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It’s a sad sight to see pubs getting boarded up across the city. It feels like we lose a beloved local boozer every week as other chains open huge tanking shops. But one London pub is undergoing an extraordinary reinvention to channel the spirit of a completely different venue that shut 15 years ago. Confused?
The building that was once a pub called The Driver (and before that The General Picton) will reopen its doors on September 9. This time, though, it won’t just be a pub. Now it’s breathing life back into another famous King’s Cross venue: the Cross nightclub. The club was in railway arches in what is now shopping ’n’ noshing hotspot Coal Drops Yard. One of the original founders, Billy Reilly, is behind the new venue, which he describes as ‘the legendary The Cross nightclub, reinvented for today’. The Cross pub will have bars, a restaurant, a club space and a roof terrace.
On New Year’s Eve 2007 (and technically well into New Year’s Day 2008), The Cross held its farewell party after being one of the most important clubs in the city’s explosive dance-music scene of the 1990s and 2000s. It attracted a cult-like following of ravers, and queues would stretch down York Way on a Saturday night. One of its co-founders also started Fabric, which is a whole other story.
The Cross (2022 version) might be a slightly more polite, slightly less fashion-meets-ravehead version of the original, but it’s a nod to what made this corner of London the dance capital of basically everywhere back in the day. And that’s no bad thing.
The Cross will open on Sep 9. 2-4 Wharfdale Rd, N1 9RY.
Yikes! Brewdog is charging £7.10 for a pint of Punk IPA at its new Waterloo bar.