“I LOVE THIS BAR!!!” Those watering holes for the good times and the worst. No light, some light. Stools, a booth. Old fashioned, Modern. Which one stands out? Do you go there often? Or was once enough? Pubs, Famous Places. What lasts? Where do you chill and relax?
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I lived right around the corner from this one when I was drinking. Now, the bar closed at 2 am, but you could still hear a party going on in there until the doors opened back up at 7.
Cheap beer, cheap shots, and a laundromat next door, so you could actually do some chores!
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For me there was only every one bar that mattered.
sadly I don’t see any pictures of the gorilla. They used to have a life size animatronic gorilla in a big clear plastic box.
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My clothes already smelled enough like cigarettes and whiskey, I didn’t need any help !
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What made it matter Pearl? Just curious.
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Since I’ve been California sober, it’s dispensaries now.
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My favourite local pub is The Phoenix Inn because it satisfies my big three asks of a pub:
No jukebox or piped in music of any kind
No food served (saved for bags of crisps, nuts and the odd pork pie)
No fluorescent lighting
It also has a log fire and a judicious selection of ales on cask
Also it’s right next to the city walls, which you can see from the beer garden. Occasionally you’ll see people you know walking the walls so you can be all like “Who are ya! Who are ya! Have a pint you rummy lorry”
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Is that even allowed anymore? I can’t stand going into a pub, sitting down with a drink, and suddenly having music drown out everything but the person right next to me.
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It should be the law of the land but sadly not. There is an insidious alternative doing the rounds which is music on at a barely perceptible level, so you’ll be trying to unwind but be naggingly aware of something at the edge of your consciousness. And that something is that cursed Elbow song or something.
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I wish to know about this “pork pie!”
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Pork pies are goooood! Well, good ones are, anyway.
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Me too!
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Oh blimey - they’ve been such a ubiquitous presence in my life I never considered they’d be so localised. Well, I don’t want to derail the thread (and believe me, on this subject I could) so to be brief - pork pies are a saintly mix of pork meat and jelly wrapped in a specific kind of pastry (Hot water crust I think). The meat is cooked but you eat the pie cold. Get some hot English mustard on it and eat with some pickled onions and you’ll be singing Jerusalem with a hanky on your head before you know it
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I went to college in Palo Alto and there were two kinds of places people went to drink: the super expensive sushi bar, or Antonio’s, which was the diviest of dive bars. So once we were of age, me and my friends spent a LOT of evenings at Antonios, drinking and playing liar’s dice (they kept the equipment for that at the bar). After college, by a happy coincidence, my first apartment was only three blocks away from the Nut House, meaning I didn’t have to drive home!
It’s been slowly dying for years as Palo Alto is converting more and more from an upper-middle/lower-upper class college town to an enclave for the super wealthy. Every time it’s on the chopping block someone steps in to try to save it, but it’s a lost cause, because the bank won’t give you money based on nostalgia. The gorilla was sold at auction a while back, the first time it started to close down.
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With many of these places and restaurants sometimes, it’s a battle to keep them open. Progress versus what was.
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One ingenious man owns three different bars/laundromats around town.
I definitely frequent pub/dive bars mostly.
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Oh, man. I might have to pick up a pork pie from our local bakery for lunch one of these days.
More on topic, a regular bar? In this economy?! What are we, millionaires?
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