We're Going down the Pub

“Let’s go for a pint,” is always a suggestion you want to hear. Unfortunately, the place you choose to go to for said pint might induce rage.

Real ale used to be something that cost you a couple of quid and was generally enjoyable. That was until pubs started using words like “craft” and “artisan” as an excuse to put their prices up by 100%. Imported bespoke pale ales are not my main gripe though.

A couple of years ago I was out midweek in York with a friend. We’d been to a couple of our usual watering holes and decided to find something new. We walked down a side street and heard the soothing tones of Pantera blasting out of an empty establishment. This establishment had a bar, so we entered.

The music was ear-bleedingly loud inside and the barman seemed put out by the fact that he would now have to deal with customers. We asked for two pints.

“We don’t sell pints,” the 12-year-old boy with an entire container of gel in his hair told us.

They sold cocktails and bottled beer.

We perused the menu and went for some fairly bog standard stuff- I believe I had a Bloody Mary.

It was only 8pm and we decided that more cocktails would potentially kill us, so we decided to try a beer.

“I’ll just have a Beck’s or something,” I requested, quite reasonably.

“We don’t have Beck’s,” said gel boy. “If you want German beer, we’ve got Krappenscheissen or Die Toten Hosen.” They were probably not the names of the beers he actually offered us.

After parting with the best part of a tenner for two bottles of beer that tasted like tramp’s piss, I decided to ask a question of the child who, it turns out, was actually the owner.

“What’s with the heavy metal and cocktails combination?” I asked.

“Our customers like the juxtaposition of extreme music and classy drinks,” he replied.

Hang on. Did he just use the word “juxtaposition” in an ordinary sentence? A tad pretentious, non?

We finished our drinks quickly and then left.

A month or so later I was out with another group of friends. I suggested we should go to “a place I know” and took them to the cocktail place.

It was a Saturday and they actually had customers. Unfortunately the expansive room only had three tables, so we were unable to sit.

A barman who I dubbed The Lead Guitarist From Poison – he had long, bleached hair, wore skinny jeans and cowboy boots and looked a bit like he’d just got out of rehab five minutes ago – gave us a cocktail list. They had added some new ones since my last visit, and they’d only increased all cocktail prices by £1 in the meantime too.

I ordered something called The Impossibility of Finding Love at the Bottom of a Conical Flask. Presumably if you couldn’t say it, you were ejected from the premises for being too drunk. It was served, as the name suggested, in a conical flask. I felt like Beaker from the Muppets. It tasted of strawberries and took less than five minutes to drink. Not bad for six quid.

One friend ordered a drink that contained the ingredient “the essence of Dalby forest”. Intriguing. The barman known as Cheese Straws Hair (no explanation needed) prepared the drink and made great theatre of spraying a tiny bottle of what smelt of moss and weeds over the top of it. A truly awful cocktail.

I returned to the bar for a more sensible Jack and Coke and was served by the third barman, Russian Gangster. I called him this because he looked like a Russian gangster. Clever, huh?

The place has long since closed down. It seems £6 cocktails, fancy coffees and a daytime taster menu for £80 (that’s right, six incredibly small courses for just £80) can’t keep a business afloat.

They did once refuse me entry when I was part of a group of six. They didn’t like groups apparently. I believe I gave the classic drunken response to the bouncer: “We didn’t want to come in anyway, it’s shit.”

That told them.