The Dev?

[flaviomatani]

I'm busy at this moment so cannot check any of this, but just had a phone call from someone telling me that the Dev had had the management changed and they had changed the pub drastically. Does anybody know anything more about this?

Comments

[tempaccount99]

Well someone else posted the same an hour or so ago, but has since deleted the post...

[reddragdiva]

Hrmmm. www.devcamden.co.uk seems to have gone walkies.

[flavius-m.livejournal.com]

It only says it's 'exceeded its bandwidth'. I expect it may be very different when it comes back online, though.

[andyravensable.livejournal.com]

I heard the same, I suspect from the same person. Apparently, it's been made into a generic "alternative" place. If it's true, it's a bloody travesty. Suggest we go march upon Camden with pitchforks and blazing torches?

[miss-soap.livejournal.com]

Once upon a time the Dev was a very generic alternative place and was a far, far nicer place to be than when it was forcibly goth-themed.

[andyravensable.livejournal.com]

Perhaps. And I admit, the Dev's not without it's faults, but I enjoy visiting it, find it a good place to meet with friends, and, although the decor hasn't been changed in a while, enjoy the slight kitschness of the atmosphere. Each to their own, I suppose.

[flavius-m.livejournal.com]

You mean fourteen years ago when there were fights every night? Hm. I don't entirely agree.

Although it was a bit over the top with the bats and the spider webs, for sure. But it was a bit like home, a place where I felt safe to go and have a pint, feeling -how to put it, safe, in the knowledge that I would find people I knew, or at least people akin. Whether that remains the case will be seen in the fulness of time.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_noizeboy_/]

"You mean fourteen years ago when there were fights every night?"



lol...those were the days ... *sigh*

I'm still counting the bruises ;p

[dj-alexander.livejournal.com]

That doesn't make sense to me. How would a "generic alternative place" be any different from how it is now? It's not as if it even has a door policy anymore.

[andyravensable.livejournal.com]

Well, I am working solely upon the basis of what I've been told, and haven't seen it for myself, but I think the Dev's a little more than a generic alternative place - it's certainly not the same kind of crowd that you'd get in the World's End, the Intrepid Fox, or the CroBar. They do have a door policy, and I've seen it being enforced time after time - even when it's just Robin up against three rather large rugby players.

[dj-alexander.livejournal.com]

Seems all they've done is taken down the decorations for the moment.

[flavius-m.livejournal.com]

How would a "generic alternative place" be any different from how it is now?

Wall-to-wall System of a Down? Could be worse, Wall-to-wall Thin Lizzie. Or Rod Stewart.

[dj-alexander.livejournal.com]

But there's a metal bar just over the road!

Not that I would complain about wall-to-wall System Of A Down mind you, just there's other pubs in London for that.

[vexen.livejournal.com]

There is nothing on Robin's Facebook (and he updated something a few days ago), so that's some evidence against, but then again he doesn't use it very verbosely.

[arkady.livejournal.com]

See my comment below. I think Robin has more important things on his mind than updating Facebook.

[flavius-m.livejournal.com]

If they are jobless and homeless overnight, he would have, indeed.

Yup.

[cyberglamour.livejournal.com]

...Just checked with one of the dj's and apparently Janine and Robin no longer manage/work there.The djs are still the same but dunno about the crowd..

awww...well,I stopped drinking there few weeks ago anyway;)

Re: Yup.

[cyberpunkgrrl.livejournal.com]

no way... :/ That would truly suck, and I dread to think what's going to happen to it now. Was going to pop in on my way out clubbing on Friday...

Re: Yup.

[arkady.livejournal.com]

According to barbedwirekiss (and confirmed by sinbadsilk), Robin and Janine got a knock on the door this morning at 10am and told they had a week to find somewhere else to live.

Re: Yup.

[flavius-m.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's what I was told by several people there tonight who had some contact with them, although I couldn't talk to them, of course.

[dj-alexander.livejournal.com]

Was all the same when I went there on Saturday. Planning to go there tomorrow so will have a look see!

[andyravensable.livejournal.com]

That's because it apparently happened today (!) However, I may well go and have a look myself. Let's hope it's not as bad as it's been made to sound.

[sinbadsilk.livejournal.com]

It HAS changed hands. They were told this morning that they had been sacked and the new manager/s are from the Hobgoblin in Brighton. Basically, it wasn't making enough money and the owner got fed up with it.

So ring out the old, ring in the new....

And just as always, if we don't want it to change, then we have to actually go there more often and get all our friends to to stop it changing...

[andyravensable.livejournal.com]

And just as always, if we don't want it to change, then we have to actually go there more often and get all our friends to to stop it changing...

Erm, the times I've been there recently, ti's been pretty much full. Exactly how are we meant to stop it changing if we go there regularly, and aren't told that it's in danger of changing hands?

[flavius-m.livejournal.com]

And the new guys were already boasting that 'they'd taken in last night more than in the previous so-many weeks....' so just turning up and spending our pennies would just confirm that they were successfully turning the failed Dev around.... so they would need to hear their customers' opinions. I've said this elsewhere -if it becomes a Fox or Big Red clone I might as well just go to the Big Red. There's plenty of those. There's nothing like the Dev, its many problems and defects notwithstanding.

[sinbadsilk.livejournal.com]

This is true... which is why it wasn't aimed specifically at you, so much as it was a collective 'we' - as in all of us, not just one person, and I kinda base my assumptions of how busy a place is as follows:

1 if there are still seats available, then it's quiet.
2 If you have a problem getting to the toilet due to the mass of people in it, then it's busy

...and at the dev, it's been more 1 than 2, so obviously the

But regardless of that, The new people seem to actually want to do something with the Dev (putting in new furniture, seats outside with external heating, putting on themed (Metal/punk/goth) band nights, actually special offers on drinks, discounted entry at other gigging venues etc) so as crappy as it undoubtably has been for Jenine and Robin, I'm interested in how things work out there now.

[andyravensable.livejournal.com]

Sorry, yes, that was a bit of a snap back from me. In the case of the Dev, your assumptions are possibly correct, as they did get rather crowded round the route to the men's loos,a nd you needed about ten-fifteen people to take up all the chairs, but in other pubs, I'd term that as slightly too full to be comfortable.

It's a shame to lose the old ways, as it's something we'd grown used to, and if it does make it all the more comfortable, and it's staying a pub directed at the subcultures, then all the better. However, making it into a clone of the Eerie pubs in order to get the spooky metallers in, at the expense of Robin and Janine rankles me greatly. I'm investigating it this evening, and shall be quite wary as to whether I choose to go there in the future.

[sinbadsilk.livejournal.com]

no problem. It's irritating that the change hasn't been a gradual change-over (as you would expect for people who have managed it for quite a few years) but instead an abrupt "Get the hell out" which is rude in the extreme.

There is actually, thinking about it, seats for about 45 people in the Dev, and I think that's about the busiest it normally manages most of the time - still busy by our standards, but not, I think, enough to make much of a profit for the person who owns it.

Let's look at it this way. When the Fox changed, we were all worried about it never being the same, but it's come back better and stronger than it was before. I'm hoping the same thing happens with the Dev.

[flavius-m.livejournal.com]

The Fox came back in a different place with the same people. The Dev is in the same place, but.. who knows...

[sinbadsilk.livejournal.com]

true

[aliasrob.livejournal.com]

Someone should have torched the Dev when Roy was kicked out. It's been a travesty for a long, long time now.

[mr-bizarre.livejournal.com]

Exactamundo!

[flavius-m.livejournal.com]

Well I disagree. However much I've complained about some of the thigns that Robin was doing, sacking people and putting them on the street like that with practaically no notice belongs in the XIX Century, not now.

Beyond that, we'll see. I was there tonight, and apart from MTV-type metal wall-to-wall, the guys taking over don't seem too much of a bad bunch. But the Dev will change. Still to see whether it is for the better.

[gaius-octavian.livejournal.com]

Whoah there cowboy. Wait until it was full of goths first. Otherwise they might come and bother the decent volk at Quinn's.

[arachne.livejournal.com]

I'll wait and see what the actual pub turns out like (speaking as one who now lives in the sticks and rarely goes, but always saw it as a fine place to chill at certain times of the day when I knew it wouldn't be busy and I'd have no hassle for sitting with a beer'n'book). How Janine and Robin have been treated, while it's part of the risk of living in a tenanted pub, is really fucking sucky. I hope they're ok.

Reckon the new guys'd be up to getting a (just one, I'm not greedy!) decent ale in? All those shit European lagers, and still no pump o' pride.

[jupiter909.livejournal.com]

From a business perspective it makes plain sense to have changed management. One does not need 'sell-out' to be successful but in that same breath one can't be totally nazi with pseudo rules and regulations.
I refuse to go into the dev because they had become nazi like. The rationality behind dress code for venues is to ensure that clientelle do not feel threatened and that things such as fights to not break out between different factions of subcultures. So it makes perfect sense not to let a townie/chav in etc. However when someone like myself that dresses normalish goes there with 12 other people that are all fully gothed out and they refuse me entry then they are being complete assholes. On that evening my friends and I all diverted to Quinns. They lost 13 clients that evening. How many other people has this happened to, it's death to business that. With such a myopic view they were/are clearly doomed.

My £0.02

[flavius-m.livejournal.com]

The dress code thing had got silly, true. Like all things tend to, it extended and outlived its usefulness. But there is a reason why it was brought in in the first place, which you already expounded upon. We'll see how it goes.

[jupiter909.livejournal.com]

There is so much change happening in that part of London and much cash is flowing back and forth between larger corporations and the little men. There is a such a fine line between improving an area and that of turning it into a generic 'high' street. It actually makes me sick to see the same stores dotted on every street. Tis very disconcerting being in a déjà vu state when walking from area to area. Lets hope that the council keeps a little bit of sanity in these matters. As you say, we'll see how it goes.