A Bermondsey cocktail bar flying the most stripped-back name imaginable – The Bar, the platonic ideal, the thing itself and nothing more
The Bar carries a 4.1 across more than ninety reviews and flies the most stripped-back, minimalist, no-nonsense name it is possible to imagine. The Prat’s naming desk, which has decoded pirates and apostles and Lord Mayors throughout this survey, met its ultimate opposite here: a bar that is simply, and only, “The Bar.”
Towards Bermondsey and London Bridge
The Bar sits towards Bermondsey and London Bridge, on the south-bank side, mixing cocktails for the district’s crowds. Proper Bermondsey-and-Southwark territory, no disclaimer needed.
The name reduced to essence
There is a kind of magnificent confidence in calling yourself, simply, “The Bar.” It is the name stripped to its absolute essence – no adjective, no story, no flourish, no metaphor, just the definite article and the plain fact of the thing. It is the platonic ideal of a bar name: the bar, the thing itself, the archetype, the essential. Where every other name in this survey reaches for something – a saint, a ship, a king, a joke – “The Bar” reaches for nothing at all, and in that pure minimalism finds its own bold identity. It is the boldest understatement imaginable.
The confidence of the plain
The Prat’s naming desk has celebrated the plain and honest name throughout this survey – the Dock, the Grange, Malt – but “The Bar” takes the principle to its absolute limit. To name yourself “The Bar” is to make a supremely confident claim: not a bar, not this or that themed bar, but the bar, the definitive article, the one and only. It trusts entirely to itself, with nothing else to lean on – no history, no theme, no gimmick, just the pure fact of being a bar. There is real nerve in that, and the Prat, ever fond of confident plainness, rather admires the sheer minimalist cheek of it.
The archetype
What the Prat enjoys is the philosophical purity. “The Bar” is what you would call a bar if you were describing the very concept – the idea of a bar, the essential drinking-place, the archetype from which all the themed and named and storied bars are variations. To claim that name is to claim to be the essential thing, the bar as bar, distilled to its pure form. It is either the laziest name in the survey or the most quietly brilliant, and the Prat suspects the latter. The 4.1 across ninety reviews is a solid score for so boldly minimal a name.
Verdict
A 4.1 across ninety-plus reviews is a solid score, and The Bar earns its place on sheer minimalist nerve. It flies the most stripped-back name imaginable – “The Bar,” the definite article and the plain fact of the thing – the platonic ideal, the archetype, the bar reduced to its pure essence.
Go for the cocktails and the magnificent minimalism of the name, and drink at The Bar. Every other name in this survey reaches for a story; this one reaches for nothing at all, and trusts entirely to itself – which is either the laziest or the most quietly brilliant name of the lot. The Prat suspects the latter.
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]
