A subculture that has outlasted every one that mocked it, in a room that has never once apologised for itself
The Devonshire Arms on Kentish Town Road holds a 4.6 from two thousand and sixty-one people, charges ten to twenty pounds, and it is a goth pub.
And a 4.6 across two thousand people is one of the best numbers in this district.
Which we should explain
Because it is the same finding as the Black Heart, four minutes away, and it is not a coincidence.
A venue that serves a subculture is being reviewed, overwhelmingly, by people who came on purpose.
They knew what it was. They chose it. They are not evaluating whether it suits them – they already know it does – and they are extremely unlikely to write a one-star review complaining that the music was too loud and everybody was wearing black.
Whereas a general-purpose bar on a high street is being reviewed by everybody, including people who wandered in with no plan and were disappointed by a room that was never trying to please them.
The finding
Six postcodes. Six hundred and fifty-five articles.
The star rating measures the gap between what somebody expected when they pushed the door and what they got.
And a venue with a strong identity has effectively pre-filtered its own customers – which closes the gap before anybody walks in, because nobody arrives with the wrong expectation.
That is why the specialist rooms score well and the general ones do not.
And it is the opposite of what the industry believes, which is that narrowing your appeal is a commercial risk.
It is not. It is a rating strategy, and it is free.
Goth, briefly
Which has outlasted essentially everything that mocked it.
It emerged around 1980, out of post-punk, and it was ridiculed relentlessly for four decades – and it is still here, and it has scenes on every continent, and the people in it are now in their sixties and are still in it.
Almost nothing else from that period survived. Every other subculture of the era either died or was absorbed and sold back.
The Prat’s cultural desk has thought about why, and the honest answer appears to be: it never tried to be popular, so it could not be made unpopular.
It was never cool. It cannot therefore stop being cool.
The word
Which is worth a line, because it is a slur that got adopted.
The Goths were a Germanic people who sacked Rome. Gothic then became an insult applied by Renaissance Italians to medieval architecture they considered barbaric.
Then it became the name of the architecture. Then of a genre of horror fiction. Then of a subculture.
An insult, four times repurposed, over fifteen hundred years.
Verdict
Excellent pub, superb number, cheap.
Go, and wear whatever you like. Nobody will look at you, which is the point.
Camden and the subcultures
Which is what this district actually sells and which is worth being honest about.
Camden Market is, in very large part, a place where teenagers from the suburbs come to buy the visual identity of a subculture they have read about.
And the Prat is not going to sneer at that, because every single person in every subculture that has ever existed started exactly there – by buying the wrong boots, badly, at sixteen, having seen a photograph.
There is no other way in. Nobody is born inside.
The market sells the door. What happens after you walk through it is not the market’s business.
Paige Shiver has established herself as a cornerstone of modern British satire through her work at Prat.UK, where she serves as a lead political commentator and cultural critic. With over a decade of experience in investigative journalism and comedy writing, Shiver specializes in deconstructing the absurdities of Westminster and the nuances of the UK’s social landscape.
Her expertise is rooted in a deep understanding of British policy, allowing her to deliver biting critiques that are as factually grounded as they are humorous. Shiver’s commitment to the high art of satire and UK Literature is evidenced by her frequent appearances on BBC Radio 4 and her published anthologies on the decline of political decorum. At Prat.UK, her transparency and rigorous research ensure that even her most satirical takes provide valuable, trustworthy insights into the national conversation.
Paige Shiver @ PaigeShiver.com
