Closing Time

Me, at the Turf Tavern in Oxford

I’m coming to the end of my time in England, and that means closing time for this little side project. For those keeping score at home, I visited and catalogued 21 pubs during my six-week adventure. I felt that was an appropriate number: 21 is the legal drinking age in the states, and the 21st Amendment repealed prohibition. Seems rather fortuitous.

I left many old boozers undiscovered, but such is the nature of travel. You can’t see and experience everything, but you explore what you can. Still, I didn’t want to jump on a jet and just end this blog at a hard stop. But how to bring it in for a soft landing? I suppose a ranking of pubs from most to least favored is simplest. Sure. Why not?

1. The Seven Stars
2. The Wrestlers
3. The Spaniards Inn
4. The Mayflower
5. The Turf Tavern (Oxford)
6. The Nags Head
7. The Churchill Arms
8. The George Inn
9. The Guinea
10. The Grapes
11. The French House
12. The Lamb & Flag
13. Town of Ramsgate
14. Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese
15. Ye Olde Mitre
16. The Old Nick
17. Cittie of Yorke
18. The Grenadier
19. The Prospect of Whitby
20. The Old Bell Tavern
21. Hoop & Grapes

Then again, how much can a list capture? Ranking has inherent problems. Defining something as the best via loose criteria and then seeking it out often brings about less joy than simply embracing the immediately accessible. Moreover, without an understanding as to how a ranking was derived, the information it conveys is useless. To that end, I’ve linked each pub to its respective post so my initial reflections can provide some context.

 

However, those posts are granular and disconnected. I think it worthwhile both for myself and my reader(s) if I describe more generally my thoughts on my London Crawling project as a whole.

 

Just to get this out of the way, I realize you may find it pretentious of me to describe a travel blog of a six-week pub crawl as a “project,” as though it were some grand scientific undertaking. I wouldn’t describe the research within as particularly rigorous, and though I clearly had fun with it, I also took it seriously. I meant what I said in my introductory post when I described the pub as “a place where humanity exercises its most phenomenal and foundational qualities,” namely fostering connections and community with others.

 

Building on that point, the better the pub contributed toward comradery, the higher it climbed on my list. I assessed this feature through informal observations, mostly around three questions: 

1. Do the employees enjoy each other’s company? 
2. Do the patrons enjoy each other’s company? 
3. Do the employees have a sense of the patrons as persons? 

Even as a stranger in their midst, the environment was much more welcoming when regulars were sprinkled in, and quirks and inside jokes shared amongst the staff. It lent to a sense of uniqueness, to a feeling of something special.

 

That uniqueness sadly appears under threat. Major brewers own and operate many English pubs—Fuller’s, Nicholson’s, Sam Smith, and Greene King being the most prominent ones from what I saw. I give them credit regarding transparency. It’s very clear from the signage who runs what, which is something I can’t say for similar conglomerates back home. However, there’s a cold efficiency to the English pub system that outmatches even our American tendencies.

 

Keeping in mind this is informed only by personal observation, my sense is that the American model hinges on variety. An owner of multiple bars can capture a wider market share by diversifying the offerings and experiences of his or her establishments.

 

The English model leans more toward uniformity. Take Greene King, for instance. It runs thousands of establishments across the U.K., including the George Inn in London and the Turf Tavern in Oxford. You would think two pubs 58 miles apart would be radically different. In some ways they are, but in others, not so much. They have similar branding, similar drink offerings, and the exact same food menus. While I like both pubs, I can’t help but feel some of the charm has been sacrificed in service to the conglomerate. As such, I tended to enjoy independent (or at least independent-minded) pubs over their corporate cousins.

 

But as I said, I like the George and the Turf. They’re Nos. 8 and 5 on my list, respectively. How can this be? Mathematics offers the simplest answer. Most pubs I visited are tied to a specific brewery, so some were bound to make the top choices. The more complete answer revolved around people. To some extent, the comradery factor I mentioned comes into play. More important, though, is that I visited these places with friends and colleagues. All things being equal, the quality of the company and the conversation are the great separators.

 

My wife, Chelsey, often comments that I like bars not because I like to drink, but because I like to talk. I think in part that’s a reprisal of my loquacious nature, but I own that reality. I mean, fucking hell! I wrote over 11,000 words for a travel blog on London pubs that maybe a dozen people will read—and I did it for fun. I clearly like to spin a yarn.

 

But I also like to listen. People fascinate me. We’re social animals, and the stories we tell and the experiences we live through bind us together, for good or ill. Pubs serve as grand gathering places, the last vestiges of the classical forum, the cathedrals of companionship where life truly happens.

 

But alas, here we are at closing time. “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here,” the old adage goes. Yet for homo sapiens—or perhaps, more aptly, homo socialis—few places could feel more like home than the pub. Anyone fancy a pint?