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VERSION:2.1
N:The Commercial Tavern
FN:The Commercial Tavern
TEL;WORK;VOICE:020 7247 1888
ADR;WORK:;;142-144 Commercial Street;E1 6NU
URL:
NOTE:Commercial Street marks the boundary between the ever-expanding retail opportunities of the City - witness the redeveloped Spitalfields Market with its generic bars and eateries - and what used to be known as part of the East End, an area successively occupied by dyers and tanners, Huguenots, Eastern European Jews, Bangladeshis and now, slowly driving the Bangladeshi community out of the more desirable parts of the area, a new breed of incomer - Young British Artists. Known for their zany hairstyles and anything goes attitude, Young British Artists can be spotted from afar by the heavy burden of irony they carry, leading to slumped shoulders and a bowed gait. Of all the pubs in the area, the YBA influence can be felt most heavily in the Commercial Tavern. So po-mo it's amazing Derrida hasn't resurrected himself just to write about it, the Commercial Tavern, with its granddad beer glasses, faux-naive soundtrack and Popeye cartoons on the walls, is all about the trash of meaning: stating, more or less, that, because we know everything is going to fail, why bother with anything grandiose, interesting or challenging in the first place? Far more comforting to reject the uncertain and conflicting moralities of the world outside and regress to an infantilised state, to the Freudian anal fixation and the shit, all the while laughing at yourself for doing so. Anyone wishing to see why British art, like British drama and literature, is the void that it is, could do a lot worse than stopping off here for a quick granddad's mug of ale.
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