Bad pub guide 2019

[Kaz Hayashi]

Inspired from Butch talking about the pissing options at the Mill in the toilet graffiti thread.

My entry:

Pumphreys - Newcastle 

In the Bigg Market, bang in the city centre, you’ll find this pub selling pints at these prices:

Punter - “John Smiths, pint of cocktail for the lass and some pork scratchings”

Barman - “We don’t do food”

What customers say:

Nestled between the comments on google reviews (4.3 rating) about how cheap the pints are and how great the bar maid is, you’ll find these nuggets:

But if those reviews aren’t enough to entice you in, then this will hopefully help you plan your night.

The last time I popped in was due to some horse racing last year. (There’s a bookies next door). As I was approaching the pub, a chair came flying out of the door, followed by a really big lad who had been literally thrown out and was flying horizontally. When I got there, my group of 4 were just watching the racing and were there until we were the last ones in. I went to the bogs upstairs, which were carpeted with an additional inch of piss covering the entire surface, sambas ruined. There was a very old bloke, laid face down on the floor, chuntering on about the horses. He had one of those holes in his neck to help him breath. You can probably imagine my concern here. So I went downstairs and told the 2 bar staff. They replied “Aye it’s Peter”. After 15 mins the helped him downstairs, served him a pint, and put him outside to wait for his taxi.

Over to you lot. Help the rest of us plan a night out in your city. 

[Jazzy G]

How the hell do they manage to sell that at those prices? 

[King Mal the Glorious]

I went to Pumphrey's for the first time a couple of months ago, it was virtually empty so no horror stories from me. It was my dad's choice, he loves fucking awful pubs. It'll be the Beehive next...

[Kaz Hayashi]

Just now, King Mal the Glorious said:

I went to Pumphrey's for the first time a couple of months ago, it was virtually empty so no horror stories from me. It was my dad's choice, he loves fucking awful pubs. It'll be the Beehive next...

In fairness the beehive serves food (Quavers).

[PunkStep]

The Norfolk Arms, Sheffield.

 

 

Fuck me, this place. For my brother-in-law's stag do we went to Sheffield- which is known for it's pretty decent nightlife due to the number of students up there. I went there for a night out with the Rotherham office in a previous job and remember it being a cracking night. We stayed at a Travelodge and the nearest pub was the Norfolk Arms- which matches the description of the pub from Kaz's original post. A 'proper pub' in every sense of the word.

It stank of really cheap bleach that I haven't smelt since the 1980s- completely unfragranced 10p a bottle stuff that is no doubt designed to get you high enough to help the local muggers that keep the bar busy. You had the strangest collective of regulars in there too- most with their teeth missing. Probably from drinking the bleach on the floor. You'd find a good few people sleeping on the benches in there too.

You also had a 'meat man' standing outside most of the time. Some bloke with supermarket carrier bags full of various meats, trying to sell them off to anyone that entered the vicinity. Is this a thing anywhere else, a meat man?? You also had some bloke trying to sell tubs of Quality Street which he probably lifted from the nearest shop. It was proper grim. If you leaned on the bar, you needed somebody to detach you from the stickiness.

By the way, there seem to be a few establishments in Sheffield going by this name. It's this one. On Google, where you have Q&A for places, one of the questions is 'Why is it being boarded up'. I fucking wonder. The reviews are awash with 'proper pub, proper people' etc. The 'proper people' in question couldn't stop staring at some of the guys in our party, because they were black. When they did stop staring, they would ask if they had any ganja on them.

[Gus Mears]

5 minutes ago, PunkStep said:

You also had a 'meat man' standing outside most of the time. Some bloke with supermarket carrier bags full of various meats, trying to sell them off to anyone that entered the vicinity. Is this a thing anywhere else, a meat man?? You also had some bloke trying to sell tubs of Quality Street which he probably lifted from the nearest shop. It was proper grim. If you leaned on the bar, you needed somebody to detach you from the stickiness.

Paging @tiger_rick

[BomberPat]

There used to be a pub in Jersey called The Eagle Tavern, which closed about ten or twelve years ago. 

Named for this fella above the door;

 

Rumour persisted that the original eagle statue was a Nazi imperial eagle left over from the war, either remodeled into the one in the photo, or replaced at some unspecified point in the past. It was the go-to pub for neo-Nazis and assorted wrong'uns. 

The license was revoked after a stabbing, and when the police showed up to make the arrest they found the landlord and staff were all so pissed they could barely stand. 

This is from the newspaper reporting that it had closed;

Quote

residents who live nearby told the Assembly that their quality of life had improved considerably since the doors of the Lemprière Street pub were shut. The court heard that pub customers regularly urinated and defecated in the street. A letter from Devonshire Lane resident Rui De Abreu said that his lounge smelt of urine during the winter as it seeped through old cement that covers his yard.

 

There's also the Dog & Sausage - apparently once called the Dorset & Somerset, and got officially renamed after locals had called it that for years. If we're playing shit pub bingo, the Trip Advisor review has the inevitable;

Quote

This is a real pub, locals love it for that fact. No frills, just an honest to goodness pub.
Can be loud, even raucous, but always honest.
If you’re, (really), hungry, or having too much of a good time to care, there’s a burger place opposite.

It's a real pub. 

 

The "burger place" opposite is McDonalds. It's the only pub I've ever been in where I've seen someone draw out a line of coke on their table and take it in full view of the bar staff, at 3 in the afternoon. Middle-aged bikers and ex-bouncers make up most of the clientele. There's a bloke who drinks in there who takes his blow-up doll out to the pub with him, dressed up, and was apparently on the telly once talking about it. 

[Gus Mears]

It's mercifully been shut down, but the Cat Tavern was my go to shit pub and I spent far too much time there after I was 18 I guess due to misguided loyalty as they served me underage.

Great memories like Andy Duval taking loads of Ket and attempting to climb into the trough urinal and Chris Taylor putting on 'Union Song' by the Strawbs ten times on the jukebox and getting punched in the face. 

The alcohol selection was better than some mentioned in here, in that they had at least one local ale. Though I chiefly remember drinking Black Rat cider because it was about 8% and meant you forgot more rapidly that you were drinking at the Cat Tavern. 

I also used to stay in the rooms upstairs as they cost 20 quid a night and I didn't want to get the train home at 10PM. God, they were grim, the window of one was propped open with a Bible once (the one in the top right of the picture) and the lights didn't work at all. Tom Wood's Dad was a resident there at one point and used to sell Benzos out of the window. 

Edited June 24, 2019 by Gus Mears

[PunkStep]

[Gus Mears]

And then all of 50ft up the road was the Railway, which is still open and is still terrible. If that was the first place you visited after getting to Salisbury, you'd immediately turn around and go back to the station. Yet more reviews with phrases like 'proper boozer', which is like a clarion call for awful pubs. 

Quote

Every railway station needs an old fashioned railway boozer and this place is a classic example of one.
No food whatsoever and a rough joint with dodgy clientele and the odd dog running around.
I do quite like these kind of pubs and you need one like this to allow a two minute sprint for your train!

7/10

Again, I went there probably far too much, but that was largely because the landlady was the most miserable person I have ever met and I found her hilarious. She must have been at ;least 75 and had an inveterate hatred of serving drinks and absolutely despised people of any kind. But, always had an analogue TV set on the end of the bar and kept it on ITV 4 the whole time, so I used to enjoy watching repeats of Poirot and Miss Marple with a pint which is pretty much heaven for me. 

The absolute pinnacle of this was during the launch of the 2012 Olympics, where she flat out refused to switch the TV to the opening ceremony until an episode of Touch of Frost had ended and we missed almost all of it.  . 

[PowerButchi]

Never drink in a pub with a flat roof.

[tiger_rick]

1 hour ago, Gus Mears said:

Paging @tiger_rick

The meat man is the bloke on the market who sells a bundle of meat in a bag for a tenner. Tom Stade did a decent stand-up routine on that on Live at the Apollo a few years ago.

Feature of a bad pub is a bloke wandering around selling huge blocks of cheese he's nicked from the supermarket. You know you're in a rough area (or all of Hull, ho ho ho) when they have security tags on the cheese.

Edited June 24, 2019 by tiger_rick

[SuperBacon]

The one time I went to Hull (loved it by the way), the first pub we went into, an old man immediately came over and offered us some snuff.

Of course we obliged. Wasn’t great I’ll be honest 

[PowerButchi]

The main feature of a bad pub is the selling of food and families in them. People selling nicked cheap meat, cheese, coffee or razor blades in a pub is a good thing.

[tiger_rick]

12 minutes ago, PowerButchi said:

The main feature of a bad pub is the selling of food and families in them. People selling nicked cheap meat, cheese, coffee or razor blades in a pub is a good thing.

Where are you on being offered a rose for a quid?