In the late 1990s, when London had not yet fallen prey to gentrification, eastern tycoons and star chefs, a venue called Dragon Bar appeared on Old Street and became the centre of the British street art universe.
Located on a street that in 1998 was not very advisable for tourists, this dark joint with a wild clientele almost instantly brought together the best of London’s underground scene.
The father of the Dragon Bar was a guy called Justin Piggot, with very clear ideas about what his establishment should be, as he explains in the book The Dragon Bar Book“I already had the perfect bar in my head – I wanted Tom Waits coming out of the door, a flashing neon sign pointing down an alleyway and full of weirdos.” Piggot found the empty building and then built and fitted out the premises himself. “At the time, Shoreditch and Old Street were grim places – burnt out cars, it smelled a bit bad, taxis didn’t want to go there after dark and there were lots of empty warehouses and boarded up buildings,” says Josh Jones, co-editor of the book and one of the founders of the legendary art zine, Pavement Licker.
Word of mouth did the rest and the walls of the place were filled with graffiti of figures, some of which later became objects of the mainstream global. Banksy had her first exhibition in London there (the original Santa’s Ghetto). “I think it was like New York’s CBGB in London,” says Josh Jones.
The Dragon Bar closed its doors in 2008, but Jones is clear that there is still hope: “Places like this are becoming harder and harder to find, but from these ashes a phoenix will emerge… or hopefully a dragon!”
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