25 Camberwell Church Street,
Camberwell,
London,
SE5 8TR
0872 148 0589
The ViewLondon Review
Brighter than a baboon’s bottom, the Funky Munky – with its banana-yellow walls and Day-Glo graffiti daubings – does little to blend into the unimaginative terrain of Camberwell Green.
But that’s no bad thing – as one of the handful of hip, late-licensed DJ bars spearheading this south-London enclave’s renaissance, The Munky has a lot to caw about.
The Munky’s magic is in its slightly lefty, slightly Thatcher-child, slightly über-cool DJ bar propensities. The venue attempts to be all things to all comers, apish or otherwise, and somehow manages to pull it off. Enter by day and you could be interrupting the cardies and kaftans at a Socialist Worker’s meeting; but delay your visit by a couple of hours and you may stumble upon a new acts showcase from an up-and-coming hip-hop label.
Unlike its style-bar counterparts north of the river the Funky Munky scores highly on decor, opting for Llewellyn-Bowen bomb-in-a-paintshop brashness rather than the bland brickwork and steel-clad bars of Cargo, Blu, Home and their homogenous ilk.
Maroon-splashed Ikea shelf work props up the optics, flanked by smutty chalkboards advertising the day’s lethal shot and cocktail combos; a large graffiti tag underneath the bar advertises ‘Camberwell Live’, a pretty accurate assertion judging by my difficulties in squeezing past the ‘live’ antics on the dancefloor as the night progressed.
So, sit back and chat about the gothic endoscopy-probe styled chandeliers and other brick-a-brac absurdities over a perfect seabreeze on a long summer afternoon, or head down for one of the club nights – a similarly spirited mixture of breaks, old funk and hip-hop which are steadily garnering clubland respec’.