Does Anyone Here Like It's A Scream

I always see Screams as Student places = rubbish booze.

You don't really see many Firkin pubs around in this day and age, but when they ruled the high street they were a bit of a mixed bag. The old-school ones, like the Fox and Firkin in Lewisham, were great, but a lot of the newer 90s chain ones were dreadful. Rule of thumb for Firkin pubs is that the quality of the pub is inversely proportional to the tenuousness of the pub name. If it was called the Frog and Firkin, it was probably passable, or even prety good. If it was called the Philatelist and Firkin you could bank on it being a big soulless cowshed hellhole of Weatherspoons-esque proportions.

the Firkin in Brighton town centre (the Lanes) is the best i've been to...

its funny how a lot of them seemed to have been replaced by O Neills and now something else - but all owned by the same company anyway i thought

So true and only any good when my friend Chris worked there and would happily dispense shot after shot with no money changing hands. Why go there when you can walk for five minutes and go somewhere nice on Division Street? It's A Scream are all far too yellow.

It's A Scream - soul-deviod hell-holes with 'wacky' cultural references that those crazy students should like.
O'Neils - soul-devoid hell-holes with nothing but Boyzone and Irish folk jigs on juke box.
Yates - soul-deviod hell-holes with awful, awful wine and screaming young girls.
Weatherspoons - soul-deviod hell-holes that manage to be both down at heel and badly aspirational at the same time.
All Bar One - soul-deviod hell-hole full of blokes in rugby shirts chasing girls in black Morgan tops drinking warm white wine. (see also Rat and Parrot, Slug and Lettuce, Pitcher and Piano)

Please never get me started on chain bars again.

(I will make an exception for Revolution because the one in Soho is nice and the one in Wolverhampton has big sofas and a few of my friends used to DJ at the one in Sheffield and I like a nice cocktail and cranberry vodka and ... oh shit ... the marketing people have won!)

Stevem mentioned lack of seats in the St Albans Firkin; this seemed to characterise the chain. The Philosopher & Firkin and Philanderer & Firkin in Oxford both suffered from this problem. The few seats the Philanderer had were around faux barrels to act as tables, with ridiculous wooden trim round the edges in the shape of pieces of rope. Or they mght actually have been rope heavily varnished to match the barrel, I can't remember. Either way, it looked v. silly.

Both have now become It's A Screams, the City Arms and Jericho repsctively. I haven't been in the latter, but the I graced the former with my presence on Friday. It was very strange.

The Pub Oxford was the first IAS I encountered and then I rushed upstairs to the (sadly gone) Point to a gig by some now-forgotten band.

Good thing I find keg Worthington bearable - it's the only bitter It's A Scream sell.

I was at a birthday do for a colleague on Friday so I couldn't make too much of a fuss. The oddest feature had to be the card swapping to get free drinks. There were cards like top trumps which you were given when you bought a round, with subjects like Grannies and Shopkeepers. As soon as you collected a full set you got a free shot.

Have a soft spot for provincial O'Neils, but London O'Neils are bloody horrible, prize culprit being the one by Leicester Sq. EUGHGHGH. I like another chain pub round that area though, it has plenty of little nooks in which to hide from the evil orange faced hordes and my friends think I suit it because it's a bit like how they imagine a pub from LOTR to look like.

Hmmm.

Maddy you should GO to the Pit and Pendulum, it is a larff and they have amusingly named cocktails if I recall correctly! Perhaps you should go to it on a PUB CRAWL. Yes! A Nottingham pub crawl. What a good idea!!

Oh, and the Pavlov's Dog in Reading still (to my knowledge at least) has a cigarette-packet football shirt made by ME behind the bar. Reason enough not to go on its own, to be honest.

Firkin pubs - occasionally frequented one in t'north, it had ranges of real ale and a "broken" jukebox that we used to get free plays on and barely any atmosphere. But a bunch of good friends can create yr own atmosphere. Top jums. Certainly better than some horrific non-chain pubs I've visited recently (will the Hog and Pound please stand up)?

makes me want to be a student again.

-- MarkH (mark_e_heste...), February 10th, 2003 4:03 PM. (MarkH) (link)

LOLZ that was my local 5-7 years ago! It had table football and 2 pool tables, and was reasonably cheap.

-- mark grout (mark.grou...), November 6th, 2006 5:04 PM. (mark grout) (later) (link)

No it was the Scream pub by then. Jack Of Both Sides I guess got raided/closed down about '97ish? Now that was a scary place.