Friday, December 15, 2006

Taking the piss



I was walking in East London with a friend the other day when I spotted what appeared to be a couple of bouncers standing outside the disused public toilets in front of Christchurch on Commercial Street.

Only the toilets weren’t disused any more

And they really were bouncers

Yup, retail property prices have got so bad in London that people are opening pubs in derelict underground lavatories…


Avoid hefty West End prices - spend your Saturday nights out in a toilet!


Welcome to ‘Public Life’, a new concept in socialising

As one review puts it...

Hidden away beneath the streets of Shoreditch with only a tiny glass awning and steep flight of stairs alerting passers-by to its presence, the bar’s well-disguised location means you avoid the hefty queues and hefty prices of most West End venues. It is small inside and fairly basic in terms of decor but a varied music policy (there’s usually something to suit every taste) and friendly, intimate vibe make it a popular choice for laid back lovers of drinking, dancing and... toilets!

And as further evidence that London has become Bizarro World, where money is more common than sense and the beautiful people dance in khazis, on the other side of town somebody else has just spent several hundred thousand pounds building a luxury public convenience that costs punters £5 a dump. The cleverly named WC1 has just opened to paying guests -

"Whether shopping, polishing up after work or simply taking five minutes to relax between meetings, WC1 provides all that a woman needs to transform herself from the inside out at any time of day.”

Thinking back to some of the lunatic business ideas idiots were putting money into in the late 1980s, people drinking and dancing in toilets and spanking a fiver to take a crap in something that looks like a bright pink nuclear bunker are just the sort of things that happen when you don't have enough economic recessions. You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried... and would you want to?

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