Tuesday, 20 August 2013

Save the Bohemia


As some of you will have seen, the Bohemia pub in North Finchley has been closed down after just one year of business. In addition to being a top local watering hole, the Bohemia has hosted many formal and informal JM gatherings, including our session on the Foodbank Network where members and pub goers alike made donations for the local Foodbank, and the Christmas wrapping bonanza when we organised the donation and wrapping of over 30 gifts for giving out at the Christmas meal the pub was putting on for isolated older people.

Apparently, the issue is that the landlord doesn't want to renew the lease to Antic Ltd who run the Bohemia. As part of ongoing negotiations with the landlord, Antic Ltd are asking Bohemia regulars to write letters of support to buoy their cause. So that's where you come in.

Over the last few years we have equipped and encouraged you to take a stand on a wide range of issues, to write to company managers and to visit your MPs to make a noise about the issues that matter to you. Now we're asking you to take all those skills and apply them to overcoming our very own issue.

Its not as desperate as lack of access of clean drinking water, not as horrific as FGM, and not as entrenched as unjust trade laws. However, it is something that will have a negative effect on our local community and our own efforts as a network.

So please, if you feel able, drop a note to fi@anticlondon.com who is compiling letters of support for the pub to use in their negotiations. Tell her why you care about the pub and what happens to it. Tell her how much we value what the staff there have done to create a welcoming space for the community. Tell her that we don't want a Tesco Metro or whatever the landlord is hoping to put there instead. We love the Bohemia and we want to see if continue to be the vibrant and vital community hub that it has become.

I've sent off a note already - will you join me in the doing the same?

Thanks!

PS - We are just laying final plans for the new term and will be in touch soon to share more, so watch this space...


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