A perfectly-scored wine bar flying a quirky, clever name – Glue, the thing that binds and holds together, exactly as a good local binds its community
Glue Wine Bar posts a perfect-looking 5.0 across nearly fifty reviews and flies one of the most unexpected and quietly clever names in this whole survey. The Prat’s naming desk, after decoding admirals and apostles, was genuinely charmed to find real wisdom hiding in so odd a little word.
Towards Bermondsey and Rotherhithe
Glue sits towards Bermondsey and Rotherhithe, on the south-bank side, pouring wine to the district’s crowds. Proper Bermondsey territory, no disclaimer needed.
The odd little word
“Glue” is, on its face, an unlikely name for a wine bar – a plain, sticky, functional word, the very opposite of the romantic or the grand. And that unexpectedness is precisely its charm. It is a name that stops you, makes you think, refuses the easy glamour of the usual bar names. The Prat, weary of the interchangeable and the predictable, delights in a name with the nerve to be this odd – a single, sticky, ordinary word chosen, one suspects, for the clever idea buried inside it.
The social glue
The Prat’s favourite reading is the wisdom hidden in the word. Glue is the thing that binds, that holds together, that joins one thing to another and makes them stick – and there is a lovely and profound truth in naming a bar for it. For the good local is exactly the social glue of its community: the place that binds people together, that holds a neighbourhood’s friendships fast, that joins strangers into regulars and regulars into friends. “Glue” names that binding, connecting, holding-together function precisely – the bar as the social glue of its world, the thing that makes a community stick. It is, beneath its oddity, one of the truest names in the survey.
The perfect little bar
The Prat’s numbers desk notes the perfect-looking score, promising though the sample is still modest. A 5.0 across nearly fifty reviews is a genuinely lovely early result – the mark of a small, cherished wine bar that its regulars adore. It suits the name beautifully: a place that binds its people so well, holds its community so warmly, that they cannot fault it. The glue, it seems, holds fast – and a wine bar that names itself for the thing that binds a community, and then binds it this well, has more than earned its clever little name.
Verdict
A 5.0 across nearly fifty reviews is a lovely early score, and Glue earns it on quiet cleverness and evident warmth alike. It flies the oddest and, beneath the surface, one of the truest names in the survey – glue, the thing that binds and holds together, exactly as a good local is the social glue that binds its community.
Go for the wine and the quiet cleverness of the name, and let yourself be bound in at Glue. The best locals are the social glue of their neighbourhoods – the places that hold friendships fast and make communities stick – and this one names that binding truth in a single, unexpected, perfect little word.
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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