Like many people I wasn’t in the John Snow when that infamous kiss took place, I don’t know the landlord or the people who were kissing. So I’ve got no reason to believe either of them over the other. The few things that we do know for certain is that the LandLord acted after a complaint, they claim it was quick peck on the cheek the person who complained says it was more (and some supprto this). Quite frankly I don’t care, we’ve no evidence that the landlord would have acted any different if someone had complained about a straight couple kissing, or in regards to any other complaint from another customer. Yet as I’ve heard it described asking someone to leave a pub because someone else has complained has “upset the internet”. Despite it being “insane” to throw out a gay couple in SoHo because you’ll surely go out of business action must still be taken by the mob to make sure this pub, or at least the landlord, suffers this fate. Simply not using that pub and going to another isn’t enough.
All that aside though what puzzles me is this idea that all of SoHo is this gay paradise where every venue must be a suitable place for snogging/kissing who ever you like. Look at the map the line in red outlines the traditional boundaries of SoHo, the rod in pink is Old Compton street which is the heart of queer SohO. Between Old Compton street and where the pub is (that little symbol thing) lies various sex shops, strip joints (I believe mainly heterosexual), a fruit market, numerous fabric shops, offices and houses. Really by the time you get to Broadwick street you could be almost any where in London. If you have to be mad to run a business where people kissing may not always be welcome someone better tell Nickleodeon and Hamily’s. As Wikipedia says these days it “is predominantly a fashionable district of upmarket restaurants and media offices”*. So it would seem the internet is an angry ill-educated lynch mob, which only wants the law applied selectively, which really isn’t new and shouldn’t surprise me. But someone should probably warn all the businesses, houses, religious buildings and such in SoHO that the “internet” is apparently watching and if someone gets upset on twitter then the full might of the internets will be turned upon them in a giant hissy fit. On the other hand if any film directors out there want a load of people kissing in a venue for cheap you know what to do.
Ho hum.
Mind generally when I’ve been asked to leave a pub in the past, I’ve found it simplest to do so – but then I’ve also left pubs just becasue I didn’t like the atmosphere much.
* Normally I don’t treat Wikipedia as a reliable resource but it’ll do for now.
