For the past couple of years now, the media has been telling us that a Lego Brick Bar pop-up will be coming to London. Well, at some point last year, tickets were finally released for the four-day event. The location was unknown at the time of booking, and it wasn't revealed until a couple of weeks ago. The secret location was Oval Space in East London. We were promised over a million bricks with furniture and other items being made out of bricks as well as brick-inspired food and drinks. I am a big fan of Lego, so I booked tickets for myself and the bloke on the first available slot on Saturday (11:00am). We were asked to be twenty minutes early, and they were just opening the venue and sorting out the gating and ticketing. So, we waited around in the cold and windy outdoors.
Just a note that this pop-up is called "Brick Bar" and does not reference the famous plastic toy brick company, Lego, although it was obviously inspired by Lego. But, I don't think Lego would allow a toy to be associated with a drinking pop-up bar with colourful names for the ball pit and DJ table. The plastic bricks were the off-brand Chinese imports and not Lego bricks. There were also large bricks, Lego brick heads, and a few flashing blocks to sit on. But, not all of the furniture has been made of plastic bricks. So, there was no mention of "Lego", but it was obviously implied.
I saw one person wearing a Lego Batman costume. A few people brought their kids, and I noticed that they seemed to be having a better time throughout the duration.
A LOT of people had tickets for the 11:00am slot, so my first stop was to the food queue to get food, doughnuts and then to the bar to get a drink.
A selection of burgers (known as "brick burgers") were available. These were made with fresh ingredients. Chicken, beef, and vegetarian were included. They also had chips. Now, from the promotional material, I expected these to be plastic brick-inspired. The sandwiches were, though the chips were not, and I think it could have been fairly easy to cut chips like bricks. The sandwiches were made of plain coloured bread. To make them look brick-shaped, the circles were cut out of an extra slice of bread and placed on top. Now, my problem is that the bread fell apart easily, so they were extremely messy to eat, and they did not provide wet wipes. So, how many people went from eating to handling bricks?
One seller was selling doughnuts, and one of these flavours was inspired by Lego. One square one was made to look like a Lego head.
And, finally, that brings me to the Brick Bar bar. Not all drinks were served in a mock plastic brick plastic mug. Only alcohol was served in them, so if you just wanted a soft drink, you were out of luck and could not have it in the plastic brick mug. The soft drinks were emptied into a smaller plastic cup, and the remainder of the contents of the can was thrown out. I wanted the plastic brick mug, and thus I had to order a gin and tonic (the options were limited). This came with one small shot of gin and an extra small can of tonic water as a mixer. That was it! This was cheap and stingy giving out these tiny drinks in such a large glass and at expensive prices; the prices were more expensive than going to one of the nearby bars and buying the same thing. Also, I didn't care to be drinking alcohol and drinking such a small amount with my food.
A DJ at a table called "shitting bricks" was cranking out tunes, and she did a good job keeping the music flowing, and a man was calling out different activities (which I will discuss later). There was a giant throne with a few Lego costumes on the floor and a ping pong table that had been covered with bricks. There was a water fountain made out of Lego glued on to the side, but it was broken, and water was spilling over the floor. There was also a ball pit in the corner called "balls deep". And, I will remind you that there were a few kids at the venue, and they seemed to be having a better time and were hanging out in the ball pit. Someone had a baby in the ball pit. As soon as small children or babies go into a ball pit, that puts it off for me. Ball pits are very unhygenic places. I'm not saying that I don't like children or babies; I just know that these young humans do not really have any control over bodily fluids and tend to expel a lot of fluids.
So, I mentioned the man calling out different activities. Well, there were not many activities to go around. In the hour that I visited, only two activities for prizes were conducted. The first activity was to find ten gold-painted bricks were hidden around the different collections of plastic bricks. Well, great, but that means only one team can look for all ten bricks and convince others who may have found the gold bricks that they wanted the prize. The announcer announced that a couple took off to look immediately for the gold bricks. (I was standing in the queue at the bar and had my food to eat then, but this put me off even attempting to look.) Then, another activity was to build a flying object in ten minutes, but the announcer again highlighted that someone was already building a plane, so they got a head start. Again, I was eating by then and couldn't do anything, but had also been put off that someone had already made progress before the countdown.
Now, after eating, I thought that I'd take a look around at the creations on the walls and also make my own creation. However, the room was a huge room, but the issue is that there were only three big boxes of plastic bricks, and everyone was crowded around them as many of them were in corners of the room and not easy to access, so getting to them was not possible. The whole middle of the room was virtually empty with people crowded along the walls. There were three or four small "tables" made with Lego in the middle of the room with about ten of the glowing bricks. There was not nearly enough places to sit or create Lego. Also, a lot of Lego bricks were scattered on the floor.
Overall, the event was disappointing, and unfortunately the bloke and I were not the only ones to feel that way. I expected more brick creations (furniture, the whole bar, etc), and they should have had more activities for prizes or at least someone with more charisma announcing. This event should have been so much better as they could have done so much more and organised it in a much better way. For example, little things like changing the layout and having more brick containers and tables and seating around the area for building and more props. Overall, I give this a 1 out of 5 stars. This is one of the most disappointing events that I have ever been to, and I spent over 140.00 on the entry fee and the food.
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