Bar Titania, Soho
Will this latest gay/ straight friendly concept prove to be a winner at a hostile site that, in fairly rapid succession, has seen off numerous passing fancies, among them Geisha, Piano Lounge and Longshots? Let's just say, I wish the owners luck but won't be betting my best Turnbull and Asser double cuff on it. Like the FTSE's miners, gay bars' stock is low these days. I blame social media. Like Video Killed The Radio Stars, Grindr and Gaydar killed the gay bars. Let's face it; If a thrusting blade aims to cop off, why hang around in bars hawking his harris when he can show it online and have hot top - 10 Inches/ cut/ into uniform, red, yellow and Paris Hilton - Hector from Honduras's cock up his tail in less time than it takes a barman to make a Carol Channing cocktail? Hoping to strike it lucky on the gay bar scene, Titania's vision is a mere cosmetic rehash of what went before. Conspiring against them is the space's tricky layout - a narrow bar in a narrow corridor serving a claustrophobic windowless box-room beyond and, upstairs, a vast lounge detached from any downstairs buzz....should there ever be any. Overseen by the Shakespearian Queen herself - imagined in a mural that I can't imagine anyone is about to tear down, banking on auctioning it, like a Banksy, for six figures - here's a gauche mix of lumpen furniture, clichéd feature floral wallpaper/ chandelier combo and, in that airy upstairs cream space, bland cream seating groups, cream candles and display table units (in cream) in which copies of Boyz and Pride await your perusal. What was the design brief, I wonder? A gay Guildford GUM clinic's reception room? If the interior is not your bag, you can groove along to Barbara Bush's disco ditties -no, not Dubya's mummy; a bloke from Battersea sporting fake titties, I'm told. If Babs is not your bag, enjoy your £6.95 cosmo or caipirinha - or a bottle of Ayala (£45) if you're a piss elegant poseur - in Titania's ‘beautiful outside space with relaxed seating, candlelight and stunning plants' - aka a dreary covered patio overlooking fume-choked, charmless Charing Cross Road. I'm confused. Weren't gay bars once the most cutting-edge joints in town? Or was that - like Rock Hudson's image as
as a straight stud muffin - a load of old bollocks too? As it is, another old closet case springs to mind here, currently being admirably played in cinemas by Michael Douglas. And if you reckon Titiania's Liberace-lite pose will pull in the punters in their gazillions, then you might be 'away with the fairies' as my grandmother used to say.
