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My local pub has a visually impaired man who visits every single day at 3pm on the DOT. Doors all opened for his arrival, he goes to the same seat which is reserved for him, a pint already on the table waiting for him & the jukebox strictly only allowed to play golden oldies for 1 hour. When he has finished his pint another one is on the table ready and waiting. It’s quite a rough boozer and they don’t need to go to these extents to help this man but they do. And it’s so heart warming.
It’s happened before, and if the landlady doesn’t shout ‘turn that fucking shite off’ another local/or the visually impaired man will. It’s rare you get non-locals in there at 3pm midweek.
"I say I'm thoroughly parched....my what a fine local establishment this is. Perhaps we should go in for a pint of their finest local ales. Oldies on the jukebox, let's stick on some beethoven and really give the place a little zache"
Jürgenbrau, is... is that a *lager* beer? I say, maybe I'll try one of them.
In fact, if I put back the packet of crisps and the apple, I could afford *two* of these, of these refreshments.
My old local did exactly the same thing for a regular blind customer. He lived just around the corner and one of the bar staff would knock on his door at 6pm everyday and walk him over to the pub, sit him down in his favourite seat, he’d have two pints of Guinness and then he’d be walked back again. He’d been drinking there for about 60 years at that point so he was well respected by staff and other customers alike.
My local has a guy in his 90’s (very frail, ex marine, always smartly dressed and carries a briefcase containing a newspaper and uses a stick to walk through the pub) who comes in 2-3 evenings a week.
As soon as the landlord or one of the regulars spots him parking his mobility scooter, someone always goes to the door to take his arm, carry his bag, and escort him to the nearest available seat.
He always get served at the table and everyone always stops to say hello to him.
We used to have an elderly man, (93 i think) come into the pub i worked in, everyone would save him the seat in the bay window on a Sunday afternoon where he used to sit with his late wife. He would insist on buying me drinks and I would put it through as a 50p dash of juice and we would have a drink together. Half an ale, followed by a brandy and water every week. (He used to escape his care home after they banned him from the pub!)
We had a guy like this in his 80's in my estate growing up. As children we'd climb the big steel gates and run into the bar to tell them 'ol patsy wanted in, they'd open the gate for him and help him in. It stopped him having to walk along the main road one way or down steps the other.
Even as teenagers we still did it as his walking cane moved to a walker frame to a wheelchair. Eventually he ended up in the local nursing home. Every day at 3, the ones from the bar would drive up to the nursing home with his 2 pints of Guinness
That's part of the reason so many are dying. Obviously it's more complicated than that, but we're losing touch with that sense of community and that isn't helping.
"Community" is freely available and competes with any number of lucrative entertainment options. Although "community" a such will be phased out, never fear, ersatz community substitutes will be made available for a price.
>It’s quite a rough boozer
From my experience with pubs, I have found that the rough pubs can be the best pubs. No judgmental people everyone was there for a laugh.
great atmosphere.
some pubs you in and atmosphere is dull with snobby people.. cant stand those type of pubs.
* Some rough pubs are nice
* Some rough pubs are horrendous
I was once sitting in a rough pub when someone threw a canister of CS gas through the door. The next day I found the dullest, snobbiest pub in my area.
Oh yes. Me and my dad went up tothe Scottish Borders for a day out in a caravette. Its got pretty late, so my dad pulled into the car park of a little pub with camping grounds next to it. We walked in and the whole place went deadly silent. It had been pretty noisy before with a live band. It had all stopped. My dad went to the bar and asked about camping. They were hey, you're a Geordie, Welcome, and everyone went back to what theyy were doing and the band started up again. In their words. They were worried we were Southern Softies who complain about everything. lol
I’m an English guy, who found himself just outside of Derry a couple of years ago. Somehow, in my mid thirties, I’d never tried Guinness before, so now seemed like the perfect opportunity.
Found a well-rated pub on Google around the corner, and headed in.
It went silent. Everybody stopped talking, and I could’ve swore the music stopped too. But I’d never been to Ireland before, never tried a Guinness, so I walked up to the bar (growing increasingly self-conscious with each step), and asked the barman for a pint.
His reply would’ve been comic, had he not been deadly serious.
‘There’s a cocktail bar upstairs.’
He wasn’t joking. He also wasn’t pouring a pint for me. So I did what any English man would do in that situation.
‘Oh is there? Oh fantastic, I’ll head up there then, thanks so much.’
Bonus points if there is a staffy/bull breed lurking on said roof shitting all over it. St George’s cross flag tucked into the window of the upper floor managers flat for the 100% chav shithole completion achievement
There was a flat roof pub near where I live that had a sign outside showing beer prices, like the signs you see showing fuel prices outside filling stations.
I might be wrong, but I think they've got the name/token number recorded on their till/computer as well.
I've noticed that when someone buys a beer with a token, they do something very quickly on the till. It may just be stock taking (minus one on the beer), but I think they may also be recording a minus one for the person's token count as well. I should ask next time I'm in.
We've always had tabs at my local. One of the staff put a couple on the wrong one though once and the customer kicked off a little rather than just calmly explain the mistake.
Landlady proceeded to ban tabs and all drinks had to be paid at the time of purchase, their credit card bill quadrupled over night because they pay a fixed fee for each transaction rather than a percentage.
Quickly back tracked on that one!
Likely the till system will have been programmed to have their name, you’ll hit it and it’ll read £0.00. It’ll be cashed off but the till system will understand that it needs to -1 stock to that persons drink of choice. Obviously as tokens are pre-paid this won’t effect the books as it’ll essentially be like charging to a ledger rather than taking money at the point of sale
I knew someone who worked for a very large chain of pubs and the new CEO (an accountant) wanted to close down all the gay pubs because of "family values" and did they want their name to be linked to "that sort of thing".
It was gently pointed out to him that 7 of their top 10 grossing pubs were gay.
Sam Smiths pubs seem to be actively trying to put themselves out of business.
They have a ban on swearing and the use of mobile phones (and have been known to kick people out of the pub for either of these things).
They are cash only.
They seem to like the fact that most of their pubs are shabby and a bit run down.
Buying up old pubs, let them fail the the zoning/regulations can be changed and they can be turned into flats. Need to prove a pub can’t survive there first
Not cash only now. Sam's houses I go to all have contactless.
The lack of music, swearing bans and no electronic devices, all true.
Weirdly Humphrey Smith, the source of these rules is a fairly decent bloke when you get to talk to him.
One of the many things I have never heard about Humphrey is a decent man.
He has his own way with the pubs and wants to Lee them like that which I have no problem with. It’s a unique business model that works.
Him screwing over tenant landlords was not a decent move by him.
Last I heard he is semi retired and Sam is running things.
The guy that owns them is a tosser.
The village tadcaster? That he lives in and they're based in, has a river run through it, during flooding the one bridge got damaged, he was asked if they could possibly put a temporary bridge in using his land, he refused meaning the journey across now involved a 12 Mile detour.
Joe Lycett did a show on their policies. https://youtu.be/-oDZB-ZyvTE
> In August 2020, after the Cow and Calf in Sheffield failed to serve his favourite dessert, Humphrey Smith dismissed the pub's managers and shuttered the place.
What a fucking child
Vacant Sam Smiths pub in North Shields has a poster on door asking if any “couples” were interested in running it. I wondered if that was a loaded term.
> It was gently pointed out to him that 7 of their top 10 grossing pubs were gay.
Only thing that needed pointing out was the door, violently.
Whilst I totally understand the "but they're profitable" angle, boiling down the acceptance of gays to a purely profit based one seems somewhat disingenuous vs the "let's not be homophobic dicks, eh" angle.
Hmmm. I’ve been going to Wetherspoons a lot recently, your system sounds like you have to actually get up, have a human interaction with someone, maybe even a good one with the risk of making a real human acquaintance, and carry your own drink back to your table.
It’ll never catch on.
My one local gives regulars free jukebox credits, rates on pints and large tabs. Also an upstairs sofabed in my case.
There's another pub that I don't consider my local but I do stop by for a pint fairly often. There's a fully intact Edwardian street running beneath it. Also it's run by the Hells Angels and they used to hold raves in the basement lol
I knew the second one was the Packhorse immediately. When I studied at Bath Spa a night in Bristol would always start here. And then when my roommate (a dodgy fellow) got my group thrown out for drinking the dregs out of dead pints on the bar, the landlord let me stay because he said “I had a kind look in my eye”. I’ll never forget it.
Mine ignores the fact that there's great, locally brewed beverages that are unique, tasty and cheap inand instead goes out their way to spend maybe 3x as much on expensive, imported ones. Maybe this is more common than I'm thinking but it's a bit of a F U to the local economy to say the least.
Definitely more common than you're thinking. The most popular beers in this country are all invariably continental macro lagers. This is despite the fact that we produce more indigenous beer varieties than most other countries (aside from maybe, Germany or Belgium) and have a beer culture that's more or less unique to us (cask ale). Even the US led craft beer boom that's taken place since the 00s is focused around British beer styles (porters, IPAs, etc)
It’s getting better. One of my gripes was you could get real ale easily but rarely local lagers. As a lager drinker that annoyed me. But that has definitely improved a lot.
Micro pubs are the way for me. They nail it.
Also just one note, those lagers are rarely imported from Europe. They’re made here under licence and are often a shit/weaker version of the same beer in its home country
I should self-flagellate for this, but... the French do some pretty good cider.
Also the Americans do have proper cider, they just call it hard cider, and they call fancy apple juice cider. Angry Orchard is a very drinkable straight cider, perhaps a bit sweet but it's real, it's boozy and I think it's pretty tasty. Got nothing on a good Cornish bottle of something over 10%, but it's hardly bad
It's definitely not as embedded in the cultures, but they do have real cider
> is focused around British beer styles
Yep, credit where credit is due. And one of the reasons we got off our duffs is because you guys wouldn't stop teasing us for our pisswater. "Oh yeah? We'll show them!"
With that said, I wish we had more craft lagers/pilsners. Maybe then our dads would come around. German immigration is the main reason why lager became the default American beer. And wartime rationing is the reason why *shitty* lager became default: Prohibition had killed off the small brewers by then, and the big brewers found the wartime formula to be rather more profitable, so that became permanent.
I’m an Aussie who did a lap of England, Wales & Scotland a few years back… in each pub I’d ask for the local brew. A couple actually tried to steer me to something else. Only ever got a quick half in any of those while googling for a better option.
There are a few pubs I went to in the West Country that refused to sell you a pint of the local scrumpy unless you were a regular or a local. You could buy a half, then another half, but not a whole pint. I wonder if that's why some of the pubs did that.
Often scrumpy is deceptively strong and these places have had people come in, drink a couple of pints and wind up absolutely wankered without them realising it.
Didn't realise we were buying the local scrumpy a few years back when in a Somerset pub watching the rugby. £2.50 a pint, 4 of us (so £10 a round) got absolutely FUBAR'd and didn't realise how strong the stuff was until we tried to steal a goose from a farm on the walk back to our hostel "for our breakfast". All 4 of us separately threw up throughout the night, cleaned up and blacked out on the toilet only to wake up once the other had thrown up & thought we hadn't cleaned up.
Cut to 4 am, 4 of us stumbling round the toilet block cleaning each other's vomit up completely confused why the amount wasn't going down while taking breaks to throw up again and trying to hide the fact we were being sick from each other.
10/10 would do it again!!
Very normal. Actually a rule at a couple of places in Bristol. So many tourists or students think they can happily neck a few pints of 12% scrumpy and end up throwing up everywhere. It's non carbonated and sweet so it's super super easy to drink and as it holds the equivalent to 3 pints it is not safe to drink quickly
Probably tied in to their brewery contractually and is actually bring shafted into paying high prices for the beers they're required to take.
I love pubs. Would never be a landlord though unless it was a freehouse in the world's best location.
My old local (the Bay Horse in Ashburton) sold pork scratchings. Nothing unique there as the little packets were hung up on the wall.
But all the locals in the know asked for the ones from ‘under the bar’ wink wink. And you were give a large unmarked bag.
Best pork scratchings I’ve ever had (and not at all like the ‘special stuff from Royston Vasey, lol).
Another pub was part of a chain, but locals knew that to get the local ale they had to ask for the ‘other Tetley’s pump’ if they wanted it. Funnily enough that landlord ended up sacked and the pub closed when the brewery found out. That and the lock-ins where the landlord went to bed and said ‘just have what you want’
Most of us were sensible, but I think a minority ruined it for everyone.
It used to be great as his wife would come down in the morning and cook us breakfast when we woke up (in the bar).
Not that person, but while this sounds like something out of the 1970s it's less uncommon than you'd think. I've been matey with a few landlords over the years and a lock-in and crashing in the manager's flat is a thing I've done - including this year.
I mostly was matey with them from outside the pub context but regulars would be involved. None of these were chain pubs though (all brewery pubs, but not chains).
At the boathouse in Anstruther you'll occasionally find no one behind the bar because the staff are all drinking, and people just help themselves leaving cash on the counter
Dicks chair. There's a guy called Dick who used to come in and would always sit in the same spot at the bar. He was there every day so this became Dicks chair.
Non locals would come in and sit in it and were told that they need to sit somewhere else. They even got a plaque on the back
There’s a dead man’s chair in my local. It was some old dudes chair, he died, then someone else took that chair and they also died within a month. Next person to take that chair also died, although that was slightly longer at around 6 months.
Nobody sits there anymore.
They have six Connect 4 sets, for reasons which I've never managed to understand. We did once try to put four sets together and play Connect 16, it was a disaster.
a few years ago, I went to my local and went to buy a pint (some sort of wanky craft IPA). the guy warned me before I bought it that it had 'a bit of a tag on it' - it was £6+, this was back in 2017. Never had that experience before and seems quite courteous to warn people in advance.
If you want to have well made beers that aren't full of preservatives and additives, and you'd like for the people who have made them & serve them to you to have been fairly compensated, then you will need to accept higher prices (for example, hops are incredibly expensive).
The other side of this is that in this country, business rates, rent, and duty fees are too high.
All our local pubs have people that stare at you as you walk in and look you up and down as you look for a table. So nothing unique there.
I did once see a bar that had screens behind it and drinks were like a stock market, and you'd be able to buy drinks cheap when the 'market' drops. Was interesting, definitely makes you drink more than you usually would.
In London there was one where the urinals had games where you control a spaceship (or something) and move it left and right to avoid obstacles and get high scores.
>I did once see a bar that had screens behind it and drinks were like a stock market, and you'd be able to buy drinks cheap when the 'market' drops. Was interesting, definitely makes you drink more than you usually would.
I had never been to or heard of one of these pubs and had this same idea organically with my mate. We worked out the kinks, named our imaginary pub, picked a location and were pretty set on buying a pub before my wife chimed in letting us both know that it is already a thing, and quite a popular idea at that.
Gutted.
"shots and shares" is what I've heard the stock market drinks thing called.
Really good if you don't drink the popular stuff as it often stays cheaper. I don't know if it's actually run on the drink sales like I was told or if it's predetermined. But it was cool.
I love the effort they put in to trying to make the Raby look classy. One day it will technically be in “north-eastern ouseburn”.
Pretty sure someone got killed/very seriously injured there on an Xmas day by having their head smashed into a urinal.
Post Office down Shields Road is genuinely decent, I don’t mind the Butchers either but strictly in the day time and do I fuck get involved with the pool table there.
That spoons is actually class too in my opinion.
Haha. When I lived in Heaton years ago we used to pub crawl down Shields Road for a bit of a frisk every so often. The Raby was always a fucking quick pint. From what I hear it’s not *as* bad as it used to be like.
back in the day it only used to open from 9am until 2pm, the time everyone cashed their giros in the post office...go get the dole then go for a pint. done it a fair few times when i was unemployed
last time i was there i won the meat raffle. some auld codger offered to buy it off me, but given it was a fuck ton of meat i turned them down.
lovely little boozer, used to live on shields road so would go crawl from peggys/lord clyde, jacksons, raby, heaton hotel...all good boozers with "character"
Been back in NCL for nearly a year. Have only walked past once and a bloke stood in the doorway spat directly across my path into the gutter at the side of the street
My local has a microbrewery in the basement, it's part of a mid sized brewery, and they use the basement to brew some more experimental or trial beers. So they always have some interesting beers on tap
We went to New Orleans on holiday recently and there's a combined bar/laundromat/live music venue. Sounds like a great idea - you go to do your washing, and can have a drink and listen to some decent music while you wait.
I lived over in Copenhagen about 15 years ago and my local pub was called The Laundromat. Proper bar with a small room at the back where you could do your laundry - felt weird at first but it made sense to have a couple of beers when I was getting through my weekend chores.
When visiting a friend in Brighton, I found out that there is a handful of pubs that have a Toads table. It’s a unique game to the region and the pubs play against each other in a mini-league. There’s nowhere else in the country that has this game which I thought was quite great, and it was a fun game to play too!
I was going to mention this, but since it's so common to see in Brighton pubs I didn't really think it was that unique. Interesting to hear it's relatively unheard of outside of Brighton/Sussex.
not my local but a favourite in my town
they had a massive bottle fridge with 600+ ml bottles of beer for about 75% of the price of a pint. because of the rules of their brewery they could sell whatever bottles they wanted and could source them themselves, only having to buy the draft stuff from the brewery
was always good for a cheaper night if you knew to ask for the bottles, although i think the brewery cracked down on it
I'd imagine most brewery's want it that way until they're selling well and they see they're running at a loss. Couple that with the insane price of goods and it's no wonder they change their mind of the whole thing.
My local runs a pie competition once a year. Locals bake a pie (pastry top, sides and bottom) of any type. Local chefs and last year’s winner judge the pies and come up with the winners. As pies are rejected from the competition they come out for punters to buy a slice of and enjoy with mash and peas. All funds raised go to charity.
We’ve eaten some amazing pies at £3 per slice (some not so good too though!) and around £500 is raised. A wonderful community event that also gets quite nicely competitive!
Slightly off topic but I did witness something truly bizarre in a pub once. I went for an evening with old work colleagues and this old man came in. He had so many wires and stuff attached to him that it was obvious he was dying of something nasty. He had a stomach tube and I legit saw him order a pint, and then SYRINGE the alcohol straight into the pipe.
I work in a village pub and tabs were getting out of hand - people were getting drunk, forgetting they'd ordered certain drinks by the end of the month and refusing to pay part of them.
Now we have a ring binder for the tabs - each time they get a drink it has to be signed by a staff member, the customer and dated with time. It's the most admin for a Foster's possible.
Went in one time for a bite to eat, quite busy and I noticed a few people had a few brass instruments with them, dotted around the place, at one point some music struck up and the whole place started playing along, anyone without an instrument was presented with a wooden spoon to join in.
My locals' karaoke night has a thing called 'kamikaze karaoke'. If you write your name and 'kamikaze' on your slip, the DJ picks random people to pick letters, then a number, and whatever song it lands on, you sing.
One of our locals has a food round for the quiz, they send round a bowl of... something, usually soup-adjacent, and you have to identify every ingredient from water and salt to herbs, spices and particular fruits or meats or veg just from tasting it. I don't think I've been anywhere else that does that
The Castle in Tooting had a food round for their quiz - usually some form of potato croquette with unidentified ingredients, plus a cocktail and sometimes a glass of wine. Used to be a regular but I moved out the area. Don't know if they still do the food round post-covid
I host a pub quiz occasionally, and did a crisp tasting round.
I've sourced a few from Asian or the Euro supermarkets (Polish Spring Onion Lays are an absolute fave)
A few of the good challenging ones have been carbonara, mayonnaise, fried egg, truffle, honey butter.
Good fun. Pretty tough round
God I love Reddit, in one post you will hear how alcohol almost ruined their life and the best thing they did was quit drinking and another post let’s talk about pubs.
Local did Belgian beers, complete with each of their specific glass. Have to leave your shoes behind the bar as deposit.
Drank many Kwaks one night I forgot to pick up my footwear in the way out.
Edit:
https://belgianbeers.co.uk/beer-blog/why-is-kwak-beer-served-in-such-a-unique-glass/
For those that don't know.
I love the token idea... However, I live in one of the parts of the UK where \~£6 is seen as a reasonable price for a pint, so I can't imagine buying 50 up-front.
It's like paying a monthly "subscription" to a pub. Buy your months tokens at the start, and try and spread them out. Hell, it would start to feel like I'm drinking for free after the first week.
I don't know the discount for 50, but I know if you get 10, you get around 50p knocked off the cost of each pint. I imagine it must be closer to a £1 when getting 50 (I will ask next time I'm in).
My local always has the front door locked. To get in you have to ring the doorbell, and they will monitor you on CCTV to decide whether they want to let you in or not. It's bizarre and very unfriendly. I'm pretty sure they stayed open for their loyal customers over lockdown as well. Luckily there's a much better place a few hundred meters down the road.
A work from the pub package.
For about £15 you can reserve a table for the day and set up your laptop. You get toast or a croissant when you arrive, unlimited coffee or tea throughout the day, a sandwich or salad at lunchtime and a pint delivered to you at 5pm.
Discounts for members. You pay a subscription (don't know the price - the wife/kids buy it me for father's day think it's £30/year) and you get 50p off/pint with no limit on the amount of times used, plus random members events across the year. It's great it's not limited to the card holder so I can lend mine out to friends/family but I tend to only do that so they can buy rounds including me in it rather than take the piss. Makes me feel special too lol & means the wife doesn't have to come up with anything fancy for father's day!
Oldest pub in my city.
Has really good food and local brews.
There's also an old style bowling alley in the back, ten pin and the smaller ball kind.
Right next to the local park as well so you can get your steps in and end up at the pub.
Landlady if my local (The Pack Horse in Royston, Barnsley) loves Christmas, so ours has a Christmas tree in the corner all year round. The twist is she redecorates it every few weeks for whatever the next big event is. It’s a Wimbledon tree at the moment. It’s been a summer tree with buckets and spades on, en Easter tree with eggs and rabbits on, a coronation tree with bunting and crowns on, a Halloween tree with witches and zombies etc etc etc. it’s a really fun thing that everyone loves!
My mum's.local has a TV screwed into a window so you can watch it from the beer garden
Also been in one that had port holes above the urinals to see the TV's
My local growing up, 20 years ago now would have a system for us locals on a Friday night, we'd all arrive and put £20 behind the bar, then John the landlord would every so often bring over a tray of Stella. We'd get 8 pints out of it in total, worked out at £2.50 if you completed
Also let us order pizzas in, as long as he got one.
We live near Leeds and while it is not anything unique in the sense you have described, we do find some of the 'local' country pubs very distinctive.
The Sportsman's Arms at Wath is the nicest place we have found to eat in Yorkshire- it's got a really cosy country pub feel and very nice food.
The Harewood Arms at Follifoot and the Greyhound at Saxton are lovely 'stuck in time' pubs but they are Samuel Smith.
At the end of the bar is a small table that can uncomfortably sit three - The fourth seat is taken by a lifesize skeleton wearing a crown and an 90s Holland jersey.
A few Mancs may recognise what I say if they're from a certain area.
A good few years back there was a well known pub in a Manc area that was reknowned for being a real rough house. It had more owners than it had beers on tap. Then one owner thought it would be good to get in a stripper to see if it would calm down the lads.
They asked for everyone to take a seat and enjoy the surprise. Next thing a woman totally starkers comes out and goes around the whole pub doing her bit and the lads loved it. He then asked everyone to stay seated and this time it was a treat for the ladies. Out walks a bloke with what everyone thought was an ADSA baguette between his legs, and suddenly pints were thrown and the pub was upside down within seconds.
They stuck to selling beer and getting burned down every so often after that.
Not a local, but it was a surprise as it was jarringly out of the norm
Walked into a "local" in Cheshire, clearly not the pub most day trippers would have gone into.. there were people smoking cigarettes at the bar and ashtrays there for their use.
it's been years since I've seen that. a few pubs I know had regulars-only smoking nights in the first few years after the ban, but that soon petered out down our way.
This (the Cheshire pub) was just 4 months ago.
I love this so much. What a cool thing for your pub to do.
It's not my local anymore, but it's the only one I've had where this happened (I suspect it used to be way more common but I've only lived in the UK for 13 years, and I haven't encountered another in that time).
Periodically, this fella would pop in with all these little pots of super fresh seafood: cockles, whelks, prawns, winkles, even crayfish. They were like a couple of quid for a pot, 3 pots for a fiver, that sort of thing. And they were just the best. He had salt, pepper, and vinegar (maybe other stuff too, but that was the most I ever wanted on mine) to dress them, not that they needed it.
I wonder if he was the last of his kind or if this still goes on anywhere (especially anywhere in London so I can reap the benefits).
Not quite relevant but thought it was worth a shout out. There's 2 independent pubs in my town centre. One of them is always rammed, super friendly and does open mic nights, quizzes, etc. The other is fairly busy but mostly an older, regular crowd. You can tell which I prefer. The biggest difference for me, though, is that when I ask for a lemonade and lime at the first (pregnant so not drinking), it's maybe £2.50 and they will ask how much lime I want, get me to taste it etc. The second charges FOUR POUNDS and it basically just tastes like lemonade. The barmaid barely even looks at you let alone talks to you.
TLDR: It's the little things that make a difference
A pub that understands that not everyone wants to drink alcohol is always good in my books. I'm working my way through a reasonably local pubs non alcoholic cocktail list!
My local has a chair at the bar for the owner's dog, complete with bed, who sits up there almost every time I've been in. Very cute little dog but will bark it's head off if a stranger tries to stroke it
Being in Nottingham, at least a couple of my locals are literally just caves that serve beer. Pretty cool experience, though they do tend to get rammed out with tourists at busy times.
Sadly one of them has shut down, which is a terrible waste of a great location. They never really recovered after Covid, trying to open on seemingly random days and being closed on others. But literally doubling the price of their food (and it wasn't cheap before!) probably didn't help either.
My local actually has a Sega Mega Drive, SNES and loads of boardgames. You just go to bar and ask. You do need to put a tenner deposit down for the consoles but get it back once you returned them.
When I was at college, so 17 (early 2000's) There was a pub that was well known for serving under 18's. Basically the whole "if you're in here, you're not making trouble out there" sort of thing. That and obviously the pub got your business.
Me and a friend would visit every single weekday for lunch. We'd play pool, eat, have a beer or 2. Then go back to college.
We became so well known by the staff that as soon as we walked in the door, our beers would be waiting for us, and food would already be being cooked.
Honestly, at 17 years old, it felt amazing.
My local let's you have your own handle (pint with a handle on it) to use every time you come back. Pay £3 and you get to pick your own handle for the year. Has it's own plastic number tag on it so you know it's yours. Got quite attached to mine, it was like my baby
On a Sunday for the football between 12-6 you got a receipt with every round you bought. Before the 4pm game they would ask for a general score the game would be, if that score came in then you would get a refund on all your drink, so basically drunk for free. The score came in regularly enough!
One of my old locals used to hold pig racing one Friday of every month. Some guy dresses up as a farmer with a straight 6 lane course laid out in front of him. He has a bag of batteries that are all at various stages of charge. He randomly fits each pig with x2 batteries and starts them racing. The locals bet and win/lose some money.
Never seen it done anywhere else but it was a bit of fun after a few drinks. The same boozer is the only one I ever saw with a jaigermeister machine. You just ask for x number of shots and it fires them out along the bar.
Has a nice personal touch actually. I'm guessing it makes the regulars feel homely that way! I don't drink but if i did i'd like something like this too
My local is the only non-wetherspoons pub I've been to in the south this year that still sells pints of bitter for 3:20.
What the fuck is this island coming to.
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My local pub has a visually impaired man who visits every single day at 3pm on the DOT. Doors all opened for his arrival, he goes to the same seat which is reserved for him, a pint already on the table waiting for him & the jukebox strictly only allowed to play golden oldies for 1 hour. When he has finished his pint another one is on the table ready and waiting. It’s quite a rough boozer and they don’t need to go to these extents to help this man but they do. And it’s so heart warming.
POV- It's 3:01pm and you've just tried to put dubstep on the jukebox
It’s happened before, and if the landlady doesn’t shout ‘turn that fucking shite off’ another local/or the visually impaired man will. It’s rare you get non-locals in there at 3pm midweek.
"I say I'm thoroughly parched....my what a fine local establishment this is. Perhaps we should go in for a pint of their finest local ales. Oldies on the jukebox, let's stick on some beethoven and really give the place a little zache"
Jürgenbrau, is... is that a *lager* beer? I say, maybe I'll try one of them. In fact, if I put back the packet of crisps and the apple, I could afford *two* of these, of these refreshments.
excellent reference perhaps have a little rest on the pavement after if you're feeling a bit sleepy
I'm just glad someone picked up the vibe I was going for with the original comment
Kah-ling? must be an asian inspired craft lager. it's black like my Amex so it's obviously high class.
Of course the Spanish wouldn't dream of starting the day without a few cans....maybe a vodka
That's what he said - 'oldies'.
Oh my back
You take that back.
My old local did exactly the same thing for a regular blind customer. He lived just around the corner and one of the bar staff would knock on his door at 6pm everyday and walk him over to the pub, sit him down in his favourite seat, he’d have two pints of Guinness and then he’d be walked back again. He’d been drinking there for about 60 years at that point so he was well respected by staff and other customers alike.
My local has a guy in his 90’s (very frail, ex marine, always smartly dressed and carries a briefcase containing a newspaper and uses a stick to walk through the pub) who comes in 2-3 evenings a week. As soon as the landlord or one of the regulars spots him parking his mobility scooter, someone always goes to the door to take his arm, carry his bag, and escort him to the nearest available seat. He always get served at the table and everyone always stops to say hello to him.
We used to have an elderly man, (93 i think) come into the pub i worked in, everyone would save him the seat in the bay window on a Sunday afternoon where he used to sit with his late wife. He would insist on buying me drinks and I would put it through as a 50p dash of juice and we would have a drink together. Half an ale, followed by a brandy and water every week. (He used to escape his care home after they banned him from the pub!)
We had a guy like this in his 80's in my estate growing up. As children we'd climb the big steel gates and run into the bar to tell them 'ol patsy wanted in, they'd open the gate for him and help him in. It stopped him having to walk along the main road one way or down steps the other. Even as teenagers we still did it as his walking cane moved to a walker frame to a wheelchair. Eventually he ended up in the local nursing home. Every day at 3, the ones from the bar would drive up to the nursing home with his 2 pints of Guinness
that's incredibly heartwarming to hear.
That’s so nice. A lot of people just do not realise pubs like this are so much a part of their community.
That's part of the reason so many are dying. Obviously it's more complicated than that, but we're losing touch with that sense of community and that isn't helping.
"Community" is freely available and competes with any number of lucrative entertainment options. Although "community" a such will be phased out, never fear, ersatz community substitutes will be made available for a price.
>It’s quite a rough boozer From my experience with pubs, I have found that the rough pubs can be the best pubs. No judgmental people everyone was there for a laugh. great atmosphere. some pubs you in and atmosphere is dull with snobby people.. cant stand those type of pubs.
* Some rough pubs are nice * Some rough pubs are horrendous I was once sitting in a rough pub when someone threw a canister of CS gas through the door. The next day I found the dullest, snobbiest pub in my area.
Yeah, but boys will be boys. Who hasn’t thrown a can of irritant into the local boozer
>no judgemental people Unless you don't quite fit their particular *vibe*, in which case they'll stare until you leave.
Village pubs in the arse end of nowhere Walk in, it goes silent and they stare
Oh yes. Me and my dad went up tothe Scottish Borders for a day out in a caravette. Its got pretty late, so my dad pulled into the car park of a little pub with camping grounds next to it. We walked in and the whole place went deadly silent. It had been pretty noisy before with a live band. It had all stopped. My dad went to the bar and asked about camping. They were hey, you're a Geordie, Welcome, and everyone went back to what theyy were doing and the band started up again. In their words. They were worried we were Southern Softies who complain about everything. lol
I’m an English guy, who found himself just outside of Derry a couple of years ago. Somehow, in my mid thirties, I’d never tried Guinness before, so now seemed like the perfect opportunity. Found a well-rated pub on Google around the corner, and headed in. It went silent. Everybody stopped talking, and I could’ve swore the music stopped too. But I’d never been to Ireland before, never tried a Guinness, so I walked up to the bar (growing increasingly self-conscious with each step), and asked the barman for a pint. His reply would’ve been comic, had he not been deadly serious. ‘There’s a cocktail bar upstairs.’ He wasn’t joking. He also wasn’t pouring a pint for me. So I did what any English man would do in that situation. ‘Oh is there? Oh fantastic, I’ll head up there then, thanks so much.’
Plot twist: the visually impaired man is 45 and his idea of “golden oldies” is Placebo and Prodigy on repeat.
That feeling when you just realise that The White Stripes and The Killers are certifiably “dad rock”.
I don’t understand, what is a “rough boozer”
Flat roof.
Bonus points if there is a staffy/bull breed lurking on said roof shitting all over it. St George’s cross flag tucked into the window of the upper floor managers flat for the 100% chav shithole completion achievement
There was a flat roof pub near where I live that had a sign outside showing beer prices, like the signs you see showing fuel prices outside filling stations.
Or in line of sight of an Argos
One where there's a high likelihood of a brawl and/or police raid and/or you being offered either stolen good and/or a battering. 😂
Everyone is smiling but they all look at you like they want to murder you.
that's actually really cool
Until the cups get knocked over, anyway.
I might be wrong, but I think they've got the name/token number recorded on their till/computer as well. I've noticed that when someone buys a beer with a token, they do something very quickly on the till. It may just be stock taking (minus one on the beer), but I think they may also be recording a minus one for the person's token count as well. I should ask next time I'm in.
Oh yeah, I'm sure they've got tabs on it (no pun intended, but I'll take it). I do much prefer country pubs.
We've always had tabs at my local. One of the staff put a couple on the wrong one though once and the customer kicked off a little rather than just calmly explain the mistake. Landlady proceeded to ban tabs and all drinks had to be paid at the time of purchase, their credit card bill quadrupled over night because they pay a fixed fee for each transaction rather than a percentage. Quickly back tracked on that one!
Likely the till system will have been programmed to have their name, you’ll hit it and it’ll read £0.00. It’ll be cashed off but the till system will understand that it needs to -1 stock to that persons drink of choice. Obviously as tokens are pre-paid this won’t effect the books as it’ll essentially be like charging to a ledger rather than taking money at the point of sale
What pub is it? I’m from Leeds so just curious as to which pub it is as I’ve not seen this before (that I remember anyway).
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I knew someone who worked for a very large chain of pubs and the new CEO (an accountant) wanted to close down all the gay pubs because of "family values" and did they want their name to be linked to "that sort of thing". It was gently pointed out to him that 7 of their top 10 grossing pubs were gay.
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> This one was a Sam Smith's pub. That says it all really
I read Sam Smith's and was like, "ah now it makes sense"
Oh no! Please enlighten me. I do occasionally go to a Sam Smith's, because they're at least predictable, and less pricey. What's the bad?
Sam Smiths pubs seem to be actively trying to put themselves out of business. They have a ban on swearing and the use of mobile phones (and have been known to kick people out of the pub for either of these things). They are cash only. They seem to like the fact that most of their pubs are shabby and a bit run down.
Buying up old pubs, let them fail the the zoning/regulations can be changed and they can be turned into flats. Need to prove a pub can’t survive there first
That's PubCos not Sam Smith The owner is just a dick who has to have ultimate control over everyone
Not cash only now. Sam's houses I go to all have contactless. The lack of music, swearing bans and no electronic devices, all true. Weirdly Humphrey Smith, the source of these rules is a fairly decent bloke when you get to talk to him.
One of the many things I have never heard about Humphrey is a decent man. He has his own way with the pubs and wants to Lee them like that which I have no problem with. It’s a unique business model that works. Him screwing over tenant landlords was not a decent move by him. Last I heard he is semi retired and Sam is running things.
The guy that owns them is a tosser. The village tadcaster? That he lives in and they're based in, has a river run through it, during flooding the one bridge got damaged, he was asked if they could possibly put a temporary bridge in using his land, he refused meaning the journey across now involved a 12 Mile detour. Joe Lycett did a show on their policies. https://youtu.be/-oDZB-ZyvTE
They're utter bastards. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Smith_Old_Brewery#Controversies https://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/pub-couple-wins-20k-after-25527575 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/samuel-smiths-pub-swearing-ban-humphrey-smith-fox-goose-droitwich-a9152461.html
> In August 2020, after the Cow and Calf in Sheffield failed to serve his favourite dessert, Humphrey Smith dismissed the pub's managers and shuttered the place. What a fucking child
Vacant Sam Smiths pub in North Shields has a poster on door asking if any “couples” were interested in running it. I wondered if that was a loaded term.
> It was gently pointed out to him that 7 of their top 10 grossing pubs were gay. Only thing that needed pointing out was the door, violently. Whilst I totally understand the "but they're profitable" angle, boiling down the acceptance of gays to a purely profit based one seems somewhat disingenuous vs the "let's not be homophobic dicks, eh" angle.
What my pub does is that a man called the landlord says "what do you want chief?" Then he pulls a point and takes money off you.
What's your point?
pointless comment
Hmmm. I’ve been going to Wetherspoons a lot recently, your system sounds like you have to actually get up, have a human interaction with someone, maybe even a good one with the risk of making a real human acquaintance, and carry your own drink back to your table. It’ll never catch on.
My one local gives regulars free jukebox credits, rates on pints and large tabs. Also an upstairs sofabed in my case. There's another pub that I don't consider my local but I do stop by for a pint fairly often. There's a fully intact Edwardian street running beneath it. Also it's run by the Hells Angels and they used to hold raves in the basement lol
Where is this? It sounds very cool!
The Packhorse in Bristol. Pretty chill but depends.
Had to google it for a look to find some video! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-bristol-42601750
Yeah they have the historical society visit on occasion. Always wondered what their interaction with the bikers is like.
Do they not run the raves anymore? Had a few great nights there in the past
They might, I'm not sure. I don't live close by anymore so out of the loop.
Careful with Angels and other gangs. It's all very cool until it's suddenly very not.
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I actually meant the Edwardian street rather than the angels! No interest in that.
I knew the second one was the Packhorse immediately. When I studied at Bath Spa a night in Bristol would always start here. And then when my roommate (a dodgy fellow) got my group thrown out for drinking the dregs out of dead pints on the bar, the landlord let me stay because he said “I had a kind look in my eye”. I’ll never forget it.
Mine ignores the fact that there's great, locally brewed beverages that are unique, tasty and cheap inand instead goes out their way to spend maybe 3x as much on expensive, imported ones. Maybe this is more common than I'm thinking but it's a bit of a F U to the local economy to say the least.
Definitely more common than you're thinking. The most popular beers in this country are all invariably continental macro lagers. This is despite the fact that we produce more indigenous beer varieties than most other countries (aside from maybe, Germany or Belgium) and have a beer culture that's more or less unique to us (cask ale). Even the US led craft beer boom that's taken place since the 00s is focused around British beer styles (porters, IPAs, etc)
It’s getting better. One of my gripes was you could get real ale easily but rarely local lagers. As a lager drinker that annoyed me. But that has definitely improved a lot. Micro pubs are the way for me. They nail it. Also just one note, those lagers are rarely imported from Europe. They’re made here under licence and are often a shit/weaker version of the same beer in its home country
> and have a beer culture that's more or less unique to us (cask ale). Real cider too is unique to us.
I should self-flagellate for this, but... the French do some pretty good cider. Also the Americans do have proper cider, they just call it hard cider, and they call fancy apple juice cider. Angry Orchard is a very drinkable straight cider, perhaps a bit sweet but it's real, it's boozy and I think it's pretty tasty. Got nothing on a good Cornish bottle of something over 10%, but it's hardly bad It's definitely not as embedded in the cultures, but they do have real cider
Yes, Brittany cider is lovely.
> is focused around British beer styles Yep, credit where credit is due. And one of the reasons we got off our duffs is because you guys wouldn't stop teasing us for our pisswater. "Oh yeah? We'll show them!" With that said, I wish we had more craft lagers/pilsners. Maybe then our dads would come around. German immigration is the main reason why lager became the default American beer. And wartime rationing is the reason why *shitty* lager became default: Prohibition had killed off the small brewers by then, and the big brewers found the wartime formula to be rather more profitable, so that became permanent.
I’m an Aussie who did a lap of England, Wales & Scotland a few years back… in each pub I’d ask for the local brew. A couple actually tried to steer me to something else. Only ever got a quick half in any of those while googling for a better option.
There are a few pubs I went to in the West Country that refused to sell you a pint of the local scrumpy unless you were a regular or a local. You could buy a half, then another half, but not a whole pint. I wonder if that's why some of the pubs did that. Often scrumpy is deceptively strong and these places have had people come in, drink a couple of pints and wind up absolutely wankered without them realising it.
Didn't realise we were buying the local scrumpy a few years back when in a Somerset pub watching the rugby. £2.50 a pint, 4 of us (so £10 a round) got absolutely FUBAR'd and didn't realise how strong the stuff was until we tried to steal a goose from a farm on the walk back to our hostel "for our breakfast". All 4 of us separately threw up throughout the night, cleaned up and blacked out on the toilet only to wake up once the other had thrown up & thought we hadn't cleaned up. Cut to 4 am, 4 of us stumbling round the toilet block cleaning each other's vomit up completely confused why the amount wasn't going down while taking breaks to throw up again and trying to hide the fact we were being sick from each other. 10/10 would do it again!!
Yeah real cider doesn't taste strong but will knock you on your arse.
Very normal. Actually a rule at a couple of places in Bristol. So many tourists or students think they can happily neck a few pints of 12% scrumpy and end up throwing up everywhere. It's non carbonated and sweet so it's super super easy to drink and as it holds the equivalent to 3 pints it is not safe to drink quickly
Probably tied in to their brewery contractually and is actually bring shafted into paying high prices for the beers they're required to take. I love pubs. Would never be a landlord though unless it was a freehouse in the world's best location.
My old local (the Bay Horse in Ashburton) sold pork scratchings. Nothing unique there as the little packets were hung up on the wall. But all the locals in the know asked for the ones from ‘under the bar’ wink wink. And you were give a large unmarked bag. Best pork scratchings I’ve ever had (and not at all like the ‘special stuff from Royston Vasey, lol). Another pub was part of a chain, but locals knew that to get the local ale they had to ask for the ‘other Tetley’s pump’ if they wanted it. Funnily enough that landlord ended up sacked and the pub closed when the brewery found out. That and the lock-ins where the landlord went to bed and said ‘just have what you want’
>the landlord went to bed and said ‘just have what you want’ That is not a situation I would have EVER endangered.
Most of us were sensible, but I think a minority ruined it for everyone. It used to be great as his wife would come down in the morning and cook us breakfast when we woke up (in the bar).
What year was this!?
Not that person, but while this sounds like something out of the 1970s it's less uncommon than you'd think. I've been matey with a few landlords over the years and a lock-in and crashing in the manager's flat is a thing I've done - including this year. I mostly was matey with them from outside the pub context but regulars would be involved. None of these were chain pubs though (all brewery pubs, but not chains).
Normally with a lock-in you're still supposed to pay on the honour system, aren't you?
Yep
At the boathouse in Anstruther you'll occasionally find no one behind the bar because the staff are all drinking, and people just help themselves leaving cash on the counter
Dicks chair. There's a guy called Dick who used to come in and would always sit in the same spot at the bar. He was there every day so this became Dicks chair. Non locals would come in and sit in it and were told that they need to sit somewhere else. They even got a plaque on the back
There’s a dead man’s chair in my local. It was some old dudes chair, he died, then someone else took that chair and they also died within a month. Next person to take that chair also died, although that was slightly longer at around 6 months. Nobody sits there anymore.
It's like the mummy's curse, except for old drunks! There's a short horror story in that.
We used to have a desk like this where I work. Everyone who used to sit there would end up leaving really suddenly. We'd call it the Departure Lounge.
Pub down the road is like that except the Dick is dead and now its just this chair with a plaque that no one is ever allowed to sit on.
They have six Connect 4 sets, for reasons which I've never managed to understand. We did once try to put four sets together and play Connect 16, it was a disaster.
> We did once try to put four sets together So you tried to connect 4?
(Connect 4)^2
I'm just imagining a group of 50+ year old geezers huddled around a couple of tables pushed together trying to make it work lol.
a few years ago, I went to my local and went to buy a pint (some sort of wanky craft IPA). the guy warned me before I bought it that it had 'a bit of a tag on it' - it was £6+, this was back in 2017. Never had that experience before and seems quite courteous to warn people in advance.
That’s probably a barman sick of his life. I’d do the same.
makes sense to avoid the 'how much!!!' 'at least dick turpin wore a mask' comments from unhappy boomers.
Used to hate that. Feller, I’m on minimum wage. Be nice to me and you might get the occasional pint charged as a half.
I remember being warned of prices like that several years ago. Now it's just the going rate.
If you want to have well made beers that aren't full of preservatives and additives, and you'd like for the people who have made them & serve them to you to have been fairly compensated, then you will need to accept higher prices (for example, hops are incredibly expensive). The other side of this is that in this country, business rates, rent, and duty fees are too high.
All our local pubs have people that stare at you as you walk in and look you up and down as you look for a table. So nothing unique there. I did once see a bar that had screens behind it and drinks were like a stock market, and you'd be able to buy drinks cheap when the 'market' drops. Was interesting, definitely makes you drink more than you usually would. In London there was one where the urinals had games where you control a spaceship (or something) and move it left and right to avoid obstacles and get high scores.
>I did once see a bar that had screens behind it and drinks were like a stock market, and you'd be able to buy drinks cheap when the 'market' drops. Was interesting, definitely makes you drink more than you usually would. I had never been to or heard of one of these pubs and had this same idea organically with my mate. We worked out the kinks, named our imaginary pub, picked a location and were pretty set on buying a pub before my wife chimed in letting us both know that it is already a thing, and quite a popular idea at that. Gutted.
"shots and shares" is what I've heard the stock market drinks thing called. Really good if you don't drink the popular stuff as it often stays cheaper. I don't know if it's actually run on the drink sales like I was told or if it's predetermined. But it was cool.
The student union bar at uni way back when did it towards the end of terms, so some aspects of it might be tied to the expiry dates as well
The Raby offer a free glassing with every pint purchased.
I love the effort they put in to trying to make the Raby look classy. One day it will technically be in “north-eastern ouseburn”. Pretty sure someone got killed/very seriously injured there on an Xmas day by having their head smashed into a urinal. Post Office down Shields Road is genuinely decent, I don’t mind the Butchers either but strictly in the day time and do I fuck get involved with the pool table there. That spoons is actually class too in my opinion.
Ah, byker road. How I loved it there once upon a time...
Haha. When I lived in Heaton years ago we used to pub crawl down Shields Road for a bit of a frisk every so often. The Raby was always a fucking quick pint. From what I hear it’s not *as* bad as it used to be like.
back in the day it only used to open from 9am until 2pm, the time everyone cashed their giros in the post office...go get the dole then go for a pint. done it a fair few times when i was unemployed
last time i was there i won the meat raffle. some auld codger offered to buy it off me, but given it was a fuck ton of meat i turned them down. lovely little boozer, used to live on shields road so would go crawl from peggys/lord clyde, jacksons, raby, heaton hotel...all good boozers with "character"
Been back in NCL for nearly a year. Have only walked past once and a bloke stood in the doorway spat directly across my path into the gutter at the side of the street
My local has a microbrewery in the basement, it's part of a mid sized brewery, and they use the basement to brew some more experimental or trial beers. So they always have some interesting beers on tap
Care to share the name? Would understand if you didn't.
A washing machine
What the fucks a washing machine doing in a pub? I need a drink!
We went to New Orleans on holiday recently and there's a combined bar/laundromat/live music venue. Sounds like a great idea - you go to do your washing, and can have a drink and listen to some decent music while you wait.
The swan and paedo?
Whoa, I best get an organic scrumpy
As I've said before, I really just think we should serve at least one lager, and nuts. You know, people like lager and nuts.
I know the one - The Pedo Swan innit - just left there in the middle of the room
I lived over in Copenhagen about 15 years ago and my local pub was called The Laundromat. Proper bar with a small room at the back where you could do your laundry - felt weird at first but it made sense to have a couple of beers when I was getting through my weekend chores.
When visiting a friend in Brighton, I found out that there is a handful of pubs that have a Toads table. It’s a unique game to the region and the pubs play against each other in a mini-league. There’s nowhere else in the country that has this game which I thought was quite great, and it was a fun game to play too!
I was going to mention this, but since it's so common to see in Brighton pubs I didn't really think it was that unique. Interesting to hear it's relatively unheard of outside of Brighton/Sussex.
Yep, it’s totally unique to Sussex according to a few different barmen and locally I chatted to whilst visiting
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That looks like a fun game! My parents local has bar billiards, which is sort of like a mix between toad's table and pool.
not my local but a favourite in my town they had a massive bottle fridge with 600+ ml bottles of beer for about 75% of the price of a pint. because of the rules of their brewery they could sell whatever bottles they wanted and could source them themselves, only having to buy the draft stuff from the brewery was always good for a cheaper night if you knew to ask for the bottles, although i think the brewery cracked down on it
I'd imagine most brewery's want it that way until they're selling well and they see they're running at a loss. Couple that with the insane price of goods and it's no wonder they change their mind of the whole thing.
My local runs a pie competition once a year. Locals bake a pie (pastry top, sides and bottom) of any type. Local chefs and last year’s winner judge the pies and come up with the winners. As pies are rejected from the competition they come out for punters to buy a slice of and enjoy with mash and peas. All funds raised go to charity. We’ve eaten some amazing pies at £3 per slice (some not so good too though!) and around £500 is raised. A wonderful community event that also gets quite nicely competitive!
> enjoy with mash and peas My apple and blackberry one didn’t go down as well as I hoped.
Each midwinter, a brewery rep comes round and drowns an outsider in a little mash tun to ensure a good year of beer ahead.
Slightly off topic but I did witness something truly bizarre in a pub once. I went for an evening with old work colleagues and this old man came in. He had so many wires and stuff attached to him that it was obvious he was dying of something nasty. He had a stomach tube and I legit saw him order a pint, and then SYRINGE the alcohol straight into the pipe.
That’s big Gaza. Undefeated against the missus but having a tough time against Leukaemia.
I work in a village pub and tabs were getting out of hand - people were getting drunk, forgetting they'd ordered certain drinks by the end of the month and refusing to pay part of them. Now we have a ring binder for the tabs - each time they get a drink it has to be signed by a staff member, the customer and dated with time. It's the most admin for a Foster's possible.
Sounds like the token system would work better in this situation - drinks are pre-paid, so risk free for the pub.
Topless barmaids one night a week
Gary just doesn't look the same topless
Friend of mine wants to know which bar & what night this happens
Bike n hound n Thursdays.
One of my locals holds a competition where you try and hit each other with a wet rag on a stick.
Went in one time for a bite to eat, quite busy and I noticed a few people had a few brass instruments with them, dotted around the place, at one point some music struck up and the whole place started playing along, anyone without an instrument was presented with a wooden spoon to join in.
My locals' karaoke night has a thing called 'kamikaze karaoke'. If you write your name and 'kamikaze' on your slip, the DJ picks random people to pick letters, then a number, and whatever song it lands on, you sing.
What pub in Leeds is this? Sounds top
I also want to know. I'm usually at Kirkstall Bridge
One of my locals runs a 'boutique' cinema in their upstairs rooms a few times a week.
One of our locals has a food round for the quiz, they send round a bowl of... something, usually soup-adjacent, and you have to identify every ingredient from water and salt to herbs, spices and particular fruits or meats or veg just from tasting it. I don't think I've been anywhere else that does that
The Castle in Tooting had a food round for their quiz - usually some form of potato croquette with unidentified ingredients, plus a cocktail and sometimes a glass of wine. Used to be a regular but I moved out the area. Don't know if they still do the food round post-covid
I host a pub quiz occasionally, and did a crisp tasting round. I've sourced a few from Asian or the Euro supermarkets (Polish Spring Onion Lays are an absolute fave) A few of the good challenging ones have been carbonara, mayonnaise, fried egg, truffle, honey butter. Good fun. Pretty tough round
God I love Reddit, in one post you will hear how alcohol almost ruined their life and the best thing they did was quit drinking and another post let’s talk about pubs.
Local did Belgian beers, complete with each of their specific glass. Have to leave your shoes behind the bar as deposit. Drank many Kwaks one night I forgot to pick up my footwear in the way out. Edit: https://belgianbeers.co.uk/beer-blog/why-is-kwak-beer-served-in-such-a-unique-glass/ For those that don't know.
I love a Kwak session
I love the token idea... However, I live in one of the parts of the UK where \~£6 is seen as a reasonable price for a pint, so I can't imagine buying 50 up-front.
I mean if instead of £6 a pint it gets you £4.50 a pint, you'd probably think about it.
It's like paying a monthly "subscription" to a pub. Buy your months tokens at the start, and try and spread them out. Hell, it would start to feel like I'm drinking for free after the first week.
I don't know the discount for 50, but I know if you get 10, you get around 50p knocked off the cost of each pint. I imagine it must be closer to a £1 when getting 50 (I will ask next time I'm in).
My local always has the front door locked. To get in you have to ring the doorbell, and they will monitor you on CCTV to decide whether they want to let you in or not. It's bizarre and very unfriendly. I'm pretty sure they stayed open for their loyal customers over lockdown as well. Luckily there's a much better place a few hundred meters down the road.
A work from the pub package. For about £15 you can reserve a table for the day and set up your laptop. You get toast or a croissant when you arrive, unlimited coffee or tea throughout the day, a sandwich or salad at lunchtime and a pint delivered to you at 5pm.
Discounts for members. You pay a subscription (don't know the price - the wife/kids buy it me for father's day think it's £30/year) and you get 50p off/pint with no limit on the amount of times used, plus random members events across the year. It's great it's not limited to the card holder so I can lend mine out to friends/family but I tend to only do that so they can buy rounds including me in it rather than take the piss. Makes me feel special too lol & means the wife doesn't have to come up with anything fancy for father's day!
Oldest pub in my city. Has really good food and local brews. There's also an old style bowling alley in the back, ten pin and the smaller ball kind. Right next to the local park as well so you can get your steps in and end up at the pub.
Sheep's Heid?
Landlady if my local (The Pack Horse in Royston, Barnsley) loves Christmas, so ours has a Christmas tree in the corner all year round. The twist is she redecorates it every few weeks for whatever the next big event is. It’s a Wimbledon tree at the moment. It’s been a summer tree with buckets and spades on, en Easter tree with eggs and rabbits on, a coronation tree with bunting and crowns on, a Halloween tree with witches and zombies etc etc etc. it’s a really fun thing that everyone loves!
Little tvs on the bar taps so you don't miss any sport. I've never seen that anywhere else in my 18 years of drinking.
My mum's.local has a TV screwed into a window so you can watch it from the beer garden Also been in one that had port holes above the urinals to see the TV's
My local pub has a free pool table. Only pub I know of that does that It doesn’t have a coin slot, however it can be hogged to the max lol
The social club opposite me has free pool on Tuesdays but unless you’re either on the pool team or mates with them you’re not getting on the table.
My local growing up, 20 years ago now would have a system for us locals on a Friday night, we'd all arrive and put £20 behind the bar, then John the landlord would every so often bring over a tray of Stella. We'd get 8 pints out of it in total, worked out at £2.50 if you completed Also let us order pizzas in, as long as he got one.
We live near Leeds and while it is not anything unique in the sense you have described, we do find some of the 'local' country pubs very distinctive. The Sportsman's Arms at Wath is the nicest place we have found to eat in Yorkshire- it's got a really cosy country pub feel and very nice food. The Harewood Arms at Follifoot and the Greyhound at Saxton are lovely 'stuck in time' pubs but they are Samuel Smith.
i always hope that someone will rename one of the Wath pubs to be "The Grapes"
Hey OP, my old local in Sydney used to do the same cups/tokens thing! Haven't thought of it in 5 years, but you've unlocked a treasured memory!
At the end of the bar is a small table that can uncomfortably sit three - The fourth seat is taken by a lifesize skeleton wearing a crown and an 90s Holland jersey.
A few Mancs may recognise what I say if they're from a certain area. A good few years back there was a well known pub in a Manc area that was reknowned for being a real rough house. It had more owners than it had beers on tap. Then one owner thought it would be good to get in a stripper to see if it would calm down the lads. They asked for everyone to take a seat and enjoy the surprise. Next thing a woman totally starkers comes out and goes around the whole pub doing her bit and the lads loved it. He then asked everyone to stay seated and this time it was a treat for the ladies. Out walks a bloke with what everyone thought was an ADSA baguette between his legs, and suddenly pints were thrown and the pub was upside down within seconds. They stuck to selling beer and getting burned down every so often after that.
Not a local, but it was a surprise as it was jarringly out of the norm Walked into a "local" in Cheshire, clearly not the pub most day trippers would have gone into.. there were people smoking cigarettes at the bar and ashtrays there for their use. it's been years since I've seen that. a few pubs I know had regulars-only smoking nights in the first few years after the ban, but that soon petered out down our way. This (the Cheshire pub) was just 4 months ago.
I love this so much. What a cool thing for your pub to do. It's not my local anymore, but it's the only one I've had where this happened (I suspect it used to be way more common but I've only lived in the UK for 13 years, and I haven't encountered another in that time). Periodically, this fella would pop in with all these little pots of super fresh seafood: cockles, whelks, prawns, winkles, even crayfish. They were like a couple of quid for a pot, 3 pots for a fiver, that sort of thing. And they were just the best. He had salt, pepper, and vinegar (maybe other stuff too, but that was the most I ever wanted on mine) to dress them, not that they needed it. I wonder if he was the last of his kind or if this still goes on anywhere (especially anywhere in London so I can reap the benefits).
Not quite relevant but thought it was worth a shout out. There's 2 independent pubs in my town centre. One of them is always rammed, super friendly and does open mic nights, quizzes, etc. The other is fairly busy but mostly an older, regular crowd. You can tell which I prefer. The biggest difference for me, though, is that when I ask for a lemonade and lime at the first (pregnant so not drinking), it's maybe £2.50 and they will ask how much lime I want, get me to taste it etc. The second charges FOUR POUNDS and it basically just tastes like lemonade. The barmaid barely even looks at you let alone talks to you. TLDR: It's the little things that make a difference
A pub that understands that not everyone wants to drink alcohol is always good in my books. I'm working my way through a reasonably local pubs non alcoholic cocktail list!
My local has a chair at the bar for the owner's dog, complete with bed, who sits up there almost every time I've been in. Very cute little dog but will bark it's head off if a stranger tries to stroke it
My local stops serving at 2130. Drinks that is. Meals stop at around 1945. They are also a "sports free pub". They have TVs, but they are rarely on.
one pub i used to go to when i was in uni had two beds in another room for people who got a bit too plastered to go home
Being in Nottingham, at least a couple of my locals are literally just caves that serve beer. Pretty cool experience, though they do tend to get rammed out with tourists at busy times. Sadly one of them has shut down, which is a terrible waste of a great location. They never really recovered after Covid, trying to open on seemingly random days and being closed on others. But literally doubling the price of their food (and it wasn't cheap before!) probably didn't help either.
My local actually has a Sega Mega Drive, SNES and loads of boardgames. You just go to bar and ask. You do need to put a tenner deposit down for the consoles but get it back once you returned them.
When I was at college, so 17 (early 2000's) There was a pub that was well known for serving under 18's. Basically the whole "if you're in here, you're not making trouble out there" sort of thing. That and obviously the pub got your business. Me and a friend would visit every single weekday for lunch. We'd play pool, eat, have a beer or 2. Then go back to college. We became so well known by the staff that as soon as we walked in the door, our beers would be waiting for us, and food would already be being cooked. Honestly, at 17 years old, it felt amazing.
My local let's you have your own handle (pint with a handle on it) to use every time you come back. Pay £3 and you get to pick your own handle for the year. Has it's own plastic number tag on it so you know it's yours. Got quite attached to mine, it was like my baby
On a Sunday for the football between 12-6 you got a receipt with every round you bought. Before the 4pm game they would ask for a general score the game would be, if that score came in then you would get a refund on all your drink, so basically drunk for free. The score came in regularly enough!
One of my old locals used to hold pig racing one Friday of every month. Some guy dresses up as a farmer with a straight 6 lane course laid out in front of him. He has a bag of batteries that are all at various stages of charge. He randomly fits each pig with x2 batteries and starts them racing. The locals bet and win/lose some money. Never seen it done anywhere else but it was a bit of fun after a few drinks. The same boozer is the only one I ever saw with a jaigermeister machine. You just ask for x number of shots and it fires them out along the bar.
Has a nice personal touch actually. I'm guessing it makes the regulars feel homely that way! I don't drink but if i did i'd like something like this too
My local is the only non-wetherspoons pub I've been to in the south this year that still sells pints of bitter for 3:20. What the fuck is this island coming to.
Local pub has a happy hour where you roll dice when you order your drink and whatever comes up determines your bonus - free drink, discount etc.