December 07 column for Kazin

‘This is not a bar’ – bears an old wrecked black door on Sclater St, a cross road of Brick Lane.
Suddenly, with a squawk, the old door opens and a funny jovial face twinkles from behind: “Come in, it is a bar!”
Jenny and me look into each other’s eyes, say “why not”, and walk in. A whole mysterious world opens up for us: the black painted walls are decorated with the most improbable objects, from crucified teddy bears to mannequins decorated with bondage and all sorts of ornaments.
Behind the bar counter – which is actually a overturned closet – is an old Jamaican man all formally dressed up; brown hat, glasses, tie, brown coat and a soft groomed white beard. He would be the perfect grandpa I never had and looks like a rose among rabbits, completely out of place.
We get some rhum and coke and start chatting with some guys. Behind us is an amazing fireplace with a real real fire – not like those fake gas fireplaces that every London’s house bears as totem.
The place looks a bit as those cabins hanged on the peak of a snow-covered mountain in which people love to spend New Years Eve.
But there is no snow, no mountain, no new year, just a bunch of highly differentiated drunken people with a different skin colour and sight.
The atmosphere is of the most intimate ones – only candles’ light illuminates people’s smiles and chats and I, inspired by it, find myself wrapped into political and humanitarian conversations with people I never met before but – it seems – I knew from a past life.
Sip after sip Jenny and me surprise ourselves drunk and while turning on others we notice that the whole place is an ensemble of laughing happy people. It was long time I didn’t feel so good, I feel like screaming of joy. All problems seem to have disappeared because I have found the place I have been searching for too long in London. Pubs are always full of loud drunk violent people that cannot even talk to each others because the volume of music is too bloody high – so, in absence of communication, they end up beating each others up.
Clubs are cool, of course, but also the most alienating places on earth in which a crowd of droids move all in the same ways following a same music. I love to dance, but remember – dancing in London clubs is perfect if you wanna stay with yourself, only.
And then there is ‘this is not a bar’, a squat, an illegal venue but still the bar of my dreams, in which everything is permitted – painting around, smoking, chatting, dancing – and where the only rule to follow is socialization.
The whole alienation of the metropolis is cracked down in a 50 metres square – not even – squat. And I love that, tonight. When, from the main room I walk into the minor one I find Sean, one of the bar tenders, painting over a strange object – something like the back of a white skin sofa or head support of some hospital’s bed - and I am still wondering what the hell was that thing.
However, Sean was writing ‘this is not a bar’ on it, using a mixture of oil, spray and acrylic colours.
He then turns and give me the only brush available. I go on painting a landscape of London and writing some other funny sentences such as ‘new culture of peace’. While doing that I hear I whisper on my neck “this is so sexy” – obviously this has been what I heard after too many rhum and coke, reality perception is twisted and sphongled. I turn and encounter a weird charming man with big 1980s glasses and a typical British style of speaking and moving. He picks up the brush and while saying “it is so sexy to see a woman painting” paints a kind of teeth plate. I open my mouth (after having recognize that symbol which decorates many walls of East London) and say: “Wow, so it is you who paint those teeth around!Why do you paint teeth?”
“I love teeth I think they are so attractive – and I got arrested so many times because of following my passion.”
I feel a mixture of surprise and joy – I just met one of the most famous graffiti artists of London. I had been wondering months upon the identity behind those teeth graffiti and now the mind who creates them was there, in front of me, smiling from behind his huge glasses.
He goes home and I start meeting new people and people I had met in other occasions too. It is incredible how East London can pick up the same dynamics of a village when squeezed into ‘this is not a bar’ squat.
The old black painted bricks of the place even remind me of the tavern of my home town and they contribute with making me feel at home. Because this is what ‘this is not a bar’ bar makes people feel like: being into your house living room. Obviously a bit of a revised one – but with a bit of imagination, using as base the fireplace, sofas and wooden floor of it – you can really feel embraced by peace. People in there are peaceful, maybe because they are not forced to scream in order to exchange some ideas. This is why every time I walk out of it (most of times when sun is rising and a new day is greeting the city) I feel like a pirate with a new plunder – it being a new strategy for stop poppies cultivation in Afghanistan, an artist showing me her amazing sketches or a Japanese break dancer planning his trip to Venice. It had happened, then, that at 5 in the morning of a Saturday I ended up doing make up for the actresses of a music video. All boosted by ‘this is not a bar’ creative vortex. Our present, while passing our nights there, is history. Soon or later the Council of London would make ‘this is not a bar’ not a bar anymore, abandoning its skeleton among skyscrapers.
But our memories, as puckish ghosts, will make him company – for ever.