The story of the bar at the birth of street art

In ​’80s New York, graf­fi­ti peeled off walls and appeared in gal­leries as a val­ued com­mod­i­ty. In ​’90s Lon­don, a new move­ment evolved, and they imag­i­na­tive­ly called it ​‘street art’. While the bankers and deal­ers were work­ing out how to make mon­ey off it, the artists were get­ting smashed at the Drag­on Bar.

In 1998, Old Street was bleak. Taxis wouldn’t go there after dark and you def­i­nite­ly couldn’t get an oat flat white. This law­less back­wa­ter was cheap to live in and open to every­one – and that’s why the Drag­on Bar was there. Found­ed by Justin Pig­gott and kept alive by Adi Hall, the Drag­on Bar was one of those spots where every­one knew your name – like Cheers, if bits of it were on fire. The toi­lets were leg­en­dar­i­ly graf­fi­tied, there were block par­ties out the back and the gallery space upstairs was giv­en to artists for free. Banksy had his first ever Lon­don show there, Ben Eine worked behind the bar, Faile and Bäst had their first UK shows there, INVAD­ER stuck one of his space invaders out­side. And one day it mys­te­ri­ous­ly burned down…

Back in the first Covid lock­down, co-founders of cult art ​‘zine Pave­ment Lick­er, artist James-Lee Duffy and Huck Mag­a­zine edi­tor Josh Jones realised there was no doc­u­men­ta­tion of this place. It wasn’t obvi­ous at the time that the Drag­on Bar in London’s Old Street was to be an era-defin­ing place filled with decade-defin­ing artists. No one knew these peo­ple would go on to do the things they did but when they looked back, and asked around, the artists agreed. The Drag­on Bar was a moment in art his­to­ry that deserves a book about it. So that’s what they did – it took over three years but they made a 300-page, oral his­to­ry of the icon­ic bar fea­tur­ing con­tri­bu­tions from the pio­neers of street art, includ­ing Banksy, Faile, INVAD­ER, ELK, Mode 2, EINE, Lucie Fly­nn, CEPT, Sweet Toof, AIKO, James Jes­sop and many more.

Here Josh Jones sits down with James-Lee Duffy to talk through the process of cre­at­ing the book and their own mem­o­ries of the bar 25 years since it opened.

What made the Drag­on Bar such an impor­tant place, James? And why do you think this book need­ed to be made?

The bar was a melt­ing pot for cre­ative, inter­est­ing, unique peo­ple who had some­thing to say. It had this raw ener­gy mixed with this very punk DIY aes­thet­ic, which meant it was for­ev­er chang­ing and adapt­ing with the peo­ple who drank there. It was of a time when no one had mobile phones, Botox, had to update their pro­files or answer emails. We realised we had to cap­ture that ener­gy in a book or it would have stayed a fad­ed mem­o­ry. The only way to do that prop­er­ly was to self-pub­lish so we could keep con­trol of the book’s direction.

Peo­ple wouldn’t recog­nise the Old St/​Shoreditch area back then — it was lit­er­al­ly bar­ren wasn’t it?

Bar­ren is not even the word for it… burnt-out cars, aban­doned fac­to­ries, a cou­ple of pound in a pint strip clubs, very grey con­crete, bombed build­ings left from WW2, giant sew­er rats and met­al bars over win­dows. The smell was worse, like rot­ting meat.

We start­ed mak­ing this book in the first Covid lock­down. I kin­da fig­ured it would take about a year. IT TOOK THREE AND A HALF! Did you think it would take that long?

Hon­est­ly, I expect­ed it to take some time, but near­ly four years is quite a lengthy time for a project. So much time was tak­en up with hunt­ing down the images and sto­ries. Most of the time peo­ple could not remem­ber any­thing or they had some images on an old hard dri­ve at their mum and dad’s house which we wait­ed for but when we final­ly got them they were just their mates get­ting drunk.

It was you who intro­duced me to the place. Can you remem­ber your first time there?

Yeah I can. It was a summer’s day on a Sat­ur­day in 1999 and my graph­ic design­er mate Rich took me as he lived around the cor­ner. I spent most of the time sit­ting at the bar draw­ing over these fly­ers and putting them back on the pile. Our friend Paul Camo joined us and said to me ​“Why are you doing that, you’re destroy­ing someone’s work.” I replied ​“How else am I sup­posed to get my work out there.” I remem­ber tak­ing you — it was to a well row­dy drum and bass night going on in the basement.

You were going under the name ORKO back then and get­ting your work about town on var­i­ous medi­ums. Can you remem­ber the street art move­ment start­ing to snowball?

The Drag­on Bar attract­ed rebel­lious char­ac­ters, and a lot of them were graf­fi­ti writ­ers. If you mix these with artists, graph­ic design­ers, illus­tra­tors then of course you are going to get some­thing new. Some­thing not as pure and raw as paint­ing on trains or walls but anoth­er form. So yes, I saw the change hap­pen at the very start – for exam­ple, EINE who was (and is) a renowned graf­fi­ti writer start­ed to make stick­ers and put up these wheat pastes of Frankenstein’s head. Or see­ing Banksy’s sculp­ture pieces, stick­ers and sten­cils appear­ing. The bar became a liv­ing breath­ing can­vas where every space was cov­ered in spray paint, ink, stick­ers, wheat pastes or Krink.

It wasn’t just a bar where peo­ple con­gre­gat­ed. The Drag­on Bar active­ly sup­port­ed and facil­i­tat­ed every­one try­ing to do their own thing – and I think that’s what made it such a spe­cial place in the street art story.

100%. And not just for street art but for most cre­atives. For exam­ple, it gave Burn Gor­man – or Beat­box Burn as he was known then – time to reg­u­lar­ly per­form on stage when he was part of DJ crew Dec­knol­o­gy. And from there he went on to become a very suc­cess­ful actor. In fact I remem­ber him telling me he had start­ed act­ing class­es and that he real­ly want­ed to get into acting.

Wait — didn’t you fall off the wall in the car park and land in a pho­to­copi­er one time?

Ha ha. You rot­ter! I said not to men­tion this… It was NYE and my girl­friend at the time was work­ing behind the bar and of course she was giv­ing me free shots. I got a lit­tle too over excit­ed and ran out to the yard and decid­ed to climb up the back of the 96 sheet bill­board to get a view of the ​‘fire­works’. I got to the top but slipped and fell off straight off back first on to an old dumped pho­to­copi­er which made look like a tor­toise stuck on his back.

What was your favourite art show/​exhibition you went to there?

Easy — every time I went to the toi­lets there was a new piece of work on the walls. If you are ask­ing about the gallery upstairs at the Drag­on Bar then it would have to be Faile’s first Lon­don show. The com­bi­na­tion of graph­ics, punk, typog­ra­phy, illus­tra­tion and fly post blew my mind.

Do you have a favourite part of the book? I was pret­ty ecsta­t­ic when we final­ly got a quote from Banksy just before we went to print.

Yeah that was a crazy wet Mon­day mes­sage you sent me. I actu­al­ly thought you were trick­ing me. For me, the pho­tos of the win­dows cov­ered in stick­ers, tags all over the celling, the art in the bar, the toi­lets and the art shows blow my mind the same as they did then.

What will you do with the tens of thou­sands of pounds we’re no doubt going to make from this book?

Start a bar. Actu­al­ly, no. Start a movement.

The Drag­on Bar 1998 — 2008 book is on sale inter­na­tion­al­ly, pub­lished by Pave­ment Lick­er. Buy it here.

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