The highest rating in the Soho file belongs to a venue in a category we have spent five hundred articles being rude about
Clays in Soho holds a 4.9 from nine hundred and seventy-six people.
It is the highest rating in the Soho file. It is one of the highest in five postcodes. And it is a themed activity bar, which is a category we have spent five hundred and fifty-four articles being consistently, systematically rude about.
So we are going to have to deal with that.
What we have been saying
That the venues with ropes, hidden doors, Prohibition premises and Victorian explorers underperform – because they inflate expectation before the customer has tasted anything, and are then marked against a standard they invented themselves.
The Gods Rooftop Bar promises the sky and gets a 3.8. Zoo Bar promises Leicester Square and gets a 3.4. Urban Food Court promises a chair and gets a 4.8.
And that the high-rated venues, without exception, are small rooms with short lists and somebody behind the bar who knows.
The exceptions are piling up
Bat and Ball in Covent Garden: 4.8. Clays in the City: 4.7. And now Clays in Soho: 4.9.
Three activity bars, three serious samples, three numbers at or near the top of their districts.
And we have to be honest, because we have been honest about the Be At Ones and about the Bootleggers: the pattern has a hole in it.
Why we think they work
Because the promise is small and precise.
A speakeasy promises glamour, exclusivity and a story, and those are enormous claims that a room cannot deliver on a wet Tuesday.
Clays promises that you will shoot at a screen with your colleagues and that somebody will bring you a drink.
That is an extremely modest promise. It is entirely achievable. And it is delivered, every time, because the technology does not have an off night and the drinks are decent and the room does not have to be anything.
Which is precisely our own theory. The rating measures the gap between expectation and delivery – and an activity bar sets an expectation that is almost impossible to miss.
And the clay itself
Which we wrote about in the City and which bears repeating.
The originals were real pigeons, released from a trap by a man pulling a cord – which is why you shout pull, and which is why the discipline is called trap shooting.
Three hundred birds died at the 1900 Olympics, in the only event in Olympic history in which animals were deliberately killed.
The clay replaced them, not because it was banned but because it was cheaper.
Verdict
Excellent, and the highest score in Soho, and it has forced this magazine to soften an argument it has been making for five hundred articles.
What we have got wrong
We should be plain about it, because we have been plain about everything else.
Our argument was that themed venues underperform. Three activity bars have now landed at 4.7, 4.8 and 4.9 on serious samples.
The refined version is this: venues that promise an experience underperform, because an experience cannot be delivered on demand. Venues that promise an activity do not, because an activity can.
A rope promises that the evening will be memorable. A bowling machine promises that a ball will come towards you at the speed you selected.
Only one of those is a promise anybody can keep.
Verdict
Excellent, and the highest score in Soho, and it has forced this magazine to soften an argument it has been making for five hundred articles.
Go with eight people. It is what it is for.
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]
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