Here in Brixton we have a fun game we like to play
when we’re walking around our neighbourhood. Many of you will be
familiar with it, even if you live elsewhere in London – it’s called
‘Try To Spot An Open Space That Somehow Hasn’t Been Turned Into Either
Luxury Flats Or A Street Food Market’. Keen players of the game will
have been kicking themselves recently, for having failed to spot that
the rooftop of the long running shop Home ‘n’ Fashion on Pope’s Road was
– far from merely a structure for ensuring the retailer’s stock didn’t
get wet – also the perfect location for a winter themed pop-up night
food market. Before 2017 has finished we fully expect to also witness a
high-spec two bedroom apartment in each of the disused public toilets in
Windrush Square, and a stall selling pork steamed buns on top of the
Blenheim Gardens bus stop shelter.
South Pole Saloon
(for that is its name) isn’t here to just tick off one hot trend,
though. It’s here to tick off as many as possible! So sure, it’s a pop
up, and it’s selling street food at night, but it’s also got immersive
theatre! Warm cocktails! Staff with beards! Readers of ES Magazine will
be flooding in!
Let’s look at the food first, because what’s on offer
is probably why you’ll want to visit South Pole Saloon. And there’s
good reasons to do so – nobody could deny it’s good news to have food
vendors like Dip & Flip Burger
on board, not least because it means you don’t have to go to the
company’s permanent locations in the middle of nowhere (ie: Battersea or
Wimbledon) to try their solid 8/10 burger & gravy concept.
Drinks wise, well, that could be argued to be more an
area of concern. Pints of beer – exclusively supplied by Brooklyn
Brewery – start at £5.40. Just to add some context, that’s 90p more
expensive than the cheapest pint when watching The Who, Taylor Swift and
Blur play British Summer Time in Hyde Park this year. South Pole Saloon
doesn’t shy away from promoting its own entertainment offering of
course – more on that shortly – but even the most optimistic bar manager
is going to have a struggle on their hands to match the level of
entertainment provided by Tay Tay and Roger bloody Daltrey.
Amongst the lengthy licensing documents
that South Pole Saloon submitted to Lambeth Council back in September,
the company said that they anticipated their customers will be from “all
parts of London and of mixed backgrounds”. A harsh critic might suggest
that at £5:40 a drink their customer base won’t so much be from ‘all
parts of London’ as ‘pretty much exclusively from Clapham’, a theory
we’re certainly not ready to dismiss based on their opening night.
Still, at one point we do spot two women getting around this thorny
pricing issue by making use of their own hipflask. For your £5:40 you
could afford this fetching little hard liquor container and then just make your own alcohol arrangements. So you know, do that instead.
Still, the whole place looks okay, in a grown-up
Winter Wonderland kind of way. There’s enough heaters to stop you
getting cold. It seems like a passable place to come if you want an
evening of dancing, and it doesn’t lay the whole Christmas thing on too
thick. There’s other places you can go for Christmas schmaltz. South
Pole Saloon wants to where Santa’s slightly naughtier elves hang out.
Which brings us to the Saloon’s theatrical offerings. Pretty excitingly, the website promises the venue will have “every corner designed to cater for the whims of the most fantastical, playful and debaucherous guests”, which
would make for a somewhat ambitious way of describing the opening
night. We can confirm that there are some young adults on stage dancing
vaguely sexily. As for these promised ‘immersive performance’ elements,
well, we briefly spot a woman in a costume walking on the bar, and a guy
in a costume sit down next to some girls and sing them a song with his
guitar. It would all probably hold up as a decent evening’s
entertainment in Derby or somewhere. I think what we’re basically trying
to say here is: we don’t think you should go to South Pole Saloon on
the basis of their much-promoted theatrical offering.
Should you inexplicably find yourself in the mood for socialising outside this December, the Berlin-style surroundings of Brixton Bloc
is both cooler and cheaper, whilst Pop Brixton is both a stronger food
destination and a better thought out space. And both of them are one
hell of a lot more community focused than this place.
