Pint of Carling, please: Welcome to Shoreditch: Cargo

83 Rivington St, London, EC2A 3A

Trying to be compliant with my personal 2010 purposes, let’s try to resurrect pintofcarlingplease.blogspot.com and make out of it that lovely little shelter for all these pubs in London you’d like to know about but you don’t because you are unsocial or a weirdo or because you are scared of big beer measures. Whatever.

So here we go. I went to the gym twice this week, I had salad for dinner also twice and I only had beer with my dinner once. I bought tickets for the theatre and for Opera, and also a flight for going back to Madrid in March. Writing in this blog is really the only pending issue in my ‘feel good’ list for the new year… it wasn’t that hard, really.

Next posts will be ideally cover Shoreditch based pubs. As you may or not know, I’ve recently moved to this trendy London area. No more Cricklewood / Kilburn dives, good bye crappy Jubilee line and welcome to a new life of flat sharing, student-like life comeback and overprized boozers. Welcome to Shoreditch, darling.

And first one to be reviewed, for no specific reason, is Cargo. Although a bit pretentious, I quite like this place, half-way a pub and club, in the hurt of Shoreditch… I discovered it for the first time last summer, while we repeatedly enjoyed its lovely terrace on those after work binges we used to have… true enough, Cesar Tomate was still around, and London was a sparking city where every day was a good option for sipping some lager nectar until late nite.

Its terrace is indeed one of its biggest attractions. Gas heaters on winter, wide wooden benches and tables for enjoying a quiet conversation (I remember Jason helped me out to schedule my Japan trip over there), chill out tunes as background and a consistently trendy young audience, everybody in love and in pink, it looked some times more like what you would expect at Ibiza than like a hidden dive in the dirtiest area of London. Bansky-like graffiti in the walls helped to overcome that easily committed mistake, and also makes you give it a final and conclusive thought as a refreshing beer goes through your throat: yes, London is a nice place to live in.

Later on, winter came and all that crap didn’t make any sense anymore. But still the pub is quite cool inside, based under a bridge and with a Fabric look like on it - the classic brick vaults and arches with neon lights all around the place. The music tends to be electronic, and for my taste might be slightly aloud most of the time, pounding your ears a little too much and making conversation sometimes a bit difficult. Nice place then for a handover between the early pubs and the night club, but not for some quiet drinks in a mid week binge anymore.

People hanging around there? Well – the classic arty trendy Shoreditch crew, with sporadic visits of city boys. Everybody is wearing clothes worth more than 200 pounds, which obviously mirrors how much to be ‘alternative’ is synonym of mainstream and posh nowadays. I include myself on the sort of stupid people to be blamed for it – I cannot help it.

Nice as well is the live bands playing there. I saw The Drones last November, and it was one of the best examples of how a sold out gig should be: full, but comfortable. The organization maybe thought that not overpacking the place would be a good idea not only from a safety stand point, but also taking in consideration the enjoy of everybody paying about 10 quid for watching the band. So I can only recommend the venue, as the organization was good, the sound quality was flawless and the vibe they got was quite impressive, although I didn’t like the band itself too much – not my cup of tea, really.

Anyway, the area where gigs take place is also used for clubbing nights - which I think may be cool... I never went, I was put off by the massive queues I see when I go back home.

On the top of all that, drinks are a bit overpriced (that is a constant flaw of every single Shoreditch venue) at 3.50 the pint. Lager is Amstel, and you also have a couple of other draught beers plus a wide variety of bottled ones – being Budvar the best option hands down. They also serve food – advertised as Latin, but with burguers as main topic… WTF!” -, which might be an option on summer on the terrace – again, slightly more expensive than you would pay for somewhere else, but apparently the quality is good enough, which is saying more than you rally could about some other places in the area.