London City Pubbing - The Old Days

[* ORM *]

Looking at the clubbing thread brought back a few memories of the good old days when I was young, free and used to enjoy life. It was very hard to find many pubs in the City that stayed open beyond 8.30/9pm in those days, unless you fancied the rare "delights" of of the Railway Tavern or the Apples and Pears inside Liv St before grabbing a few Caseyburgers for the train home and vomiting somewhere around Harold Wood.(Casey Jones, whatever happened to them, though I do remember they were regularly fined for employing illegal immigrants on a pittance).

Bishopsgate wasn't a bad bet, with a few exceedingly dodgy pubs where the edge of the Broadgate complex is now. A mixture of strip joints and 'duck here comes another pint glass flying through the air' pubs where a fight was more or less a nightly occurence. Sadly I cannot remember any of the names of those pubs.

Alternatively you could venture as far as Shoreditch and the White Horse, which I believe is still going, or some of the pubs around Spitalfields market.

My favourite was the original Sir Paul Pindar pub. Pool and Darts upstairs and they laid on the best pub grub in the City.

Something changed in the mid-80s, dunno if it was City by-laws or not but all of a sudden Coates in London Wall turned into a Karaoke Bar, stayed opened later and was fantastic on a Friday night. Then of course there was Cozy's and Cozy's II. I believe Coates lost the plot a few years later and may have turned into a telephone bar where you could ring people up on other tables. By this time I'd already turned into an old and boring fart.

 

[Yorkshire Blue]

ORM, I think it was the 1736 Gin Act you refer to.

 

[SARF]

BB's a red one and a green one.. The Lord Aberconway was up there in the ****ehole stakes.. The Minories used to have Q's out side when they decided to turn the back bar into a disco.. If you thought the city was a ****ehole then you should have worked in the Docklands! When i started down here in my Byrites suit the Cat and Canary had just opened but you had to walk on Scaffold boards to get to it.. No Canary wharf tower but the constant banging of them hammering the foundations in.. At least 2 evacuations a week when they found another of the Luftwaffes incendiarys.. and boozing in the opprto as it was a Coppers pub so you figured ant punch ups would be fairly brief.

 

[TrueBlue]

if you like strippers go to the Griffin between Farringdon and Chancery Lane

 

[DTS]

if you like strippers go to the Griffin between Farringdon and Chancery Lane

God bless that place.

 

[Matt the Shrimp]

if you like strippers go to the Griffin between Farringdon and Chancery Lane

Named after Nick Griffin... because it's full of c**ts?

:guns: :finger:

 

[Ron Manager]

if you like strippers go to the Griffin between Farringdon and Chancery Lane

Went to a couple of lunchtime leaving bashes in there when I worked round the corner in Holborn - proper tacky and full of dirty old men and even dirtier slappers cavorting round a pole in the corner.

Grubbiest little boozer in London, surely.

 

[Lester Bangs]

Casey Jones, whatever happened to them

Oh my gosh thats a name I havent heard in years, I seem to remember that their burgers tasted like they'd come straight out of the microwave. they were pretty diabolical but always topped of a night of London drinking.

Personally, I used to spend a lot of time in various establishments on the route Liverpool Street through Houndsditch and down The Minories, many pints were sunk in The Minories public house.

One Friday late afternoon in 1991 I was enjoying a beer in said pub and chucked a few quid in the fruit machine. After I finished gambling my money I sat down at a nearby table. Two lads started to play the machine, or at least thats what I thought was going on. On closer inspection one of the lads had used a crowbar to jemmy up the front pannel of the 'fruity' and had pressed a button within the mechanics that made the machine vomit £1 coins. They must've knicked a good few hundred quid.

They emptied the machine and made for the door but they noticed I'd clocked them and came over to my table. I thought I was in for a hefty beating with the crowbar but the guy doing the 'jemmying' put his hand into his pocket and put 8 pound coins onto the table. His exact words were 'After what you've just seen I bet you could do with a drink' they then left the pub without the staff having any clue what'd gone on. They were right as I did need a drink, I've never seen such brazen theft since that day and it was in broad daylight.

Ten minutes later I thought it was time to move on as I was now party to a crime scene and there was another pub a hundred yards on a corner. I'd just ordered my pint and settled down and guess who walked in......... It seems that they were hitting every pub with a fruit machine within the square mile. i kept my head down this time and true enough they did exactly the same as last time.

 

[* ORM *]

Not theft at all but that reminds me of the time I went to the Lord Nelson near Moorfields, (I went for the pool you know, the strippers were incidental). T'was on a Saturday before a Spurs home game in the mid 80s.

I started playing the fruity and the jackpot, paid in cash, came in then held, which was pretty unusual, I said nothing when it held again, and again, and again. I took the money out and pocketed it and it held again, and again. I took about £50 quid out of it before it stopped paying out. I called the barstaff over, they witnessed me holding with no payout and holding again, before they said there must be a fault and gave me another £12 before switching it off. In those days £60 was more than I had to spend in a week.

The Lord Nelson was fantastic on a Friday night. If the crowd was purely local/regulars the doors would be locked at 11pm and we would be treated to great vfm for our 50p in the pint pot.