'Spoons to close many pubs

[hellymedic]

'Spoons are closing many pubs in That London and the South East.

Edgware CTC lost the Man in the Moon in Stanmore earlier this year. Now Barnet Cyclists will lose the Tally Ho.

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/eight-wetherspoon-pubs-in-london-are-shutting-down-a3253666.html

[Psychler]

I can't talk for any of the others but the Lord Denman in Dagenham is a complete khazi. 

If you want drugs or a fight it's the place to go.  Good riddance!

[hellymedic]

The Tally Ho! at North Finchley has been a pubbe for a long time and Tally Ho Corner is named after it.
It seemed a fair place to meet and eat.
After 'spoon's undercut all the other pubs in Stanmore, they closed or turned into pricy eating houses, leaving 'spoon's the only pub in town.
But it's gone now.

[Basil]

I can't talk for any of the others but the Lord Denman in Dagenham is a complete khazi. 

If you want drugs or a fight it's the place to go.  Good riddance!

But this is what they're for in my opinion.  The local spoons in various locations act as 'sink pubs' for the area.  This is a good thing.

[jsabine]

I can't talk for any of the others but the Lord Denman in Dagenham is a complete khazi. 

If you want drugs or a fight it's the place to go.  Good riddance!

But this is what they're for in my opinion.  The local spoons in various locations act as 'sink pubs' for the area.  This is a good thing.

And in various locations they attract audaxers.

How much overlap there may be is left as an exercise for the reader.

[ian]

I can't talk for any of the others but the Lord Denman in Dagenham is a complete khazi. 

If you want drugs or a fight it's the place to go.  Good riddance!

But this is what they're for in my opinion.  The local spoons in various locations act as 'sink pubs' for the area.  This is a good thing.

Probably this. Unless, you're in South Croydon in which case it's classy (to be honest, they're generally a safer bet than the lingering Fosters and a packet of crisps pubs).

The Capitol in Forest Hill was where we lubricated our first attempts to buy a house in London, retreating there to compare notes. It's also where we celebrated our first mortgage application and a future of debt-servitude (after what felt like an eternity in the estate agent's office across the road). Mind you back then, it was about the only decent pub in Forest Hill unless you liked Fosters and bags of crisps, now it's all fu-fu gastro and I got the Sylvan Post or the Dartmouth Arms.

[Cudzoziemiec]

My experience of Spoonses is the opposite. They tend to be cheap, boring and "safe options". Not somewhere you'd go for tasty food, though the beer is often quite good, but also definitely pubs you'd expect a fight in. I guess things are different in the wild East.

[Mr Larrington]

If they'd opened the 'spoons in the Leytonstone High Road six months earlier I might never have moved here.

[caerau]

All these things come to an end - where are all the XXXX and Firkin pubs now?


I'm sure something else will crop up to take their place.


Cheap pubs definitely attract a certain class of clientele.  I recall when I was working at Birmingham Uni, the Old Varsity Tavern on Bristol Road got converted to a 'Goose' pub and the first sign of a change in things was (and this was in about 2001ish) they had a 'January sale' where Fosters was about £1 a pint.  Great we thought... until we discovered that it now attracted all the West Midlands' alcoholics and gangsters like flies around a cowpat...

[Mr Larrington]

The Firkin chain started going downhill the minute David Bruce sold out to The Man

[mcshroom]

All these things come to an end - where are all the XXXX and Firkin pubs now?

Punch Taverns bought them out and turned them into generic non-brewing pubs

[caerau]

The Firkin chain started going downhill the minute David Bruce sold out to The Man

I'm not aware that it was possible for Firkin pubs to go 'downhill'  Maybe I missed their halcyon days.  My impression of them was that they'd take a good local and franchise its character into oblivion.

[ian]

I suppose it depends what you expect. The cheap lager and crisps places are bound to die because it's cheaper to buy your lager and crisps from the supermarket. Wetherspoons bought into that space and upped the ante with a wider range of beers and food. That said, the food is the mostly the microwaved pub generic and the tables always vaguely sticky. It's a better bet than what they replaced, but the market shifts and there's profit in gastro-food and £5.50 pints of craft beer. Of course, it's a smaller market, but it's the one that empties my pockets. Though I'm so smugly hipster it's all bloody tap rooms these days. Admittedly I might pop out for some street food.

[Mr Larrington]

The Firkin chain started going downhill the minute David Bruce sold out to The Man

I'm not aware that it was possible for Firkin pubs to go 'downhill'  Maybe I missed their halcyon days.  My impression of them was that they'd take a good local and franchise its character into oblivion.

The original chain was sold to Midsummer Leisure in 1988; Bruce said it had become too big for him and wasn't fun any more.

[caerau]

That would explain it  - I was 18 in late 1988

[hellymedic]

In this corner of Outer Londonton suburbia, the 'spoons that are remaining are mostly more downmarket than the ones which will go.
The pre-meeting haunts of my cycling associates were quite civilised (FSVO civilised).

[citoyen]

That would explain it  - I was 18 in late 1988

I discovered Firkin pubs when I went to uni in Leeds in 1991 and they were still OK then. I think it was later in the 90s when they really started to go downhill. Eddie Gadd of the superb Ramsgate Brewery used to be a Firkin brewer and still includes Dogbolter in his repertoire - rather good it is too. I use it in my home-made Christmas puddings.

I won't miss Wetherspoons if they go. There are two in Canterbury, one of which used to be a carpet showroom and still feels like a carpet showroom. It's the kind of place where you get people going for an early Sunday lunch and starting on the Stella before noon. The other one is a bit better in terms of atmosphere but the beer is hit and miss. Another opened in Whitstable a couple of years ago, in what was originally the Oxford Cinema and then became a bingo hall until Wetherspoons bought it. It's an utterly soulless place and gets very noisy with the sound bouncing round the cavernous room. Quite reliable for beer and very cheap, and I have occasionally popped in for one while waiting for a bus (my stop is across the road) but it's not my preferred watering hole and if I ever win the lottery* I plan to buy it out and turn it back into a cinema, which is one facility we're sorely lacking in Whitstable.



*unlikely as I never buy a ticket

[caerau]

I don't think I went to a Firkin until about 1998ish when I went to Birmingham - there were none in my undergrad Uni's town that I can recall (unless they were towny pubs that we daren't frequent) and the only Brewhouse type place in Southampton where I did my postgrad was a Hogshead pub.  I suppose I must have gone to one earlier than that at some point but it does't stir any memories.


It seems I did miss their Halcyon Days

[ian]

I confess they make good waiting places (the one in South Croydon is opposite my bus stop), and the one near Farringdon station is a good place to kill some time (because the pub opposite – the Castle – is horrid, expensive, and loud). They usually have an OK beer or two. And they supply calories and refreshment after a long hike. But I can't say that I'd consider one a destination. In the end they're competing for the bottom end of market that's seems to be rushing towards its own funeral. They make a margin out of scale. And possibly some customers just get stuck to the tables.

The Brockley Barge supplied a few frothy beverages when I lived thereabouts, but that was in the days when the other alternative was the dismal Maypole, the scariest and most unpleasant pub in Christendom. These days if you trip over in Brockley you land in a deli.

[hellymedic]

To be fair, there can't have been much profit in the way we used our 'spoons.
-Curry Club meal including drink, often with no extras, occupying seats and tables for 60-90 minutes.

[Lady Cavendish]

I'm another that wouldn't see this as a bad thing.

Horrible places, with disgusting frozen/microwaved food that I don't understand why anyone would eat 

[ian]

I'm another that wouldn't see this as a bad thing.

Horrible places, with disgusting frozen/microwaved food that I don't understand why anyone would eat 

The alternative was pubs that considered a menu to be listing of crisp flavours or the marginally worse two meals for £something.99 of other chains. The worst of pub food in other words, where the only dubious virtue was price. Of course, you can pay a tenner for a fish finger sandwich on artisanal sourdough with heirloom tomatoes and organic wild rocket these days. That's what corporate Amex are for.

My wife was in Bottleshop the other day and doing some translation for visiting northerners (she keeps them as pets). On spying a pint that cost £7.50, they had to get out their phones to send a picture home. I think she then introduced them to the very expensive bottle selection (and I'm now the proud owner of a bottle of tequila barrel-aged imperial stout). I suspect their corroded little northern hearts popped like dirty balloons when they saw the price of that.

[Lady Cavendish]

I would definitely rather pay a  tenner for a fish finger sandwich on artisanal sourdough with heirloom tomatoes and organic wild rocket. That sounds bloody lovely 

[nicknack]

'Spoons opened one in Sittingbourne some years ago in the downmarket end (yes, there really is one - and you can tell) which rapidly absorbed the ambience of that part of town. Last year they converted the old courthouse (in more upmarket end) which makes an interesting space for a pub - the old cells have been retained and make nice one party drinking/eating spaces. I go there quite a lot. I've not eaten there but if someone suggested it I wouldn't object. The old 'spoons has now closed. There's a new one in Sheerness too. If you're unlucky enough to be stuck in Sheerness it's probably the safest place for a bevvy.

[ian]

Sheerness is probably the one place Snake Plissken can't escape from.