A clever triple play – a real street name, the overlapping circles of the Venn diagram, and the records of a music-themed bar
Venn Street Records in Clapham holds twelve hundred and sixteen reviews and a 4.4 – a large, solid sample – and it carries one of the cleverest names in this survey: a triple play on a real street name, the famous overlapping circles of the Venn diagram, and the “records” of a music-themed bar.
The street
At its most straightforward, the name comes from Venn Street – the real Clapham street on which the bar sits, a lively little pedestrianised road near Clapham Common, known for its restaurants, its weekend market, and its cinema. So “Venn Street Records” is, on one level, simply a location name in the honest tradition this survey admires – named after its own street.
But the name does far more than locate itself, because “Venn” and “Records” both open up delightful additional meanings, turning a simple street name into a clever, multi-layered pun.
The diagram
“Venn” cannot help but evoke the Venn diagram – the famous diagram of overlapping circles, used to show the relationships between different sets, where the overlap represents what the sets have in common. The Venn diagram is one of the most recognisable and useful of all visual tools, taught in every school, used everywhere from mathematics to logic to casual illustration of how ideas overlap. It was devised by the English logician and philosopher John Venn in the 1880s, and it bears his name.
There is a lovely aptness in a bar evoking the Venn diagram, because a bar is precisely a place of overlap – the social space where different circles of people intersect, where friend groups meet and mingle, where the overlaps between people happen. A “Venn” bar is, in a sense, the overlapping middle of the diagram – the common ground where different sets of people come together. It is a witty and rather profound thing for a social venue to invoke: the bar as the intersection, the overlap, the shared space where circles meet.
The records
“Records” completes the triple play. A “record” is, of course, a vinyl record – and “Venn Street Records” reads like the name of a record shop or a record label, evoking music, vinyl, and the whole culture of records and record-collecting. The bar plays on this, with a music theme and the cool, retro, vinyl-loving aesthetic that “Records” implies. The name suggests a place where music matters, where the records spin, where the cool sounds play.
So the three elements combine brilliantly: Venn Street (the location), the Venn diagram (the overlap, the meeting of circles), and Records (the music, the vinyl). Each meaning reinforces the others – a music bar, on Venn Street, that is also the overlapping social space where different circles meet, named as if it were a record label. It is one of the most economical and clever pieces of naming in this whole survey, packing a location, a mathematical diagram, and a music theme into three words.
The bar
A large, well-regarded music-themed bar doing a fair 4.4 across a large and real sample, with a brilliantly multi-layered name playing on its street, the Venn diagram of overlapping circles, and the vinyl records of its musical theme.
Verdict
Large, popular, and cleverly named – a triple play on Venn Street, the overlapping circles of the Venn diagram, and the records of a music bar.
Have a drink at the overlap of the circles, where the music plays and the social sets intersect, and enjoy one of the wittiest names in this survey – a street, a diagram, and a stack of vinyl in three words.
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]
Someone’s sending this to their MP with basically no message. Haunts them forever.