Cambridge Pubs

[Dr. Yoshi]

- Does your home town have a big pub / bar presence?

Hells yeah! There are eight different bars within a one-block radius of the intersection of Pier and Hermosa, three of which are pubs: Patrick Malloy's, London Underground, and Hennessey's.

- Is that good for the place in your opinion?

It's our primary business in Hermosa Beach and drunks rarely stumble through my part of the neighborhood so I can't complain.

- Is there much interesting local history attached to any in particular?

Patrick Malloy's and Shark's Bay have long been favorite stomping grounds for USC and UCLA students during the weekends. The Lighthouse is the oldest of them all and has been a jazz club since the 1920s. Other than that, nothing really.

 

[Brighteye]

It's a good map of Cambridge pubs. We always used to call the whole crawl along King Street the King Street Run. Now it seems that the Arms has taken the name for itself.
The one including the Druids, Free Press and Bakers' arms (Dark Blue) is the Grafton maze, because after 5 pubs you get lost looking for the Druids or the Free Press (which are the two best pubs in Cambridge). Of course the dark blue line would be the best, because everyone knows that the dark blues are better than the light blues. Who won the boat race?
I'm not sure I agree with how they've split it though, because generally we'll start at the Prince Regent (if we're doing the central route) and move on to the Bun shop and do the King Street Run. I think all those should be one 'line'.
The purple line is clearly the 'Rah line' for Southerners who are actually ponces and have too much money.

Oxford has a good selection of pubs, lots of them old.

As for dirty notherners, I'd rather have the taste to drink a good ale than get drunk on cat's urine. Who's the real man? The man who drinks real ale in a real pub and remains as smooth as James Bond, or the boy who drinks urine, talks s*** and wears rubbish, all in a vast modern monstrosity that resembles a cattle market more than a pub.
Not that we don't have that down south too...

 

[nonconformist]

It's a good map of Cambridge pubs. We always used to call the whole crawl along King Street the King Street Run. Now it seems that the Arms has taken the name for itself.
The one including the Druids, Free Press and Bakers' arms (Dark Blue) is the Grafton maze, because after 5 pubs you get lost looking for the Druids or the Free Press (which are the two best pubs in Cambridge). Of course the dark blue line would be the best, because everyone knows that the dark blues are better than the light blues. Who won the boat race?
I'm not sure I agree with how they've split it though, because generally we'll start at the Prince Regent (if we're doing the central route) and move on to the Bun shop and do the King Street Run. I think all those should be one 'line'.
The purple line is clearly the 'Rah line' for Southerners who are actually ponces and have too much money.

Oxford has a good selection of pubs, lots of them old.

As for dirty notherners, I'd rather have the taste to drink a good ale than get drunk on cat's urine. Who's the real man? The man who drinks real ale in a real pub and remains as smooth as James Bond, or the boy who drinks urine, talks s*** and wears rubbish, all in a vast modern monstrosity that resembles a cattle market more than a pub.
Not that we don't have that down south too...

Too true.

Chequers all the way!

 

[Sidhe]

I'm using the smug smilie for this thread as I'm really chuffed to live in a town with such a rich array of pubs. They have played a significant role in the development of this historic town of Cambridge and there are heaps of them to choose from. I worked out the other day that there are at least 5 pubs within a 500 metre radius from my front door.

Here are just a few interesting facts about pubs in Cambridge:
Now have a look at the pubs on a map from the same website as that quote was taken from. You'll see they have come up with the fantastic idea of arranging the pubs into a London Underground style map. You can click on the pub name to find out more.

If you live in or visit Cambridge, let me recommend a pub crawl down the blue line. They are all close together, quite varied and all lead to the marketplace, where you can fill your beery belly.

So for the sake of discussion:

- Does your home town have a big pub / bar presence?
- Is that good for the place in your opinion?
- Is there much interesting local history attached to any in particular?
- If you know Cambridge, can you suggest any names for the different 'pub lines'? I reckon they've only gone half the distance with this otherwise brilliant map. Shying away from giving the lines names was an error imho.

Ah can't beat Portsmouth, in the 18th century it had over 1000 pubs in a 5 mile square radius(sailors are drunkards ) now it has more than 300 in a 5x5 mile square radius, that's a lot of pubs.

In some areas there are 10 pubs on one street with almost nothing else.

I believe though Portsmouth ceded it's dubious title of most pubs per capita to Amsterdam some time ago.

EDIT: Oxfords pubs are great, a real taste of the old, I remember one pub that you had to bend down to get through the door, a testament to the diminuitive height of the populace of the middle ages compared to now.

 

[El Justo]

- Does your home town have a big pub / bar presence?
- Is that good for the place in your opinion?
- Is there much interesting local history attached to any in particular?

yes. my hometown has a few pubs although there's only 3 of them that i can count off of the top of my head. i live in a small town though.

however, there are all types of beach bars not far from my house but they're mainly tourist traps.

i personally like pubs/bars as they are good for commerce and nightlife (so long as they're not directly across from where i sleep).

as for the historical notions of them...

not much i'm afraid. most are all relatively young (30 to 40 yrs maybe). there are a few that are sort of 'landmarks' in a certain sense (ie - tourists flock to them in droves).

 

[EdwardTking]

what is a squaddy?

A private soldier, most typically an infantryman too;
but also known to have been used for ground crew RAF.

 

[GinandTonic]

I split my time between brighton and camden, so spoilt for boozers. Lots of old pubs in camden, only a few in brighton more than a hundred years old.

Tourism being vital for both places they do both places a power of good. Brighton sensibly gives a street over to blokes-looking-for-a-fight and their screaching women folk. This keeps them out of the rest of the city, is easy to avoid and allows those members of the local police who incline to violence to get it out of their systems in a socially acceptable manner.

Devon has to have the best pubs in the uk. Any pub that keeps its back door unlocked in case anyone needs to get a drink in the night. Where the local cop has to potter home to change his shirt before the lock-in... Ahh happy memories...

 

[Sidhe]

Indeed Portsmouth has the same thing, it's where the proletariat can beat ten bales of s**t out of each other, and get arrested and sent to jail. You don't avoid it as such, you just make haste to depart it by taxi when the fools start kicking up a fuss over who was looking at your pint for the longest.

I avoid it but then I don't like trendy pubs, too many hooligans. Pubs that are near student establishments are better, you get a good mix of the literati and the proletariat and the bourgeouis. In case anyone thinks I'm discriminating based on class, I am most certainly a member of the proletariat.

I split my time between brighton and camden, so spoilt for boozers. Lots of old pubs in camden, only a few in brighton more than a hundred years old.

Tourism being vital for both places they do both places a power of good. Brighton sensibly gives a street over to blokes-looking-for-a-fight and their screaching women folk. This keeps them out of the rest of the city, is easy to avoid and allows those members of the local police who incline to violence to get it out of their systems in a socially acceptable manner.

Devon has to have the best pubs in the uk. Any pub that keeps its back door unlocked in case anyone needs to get a drink in the night. Where the local cop has to potter home to change his shirt before the lock-in... Ahh happy memories...

Pub ettiquette and procedure, get friendly with the land lord, if a lock in happens then your the people in the know. In Pompey I've seen police ignore lock ins consistently, they have better things to do with their time than arrest people on a technicality, it's just so not worth it

 

[GinandTonic]

I like trendy pubs, just not the sh*t chain binge-drinking rubbish next to big clubs owned by multinationals. I like real pubs too, with a landlord with an irish accent so thick as to be incomprehensible and a piano to sing songs round at 2am throwing Guinness over strangers. Country pubs too. Student pubs. Ozzy pubs. Gastro pubs. Footy pubs.

Hell I guess I just like pubs.

 

[Sidhe]

Ah a pub connoisseur so rare, in Portsmouth you can sample the whole gamette in an hour or two(drinking time included) You have to have serious stamina in a pub crawl because you only walk for two minutes max to get to the next pub. there's no sobering up period

Portsmouth is a strange town pub wise, you can walk out of a trendy bar into a student bar and then cross the road to an Irish pub(a real Irish pub, not shaemus O' flatterly O' Reilly O' bjesus were so owned by a multi national, we're as Irish as Bangkok) Then across the road again to a quiet local, down two streets to a pub/nightclub, out of that door and into a heavy metal pub, then four houses down back into a local again, their really is no need for taxis in a pub crawl unless your terminally lazy

 

[Hotpoint]

Ah a pub connoisseur so rare, in Portsmouth you can sample the whole gamette in an hour or two(drinking time included) You have to have serious stamina in a pub crawl because you only walk for two minutes max to get to the next pub. there's no sobering up period

Pompey pub crawls can be hazardous to your health in my experience. It's hard to find a route that covers enough distance to make moving worthwhile at all

 

[Desmond Hawkins]

I worked out the other day that there are at least 5 pubs within a 500 metre radius from my front door.

This is one thing I resent about living in Canada. Nothing is within 500m of anything unless you are talking about other houses. How great would it be to be able to walk or ride your bike to most places you need to go? Well I don't know because I don't have that opportunity.

*Gets a twitchy eye thinking about Rambuchan's good fortune*

 

[PrinceOfLeigh]

[/QUOTE]

Pubs that are near student establishments are better, you get a good mix of the literati and the proletariat and the bourgeouis. In case anyone thinks I'm discriminating based on class, I am most certainly a member of the proletariat.

Dear God.
Methinks you are over-anaylising what is a simple process. Choosing a Pub is simple:

Does it have a good range of cheap alcohol?
Does it have enough girls in there to keep you entertained?
Is it a Gay/Lesbian/Hooligan Hangout?

Answer the first two 'yes' and the third 'no' and you've found a winner.

As for dirty notherners, I'd rather have the taste to drink a good ale than get drunk on cat's urine. Who's the real man? The man who drinks real ale in a real pub and remains as smooth as James Bond, or the boy who drinks urine, talks s*** and wears rubbish, all in a vast modern monstrosity that resembles a cattle market more than a pub.
Not that we don't have that down south too...

Yes, Northerners all live in vast modern monstrositys. Luton anyone? Bridgewater?

 

[Whomp]

- Does your home town have a big pub / bar presence?
- Is that good for the place in your opinion?
- Is there much interesting local history attached to any in particular?

Chicago has a large bar/lounge/tavern/club presence. There are blocks full of bars in nearly every neighborhood.
I'll focus on the older more historical ones. Since the city burnt down in 1871 there's not a lot of history prior to that. The ones I'll mention have an interesting prohibition era speakeasy history.

Here are a few....

A block from my house is a old speakeasy called "The Green Door". What's cool about this place is that it was built in 1872 immediately following the Great Fire but what makes the building interesting is it was built before an ordinance was passed prohibiting wooden built commercial buildings in or around the loop (downtown Chicago). Not only is it the oldest building on the block but the only wooden one, and it also is leaning (and is the reason I'll never have a restricted view of downtown Chicago ). It's as old-fashioned and "Chicago" as it gets. Its history is plastered across the walls, ceiling, and every crack and splinter that a hundred plus years could show. It also has a basement many Chicagoans don't know about where the speakeasy was. They still bring in a small jazz band twice a week to jam in that small cramped room.

John Barleycorn. Pretty famous place where the area that is now the rear dining room was a Chinese laundry during the 1920s, and served as a front for bootleggers who rolled carts of booze through the laundry to the basement. John Dillinger and Al Capone are said to have frequented the saloon and often bought the house a round. The Biograph Theater, where Dillinger was gunned down, is just two blocks away. The building dates to 1890 and contains the original tin ceiling, columns and two-foot-thick walls. Today, the most noticeable attributes are the handmade replicas of ships, some dating to the late 1800s, which an eccentric Dutch proprietor collected during travels to Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Hong Kong and Europe. There's also an enormous moosehead, and a carving of a person wearing a crown sits above the cash register. The carving was discovered buried in the walls when the building was renovated 10 years ago. Fun local hangout.

The most famous bar in Uptown if not all of Chicago, the Green Mill is one of famous gangster Al Capone's former speakeasies from the Prohibition-era roaring '20s. There's a photo of him on the baby grand behind the bar. It was also a fav of Charlie Chaplin and Gloria Swanson. The oldest jazz club in the US (and presumably the world).

Up Late, late late?…Marie's Ridtipe Lounge has a 5 am license…what a trip this place is. Marie must be closing in on 80 years old. She's the original owner and bartender. She looks like your grandmother and acts like a truck driver. She runs the place, sings on occasion, does magic tricks, and for a shot of Jagermeister, she’ll be your new friend. The place started as a polka joint in 1961. I think the jukebox hasn't been changed in 60 years since it only has those great old 45's, from Elvis to Petula Clark.

So there's a few interesting joints...

 

[Sidhe]

Dear God.
Methinks you are over-anaylising what is a simple process. Choosing a Pub is simple:

Does it have a good range of cheap alcohol?
Does it have enough girls in there to keep you entertained?
Is it a Gay/Lesbian/Hooligan Hangout?

Answer the first two 'yes' and the third 'no' and you've found a winner.


Yes, Northerners all live in vast modern monstrositys. Luton anyone? Bridgewater?

Actually I was being ironic if you'll excuse that, the point is in Portsmouth it's not so much finding good pubs, but chosing between a score of good pubs I apologise for the irony

Pompey pub crawls can be hazardous to your health in my experience. It's hard to find a route that covers enough distance to make moving worthwhile at all

so true, we tried the Selsey to Copnor route, the pubs are fairly well spaced and full of locals, but even then it was hard to really build up a sweat when you had to walk one hundred yards most of the time. The Old Portsmouth pub crawl is an excercies in futility you might as well just stay where you are, because walking 15 yards from pub to pub is pointless, which is pretty much what I took your post to mean, best idea to make pub crawls work in Portsmouth is take somewhere like the pub A(your usual haunt) as you base pub and then move to pubs that are of equal calibre, that way you are moving at least 300 yards between pubs and sometimes Jeez nearly 600 yards

 

[Fifty]

I currently reside in a college town and hence all the bars are filled with sucky losers.

 

[Sidhe]

Ye it must bite that todays sucky losers are tomorrows Bill gates Embrace the geek in others

 

[Fifty]

Ye it must bite that todays sucky losers are tomorrows Bill gates Embrace the geek in others

Hey I don't have a problem with "geeks" at all! I have a problem with the kids who wanted sooooo bad to be cool in HS but weren't, and then they get to college and suddenly think they are totally freaking awesome because they can wear a Jack Daniels t-shirt and have sex with a fat girl at a party. LOSERS!

 

[PrinceOfLeigh]

Hey I don't have a problem with "geeks" at all! I have a problem with the kids who wanted sooooo bad to be cool in HS but weren't, and then they get to college and suddenly think they are totally freaking awesome because they can wear a Jack Daniels t-shirt and have sex with a fat girl at a party. LOSERS!

 

[Rambuchan]

Hey I don't have a problem with "geeks" at all! I have a problem with the kids who wanted sooooo bad to be cool in HS but weren't, and then they get to college and suddenly think they are totally freaking awesome because they can wear a Jack Daniels t-shirt and have sex with a fat girl at a party. LOSERS!

Is your publisher ok with you posting up sneak previews of your autobiography like this?



Thanks for all the stories of your home town drinking places and histories. Excellent stuff.

We too have many pubs with dug out framed sections of the wall, to show the old wattle and daub (sp?) construction. There also seems to be a strange tradition in Cambridge for pubs to have burnt ceilings, with cigarette lighters in particular. There is one called The Eagle which has a back room with names, love messages, dates and all sorts written on it by cigarette lighters. There is a plaque that tells you who did it also. They were US and UK Fighter Pilots from WWII. There are a few other pub ceilings like this in town, but that's the best example.

These pubs also have all sorts of old engravings and etchings, containing buckets of info on their contributions to the history of the town and the country. The other day I was looking at one engraving of a man carrying great big pike, looking somewhat like a Conquistador in his armour and helmet. Apparently he used to be a guard of the house that the pub used to be back in the 1500s (I was in The Castle Inn fyi). Loads of other great stuff, not so much time to note it all down.