John Snow
Journalist and news presenter
'It's special to me because it's the last pub to have survived, but actually it's much more special than that, It's got an amazing sense of community, I mean how many pubs can boast what's going on in here.'
Ed Vulliamy
Writer for the Guardian and Observer
'Will someone please explain what it is about London and other cities whereby it's fine to open up another boring chain bar in which people can get blizted out of their heads, but when someone tries to do something of their own with a just a straightforward neighbourhood pub, that is enterprising and fun, civilised but funky, singular but for everyone, they get shut down or turned into some fancy place nobody in the neighbourhood wants? I'm talking about my local, of which I and my neighbourhood are very fond indeed, but I get the feeling this could be about quite a few other pubs I don't know.
After living out of the country for 15 years, returning in 2003, one of the things I looked forward to re-connecting myself with were my favourite pubs. But all of them of them had gone in one of two directions – either I was scared of getting my teeth knocked in, or it was hard to negotiate a beer without being offered today's special of sea bass on a bed of bloody fennel.
I came to realise that a proper local with its own hallmark and style is a hard thing to achieve in a capital city across which eating and drinking chains blow individuality out of the water, and where the rich live cheek-by-jowl with the poor but the twain tend not to want to drink together. But those pubs that do forge an identity for themselves, and act as focal points for a local community – made up of all sorts and incomes – as a good pub should be – are an endangered species.
Thank my lucky stars, then, for the Torriano in Kentish Town, which had been taken over and done up in a classy but relaxed way by a hard-working Croatian called Dean Guberina (from Sibenik, a lovely Adriatic coastal town I happen to know from its days under siege during the recent Balkan wars) and the effervescent local girl he was lucky to find, Suzi Martin.
But they now face eviction and the probable the closure of their pub (or its replacement by a gastro thing) because of the perverse economy and the perverse morality of London and other cities in the UK falling victim to the great sell-off to developers. Five pubs a week close in London, and 56 a month across the country, according to CAMRA, and they tend to be local, independently-run places where different kinds of folk like to mix.
The Torriano sits on a dias between all kinds who inhabit the 'hood, where Edwardian houses meet the walk-up estates. And while most pubs in London would cater to either one or the other, thereby underpinning the atmosphere of class antagonism that increasingly characterises this city, the Torriano is the only place around which opens its arms to everyone simply by being what it is.
The Torriano is cool but funny; it's rogue-ish but civilised; it's popular but up-market; it's rock and roll but classy. The music is low but good, and the volume turned down for football; the afternoon sun (when there is any) hits the balcony over the garden and lads with earrings and tattoos play chess by the window. It's where the plumbers and carpenters meet the bankers and hippies; where accountants and musicians meet organic-eating professionals, but no one gives a damn so long as you reciprocate the ready smile and enjoy a drink but not too many. And you simply can't say that about many places in London. You get to know every face but not every name, strangers become friends who then greet each other on the street during the day and it's considered a little vulgar to talk too much about work.
You may get a roughneck, but they'll be in a congenial mood if they're here, and there is certainly no one to stop me taking my daughters, which I do. What's wrong with children knowing a place where they get a big hug from the manageress and a bit of affectionate respect from the public when they come for lemonade and a toastie, but are told they have to leave at seven on the dot?
The Torriano doesn't serve gastro sea bass on fennel, thank God, but you know when it's Sunday because smoke from the delicious cook-out wafts through the streets before the text message arrives inviting you.
These things don't happen by serendipity. They happen because people like Dean and Suzi have good ideas and work extremely hard to be, in the best sense, 'hosts' of the local tavern – everyone in the area knows and likes them - a time-honoured profession, but a rare one in London nowadays and, perversely, a punished one.
Admiral Taverns sold the Torriano to a property development company called Spaces, with a sole director called Shane Shahin Desai, and various addresses in London depending on which document you're looking at. Spaces immediately assigned a surveyor to insist on substantial building work according to a 'Delapidation Schedule', all of which the couple did, at a cost of £40,000 (doing a lot of good to the building, and no harm to its value) - as desperate to keep the lease as the community was to see them do so.
Then came the interesting, and sinister, bit. Spaces hired an organisation called 'Indigo Public Affairs' to run their development's progress through the local authority. People from Indigo started chatting up local people to try and get them to support the development, showing them the plans, but kept the Torriano's landlord and landlady completely in the dark – Dean and Suzi found out from neighbours what was happening to their livelihood and their home above it, and our pub.
Indigo turns out to be an agency, established in 1999, openly brazen about what it calls 'managing local politics' and 'winning planning consent' on behalf of property developers. The illuminating example they cite to advertise themselves on the internet concerned a development on a playing field in Chelmsford, for which council consent had 'designated all the homes for the elderly, which the client had no wish to build'. Indigo secured a happy outcome for the developer, however – in the end, no old folks' homes were built, the council renaged on its original purpose and the developer got to build 'market housing' instead. Pride in denying old people of a new place to live may appear an extraordinary way to promote yourself, but obviously not in Indigo's world, as it prepares to ruin our neighbourhood.
Asked what 'managing local politics' entails, Indigo told GU: 'It all involves working with stakeholders – local residents, elected members and others – to ensure that the genuine issues are not clouded by other considerations. In the case of the Torriano, it was becoming received opinion that the pub would be closing for good. It's not'.
On 22 May, Mr Desai of Spaces wrote through his solicitors to tell Dean Gruberina that his lease would not be renewed after it expires next May 17th, and that Mr Desai 'will oppose' any application to stay on. The 'grounds' are a vague list of alleged infringements, and certainly avoid any reference to the £40,000-worth of improvements insisted upon by Mr Desai and carried out by Dean and Suzi at their own expense over recent months. The notice drives towards its inevitable conclusion that 'on the termination of the current tenancy, the landlord intends to demolish or reconstruct the premises'.
Thus notified, Dean and Suzie were clearly not 'stakeholders' so far as Indigo were concerned. Asked why they chose to ignore the landlord and landlady running the property, Indigo said: 'it's not widely recognized that there is no legal requirement for any person or company submitting an application to do any consulting at all … the tenant has been in dialogue with the applicant for many months … Planning and lease renewal are two completely different issues'.
Mr Desai tells GU: 'The pub is staying. There is no ulterior motive'. Asked about the tenancy: 'A lot of work needs to be done, and the tenant will have to move out while it is done, then we can renegotiate.' Asked about the fact that he has said he would oppose any application to renew the lease, he says he will call back later. It's obvious – another gastro bar, one less local boozer everyone loves.
Our local councillor, Ralph Scott of the Liberal Democrats, calls the Torriano 'exactly the kind of place people want – not just in Kentish Town, but all over the place, one of the last pubs that isn't a chain and has some character. There've been a couple of problems with noise in the past, but I've never had a single complaint – no fighting, drunkeness or drugs, as in some places. When I was there on Saturday, they were just finishing up a Christening party.
'My concern,' he says, 'is that they haven't been kept in the loop about what's going on, and this could mean that they keep them out of the loop in order to shut them down. It's improper to lodge a planning application without having the courtesy to inform the people you may be shafting by doing so'.
Indigo's 'community consultation' has been selective, to say the least. No one who uses the Torriano has met them, but they have sought out and been over the plans with those involved in what Cllr Scott calls the 'couple of problems with noise'. Somehow, they have managed to miss the 2,000 people who have signed the petition to keep things as they are and 100 or so people like the lady who came in from the walk-ups with her two kids the other afternoon to deliver her letter (one of a number reaching 100) and ask what she could do. The neighbourhood is now gearing up to do what it can to oppose the plans and fight the eviction. Not just because we want to our local (which we do) but because we want and to try and prove, against one's hunch, that something decent and democratic can be achieved in this country, in defiance of the machine of greed and the march of mediocrity. Not unselfishly – people living in a stressed-out city badly need a bit of precious leisure time spent in a place like the Torriano. And I bet there are other people out there in the same position.
Dean and Suzi have a son now, Roko, and the community worries that this family will get fed up with the stress, count its losses, leave London and open a funky beach bar on the Adriatic, which will be our loss, and Croatia's gain. (Dump us out of Euro 2008, then take our best publicans!) It might even feature as another 'case study' on Indigo's website: 'How We Saw Off Yet Another Nice Independent Local Community Pub.' Another satisfied developer, another gastro-bar, another community stripped of its local. Is that how London wants it? Apparently so. Is it how we want it? Is it hell.
