the transformation of the venue began – but not by the standard route. Instead of a direct refurb and relaunch, the period after closure saw Heavenly Records take up temporary residence at the bar – with an experimental two months of gigs, art exhibitions and club nights in the vein of the legions of temporary Christmas shops springing up around town, entitled ‘Everything Must Go’.

“It was just an aside really, rather than informing what we were going to do next,” says Eric, whose relationship with the Heavenly label dates back to the launch of The Social – a joint venture bar project specialising in music, booze and food – in 1999. But the creative and irreverent philosophy of the venture was in keeping with Pop’s style and, as it transpired, with the future identity of the 260 capacity basement too. Because when it re-launched in February with a special performance from post-punk four piece Bloc Party, Pop had mutated into Punk: a venue that’s identity is more Shoreditch than Soho, and one that has music firmly at the top of its agenda.

Shoreditch, explains Eric, “has a very interesting scene in terms of the people that are hanging out, who tend to be more creative, edgy and anti-establishment, and in terms of the music, which is much more interesting than that being played in the West End at the moment.” With Punk, he wanted to bring a bit of that excitement into his West End homeland. So he started with an eBay-meets-Glamourama interior – courtesy of long time drinking buddy and respected designer Rock Galpin – that juxtaposes West End glitz with Shoreditch shabby chic influences. And into it he has pitched nights like Tesco Disco, Anti-Social and Digging Your Scene from Sean Rowley (Guilty Pleasures) – alongside rolling art exhibitions and, perhaps a little less radically, swanky Saturday night session Wonderland, promoted by London Parties’ Nick House. The myriad influences reflect the slightly schitzophrenic identity of Punk, which in the week is aimed at the Shoreditch set with off kilter club promos and breaking bands, but at the weekend reverts to being the preserve of the bridge and tunnel brigade with a more familiar, upmarket offering. This dual identity was borne out of the desire to do something interesting, tempered by the commercial realities of operating in such a central location, where rents are high and offering entertainment to entice the champagne set is a sensible way of paying the bills.

Of course, it necessitated some serious brainstorming for the designer charged with creating a venue to reflect it all: capturing the non-conformism of East London without alienating the core central London clientele. The name was decided early in the process. But both Rock and Eric were adamant that rather than fall into clichés – with prints of Sid Vicious lining the walls – obvious references to the 70s music genre should be avoided. In their mind, it was the spirit rather than the specifics of punk that should be evoked.

So: how to do it? The lo-fi rawness of seminal ‘Shoreditch scene’ designs (at venues like Home) couldn’t be directly translated into Soho, reasoned Rock. So instead he took one of its defining design features, eclectic furniture, and went to eBay to source Chesterfields and chaise longues, quirky Louis XIV and modern Scandanavian pieces that would eventually sit alongside each other in an unusual mish mash through the bar. With a nod to the upmarket aspirations of the Saturday crowd, he added some disposable disco glam in the shape of a galaxy of mirror balls and ‘Vegas’ mirrors behind the stage. Then, for the hell of it, he threw in some Japanese influences, both classic and modern: a trashy pink colour scheme, a golf leaf lacquered classical sideboard converted into a DJ booth, pixellated David La Chapelle shots of Gwen Stefani in her ‘Love Angel Music Baby’ phase. When else?
The result is something that’s highly individual, lots of fun and, perhaps surprisingly, highly coherent. And it’s very possible to imagine that the different design elements will be interpreted in different ways by week night and weekend customers: there’s enough here to please all parties. Which of course was the ambitious aim at the outset. But now it’s all complete, is Punk’s operator convinced it will succeed?
“We’re going to try,” says Eric, conceding that he’s not necessarily taken the safest route. “For it to work we needed the people involved in Shoreditch’s major cutting edge clubs to want to get involved, which I thought would be a challenge, but actually there’s been less resistance – less inverted snobbery – than we thought.”

It’s early days, but the parties they’ve put on so far Eric describes as “hugely successful”.

“The sort of people you see at these parties now – I’ve not seen people like that, dressed in that way, with that sort of attitude, for years. They’re punkier, non-conformist. And they’ve got a creativity that we’re losing in the West End in terms of bars, the music we play, the décor – it’s all a bit predictable. It’s nice to bring these people into this part of London - people who are experimenting, who are doing their own thing.”

All going to plan, Punk will not be the last Breakfast Group venue in 2007 to court a creative crowd. A move to do something more permanent in association with Heavenly Records is on the agenda, says Eric – and if they can find the right site with the right licence “we’d do it tomorrow,” he says.
Watch this space.

Words: Alex Eyre
Images: Jim Ellam

From: April 2007 Issue

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