Private members’ club Blacks in Soho’s Dean Street, heavy with Moroccan fabrics, old wooden furniture and eccentricity, changed hands recently and decided to perk itself up a little —and not with a Bloody Mary at 11am. An email went around to its loyalistas.
“Dear member,” it read. “We are delighted to announce that Blacks has entered into the 21st century with wi-fi that works! We won’t bore you with rules in the hope that you use your phones, laptops and tablets with style.”
Almost immediately, Susie Green, who has been a member of the club for some 20 years, sent back a zinger. “Brilliant — there is now no difference between Blacks and Starbucks!” she wrote. “Lots of people looking at their screens and not talking to one another, only into their mobile phones. Just what a club should be! The plank of wood in the basement, conveniently positioned so members can sit by themselves and stare at a blank wall, confirms it.”
Caroline Towning, who took over ownership of Blacks from Italian bon viveur Giuseppe Mascoli in April, hit back: “Dear Susie. You will be happy to hear that we have taken you off the mailing list and revoked your membership.”
Green is not the first person to have logged off from the new Blacks. Towning, who tells us she is trying to inject the Georgian drinking den with some business values, says she has also had members complain that her new chef has “made the steak too nice”.
Of course, it may just be that the internet is a more absorbing version of all those pamphlets and newspapers that littered the original Georgian coffee houses and gin dens. Discuss.
