Turn it off ! Soho club’s 6pm screen ban
A SOHO club where Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley are said to have been members has banned screens and social media in the evening to stop it becoming a “co-working space”.
The owners, chef Luke Thomas and entrepreneur Roger Payne, who bought Blacks club two years ago, are relaunching the Dean Street venue in a bid to revive its “lust for life” and sense of fun.
Mr Thomas, 25, said too many London clubs were full of people on their own, tapping on a laptop or gazing at a smartphone. Under the new rules, phone calls are banned anywhere on the premises and screens and social media are allowed only on the second floor up to 6 p m. A f t e r that they are banned throughout the club.
Mr Thomas said a single-site club such as Blacks, which opened in 1992, is more intimate and “does not have the tiers of management” of a major corporate brand such as Soho House — which started three years later on nearby Greek Street but now has dozens of locations worldwide. Welsh-born MrThomas said: “It will be a space for socialising, not social media. Blacks is a club for the exceptionally interesting and exceptionally interested. Some of the London members’ clubs have become little more than co-working spaces at the expense of social interaction and fun.”
The forerunner of Blacks, known as The Club, was founded in 1764 for Samuel Johnson as an antidote to White’s, the male-only bastion of St James’s clubland. It was recreated in 1992 as one of the first of a new breed of clubs aimed at London’s creative sector, based in a four-storey townhouse built in 1732.
Mr Thomas said one problem was that as the original membership grew older and more affluent they started to visit less often, particularly at weekends. It is hoped a discounted membership of £300 a year for under-30s and a roster of events designed to appeal to younger members will help reverse the trend.
The club, where Sam Smith, Laura Mvula and rap-star Dave launched their careers, will have live music as well as immersive theatre performances. There will also be supper club events open to non-members.