A 4.3 bar named 1920, evoking the Roaring Twenties, the Jazz Age, and the glamour of the speakeasy era
1920 Bar holds a 4.3 from seven hundred and eighteen people, and carries a name that is a date and an entire era – “1920” – evoking the glamour, style, and wild energy of the Roaring Twenties, the Jazz Age, the age of the flapper, the speakeasy, and Art Deco splendour.
The magic of a year
To name a bar simply “1920” is to conjure, with a single date, one of the most glamorous and evocative periods in modern history – the 1920s, the “Roaring Twenties,” the decade of jazz, flappers, cocktails, Art Deco, and wild post-war abandon. Few dates carry such a rich freight of associations: the exuberance and excess of the Jazz Age, the glamour of Gatsby, the liberation and energy of the decade that danced. The year 1920 specifically marks the dawn of this era – and, significantly, the year American Prohibition began, birthing the whole romantic underworld of the speakeasy. The Prat’s naming desk notes the evocative economy: a single date that summons an entire glittering age, the bar wrapped in the glamour of the Roaring Twenties by four numerals alone.
The speakeasy connection
The year 1920 is inseparable from Prohibition – the American ban on alcohol that began that year and, in one of history’s great ironies, produced not sobriety but the speakeasy, the illicit, glamorous, hidden bar where the forbidden drink flowed to the sound of jazz. This survey has cast a sceptical eye over the modern speakeasy revival throughout – the “hidden” bars that advertise their secrecy, the manufactured illicitness, the rent-gradient-in-costume of the basement bar. “1920 Bar” evokes exactly this speakeasy glamour, the romance of the Prohibition-era drinking den, the illicit cocktail in the hidden room. Whether the bar leans into full speakeasy theming or simply borrows the Jazz Age glamour, the name places it firmly in this evocative, if much-imitated, tradition. The Prat’s culture desk notes the familiar territory: the enduring romance of Prohibition, that great accidental gift to the mythology of the cocktail bar.
The Art Deco glamour
The 1920s were also the great age of Art Deco – the sleek, geometric, glamorous design style of the era, all bold lines, luxurious materials, and streamlined elegance, that defined the visual world of the Jazz Age. A bar named “1920” naturally evokes this Art Deco splendour – the glamorous, stylish, geometric aesthetic of the period, promising an atmosphere of vintage elegance and Jazz Age sophistication. There is an interesting contrast with A Bar with Shapes’ Bauhaus, also of the 1920s, elsewhere in this batch – two very different design movements of the same decade, the luxurious Art Deco and the austere Bauhaus, both born in the 1920s, both echoed in Islington bars. The Prat’s design desk enjoys the coincidence: the same glamorous decade yielding both the sleek luxury of Deco and the stern purity of Bauhaus, and both resurfacing in this survey.
The nostalgia for the age
“1920 Bar” trades, like NQ64’s retro gaming elsewhere in this batch, in nostalgia – though here for an age none of its patrons could remember, the imagined glamour of a century past. The Jazz Age has become one of the great objects of romantic nostalgia, its glamour endlessly revived in film, fashion, and bars, a golden age of style and abandon to which the modern drinker is invited to escape for an evening. The Prat’s culture desk notes the appeal: the 1920s as a permanent fantasy of glamour and excess, the bar offering a night’s escape into the imagined splendour of the Jazz Age. And the solid 4.3 across seven hundred people suggests the escape is enjoyable.
The bar
A 4.3 across seven hundred and eighteen people is a solid, volume-influenced score. The reviews describe a stylish, atmospheric bar with Jazz Age glamour, good cocktails, and a vintage vibe – an enjoyable escape into the imagined splendour of the Roaring Twenties.
Verdict
A stylish, atmospheric bar named 1920, evoking the Roaring Twenties, the Jazz Age, and the glamour of the Prohibition-era speakeasy – an entire glittering decade summoned by a single date, offered as a night’s escape into vintage splendour.
Go for cocktails amid Jazz Age glamour, and escape for an evening into the world of 1920 – the flappers and the jazz, the Art Deco splendour and the speakeasy romance, an entire glittering age conjured by four numerals over the door.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
Peter Sellers would have done this flat and cross. The delivery would have been everything.