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VERSION:2.1
N:The Elm Park Tavern
FN:The Elm Park Tavern
TEL;WORK;VOICE:020 8674 3538
ADR;WORK:;;76 Elm Park;SW2 2UB
URL:
NOTE:13 years ago, when I first moved down to London, this was my local. I used to while away the afternoons nursing a solitary pint of Guinness, watching Countdown on the small portable TV in the corner and listening as the old Jamaican guys sat around arguing and playing dominos. It's a memory that now clearly belongs to a different age; almost a cliche as much as a recollection, and almost as meaningless. Change has rippled through the whole area, mending the cracks in the plaster facades, scrubbing up the brickwork, bringing in bigger cars and wealthier people, often at the expense of the old community (it no longer feels like the sort of place where my neighbours could be a penniless Columbian couple). What has happened to so much of Notting Hill is quite clearly happening to Brixton as well. Windows without net curtains blaze out Habitat and Heal's furniture, once-empty roads clog with parked cars, everything's quieter, more circumspect. The pub has lost it net curtains too, and the mottled glass that used to disguise its interior, now boasting huge clear windows and stripped back furniture - the same central bar and baroque victorian ceiling just about the only remnants of its earlier incarnation. Plenty of tables have been crammed in, it's busy, and it retains its erstwhile cheerful atmosphere - thankfully, as I remember the barman all those years ago telling me how empty the place was now, and how it could be about to go bust. It hasn't, and has been saved by the very elements that have so indelibly changed it.The mostly white clientele have picked up a fancy for posh foreign lagers and the invariable army of Magners bottles, and a large plasma screen blares out the usual football, cricket etc. It's not a bad place, by any means, just a sign of the times. I'll get my pipe and slippers. 
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