Wetherspoon's: Classic or Dud?

ABSOLUTE CLASSIC and only a snob would disagree.

The new hot dog and beer deal is sensational stuff.

yeah you're a proper geezer arent you

Pros - decent beer selection, cheap
Cons - everything else

Don't even know if the pros still hold for that matter, I'm not sure I've been in a Wetherspoons for four years or so. Apart from the one above Victoria station and that doesn't count.

Depending on management the beer selection can be great! I spend a lot of time in these tho and they are grim dingy places

This year I finally made the arsehole move of joining camra, I got a load of spoons vouchers in the post :-/

There are so many of them it's difficult not to judge Wetherspoons on a pub by pub basis. About 70% I've been in I wouldn't return to. A handful have been decent enough. Relative cheapness is a factor.

Will Self on Wetherspoons here;

http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/culture/2013/03/ill-tell-you-whats-wrong-wetherspoons-its-run-man-named-tim

The Wetherspoons on Stoke Newington High Street has a certain bizarre charm, the old black guy who always wears a pith helmet is good value.

the other day i was talking to some people about their worst jobs, and for one it was in the kitchen of a wetherspoons. suffice to say it didn't make their food sound very appetising.

The beer selection in our local one is usually pretty good, even if their staff occasionally think red wine lives in a fridge :( The food is uniformly awful, but I often fall back on their beer & burger deal when having a pub day. Their coffee is half the price of Starbucks/Costa.

They have good whisky for extremely decent prices. They were also the first place I discovered, other than specialist bars to stock Belvedere vodka and Baltika beer on the reg. I'm usually happy to drink in one.

Another Pro: No Music.

the other day i was talking to some people about their worst jobs, and for one it was in the kitchen of a wetherspoons.

My first ever job was in the kitchen at a Wetherspoons. Pretty shitty, yes.

Spoonies are usually pretty good, not pub pubby but full of the dudes who used to hang in the pubby pubs, food is of negligible quality but many of them will serve you hard liquor at 9 in the morning and sometimes they actually have Sky Sports in them now woot woot

not pub pubby but full of the dudes who used to hang in the pubby pubs

word

There are parts of town now where there are genuinely very few places for those dudes to go but there's a kind of any-port-in-a-storm sadness to all that.

the Wetherspoon's magazine is an all time classic as well.

perhaps you could write some music reviews for it

I'm verging on a regular in the Toll Gate at Turnpike Lane and there are some interesting characters in there. There's one man I've noticed who sits by himself with a kind of long-suffering expression and seemingly deep in thought. I was in the Wetherspoon's at Waltham Cross on the Bank Holiday weekend a few weeks ago and thought a face looked familiar. It was him. It seems he went up on an excursion because I saw him later at the bus station catching the bus back (to Turnpike Lane, I think).

There was an old guy who would sit in the Southgate Spoons with a bottle of Newcastle Brown and a chess board, working out the chess puzzles in the paper. Haven't seen him for a while. He was probably waiting for someone to offer him a game, but no-one ever did.

I've seen someone arguing with a Spoons manager cos their 21 day aged steak was "clearly aged no more than 14 days".

There was an old guy who would sit in the Southgate Spoons with a bottle of Newcastle Brown and a chess board, working out the chess puzzles in the paper. Haven't seen him for a while. He was probably waiting for someone to offer him a game, but no-one ever did.

I am curious about this man. He is another regular in the Toll Gate. He stands for hours poring over hand-written notebooks, only occasionally taking a sip from his pint.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8479/8185817731_d90a3b6f5b.jpg

not quite classic, but there's space + they're often fairly quiet. Feels like there aren't that many places around where I can find a seat, do pint/2 pints + crisps after work on my own, reading, and not feel sick at how much I've just spent on what should be one of England's simple and affordable pleasures.

now we're supposed to like wetherspoon's challops klaxon

http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/a-love-letter-to-wetherspoons-hannah-ewens-455?utm_source=vicefbuk

cheapness and early opening = good, but most Spoonies are unbearably dull and sterile for solo daytime drinking. pay for Sky Sports ffs you cheap twat

I can't remember the last time I met someone who was genuinely anti-wetherspoons. It's a myth.

Wetherspoons flatness seems ever more pronounced now partly because a new gen of bargain bucket dives has sprung up to compete on price, but still be entertaining to sit in. except that one place in the town centre that just has American horse racing on all day, fuck knows what that's about

There are four wetherspoons in manchester that I can think of. Despite the dullness of the Spoons brand, they each have their own identity but all feel like simulacra of types of city pub.

ours burned down yesterday morning :-(

was in a spoons yesterday - Redhill. preferable apparently to The Abbott ("the stabbot") and it was, not great exactly, but had that lovely saturday afternoon town centre bubble to it.

large open plan sections with a high ceiling almost give it a touch of a gin palace or a large northern hotel bar.

the point being wetherspoons had done two things:

1) make it cheap
2) not fuck up the atmosphere

was with my brother who is like a one-man talkradio show of tiresome misinformation and reification of "just speaking my mind" common man bullshit. he was saying that friday nights, where the office workers pile out of hayes and insurance companies and the like has a considerable friday night camaraderie, which i can imagine. it's a culture that's never really gone anywhere for decades, which isn't entirely unappealing (esp if you're part of it) and tends to be fairly open (if you work in an office).

I had the best beer of my recent UK trip (Ringwood Old Thumper) at a Weatherspoons, of course (The Tyburn, next to Marble Arch).

Ended up in a small handful of 'em, the one at Edinburgh Airport was full of unintentional comedy.

I've been to that one in Redhill, assuming it's the one near the bus station. As I've mentioned before, I've become a regular (at least at weekends) at the Toll Gate in Turnpike Lane. I estimate the clientele in there is about 70 percent regulars. I recognize so many faces, and a lot of them seem to know each other, at least to say hello to. I got talking to a man who said he was brought up in Crouch End but now lives in Enfield. He likes the atmosphere so much that he takes two buses to come and drink there.

Some Wetherspoon's are better than others, though. I don't particularly like the Coronet on Holloway Road. It's a former cinema and something about the spaciousness of it makes it a bit impersonal. What also makes a difference is the attitude behind the bar. The staff at the Toll Gate are very friendly, but I have found staff in some places, e.g. Leytonstone and Wanstead, to be rather curt. Maybe they have more to put up with, from both managers and customers.

An inferior kind of Wetherspoon's is a sub-type called 'Lloyd's Bars'. They have music playing somewhat loudly, and offer fewer, but more expensive, real ales. There's one at Hammersmith and it is probably the worst Wetherspoon's I have been in. The place was tatty, there was music blasting, and the pint I had was foul.

I've been in the Tyburn and quite like it. Another one I like is the one inside Victoria station. You get some fascinating groups of people in there. On one occasion (a Saturday in summer, about 7.00 pm), there was this woman, aged maybe early 30s, who had a nearly full bottle of white wine in front of her but was falling asleep. She was quite attractive but looked kind of sad and desperate. Eventually she woke up and got into an apparently enjoyable conversation with some random man, who didn't seem, on the surface at least, to be obviously predatory. He had initially woken her up to warn her that someone might steal her bag. My wife and I hoped she had maybe found the love of her life at last.

dubmill its like we're cousins or something. i used to drink at the toll gate, love the victoria Wetherspoons, and yes they can vary a lot.

that lloyds in hammersmith is one of the worst pubs ive ever been to.

There's a particular type of Vice magazine dullard who thinks that ostentatiously praising Wetherspoons makes them some kind of bold anti-pub rockist man-of-the-people in this era of craft beer and farmer's market produce on the menu and really those people are the worst. Every time I'm in a Wetherspoons I'm struck by the contempt the company holds for the people who drink in them, the assumption that people will take any old shit if you sell the booze cheaply enough, the sense that they're not even *trying* to make them good. It's a sense that's reinforced every time I get a look at the Wetherspoons Pravda, with its lively mix of corporate PR, sub-CAMRA beer bores and anti-EU propaganda, and I remember the Murdoch-meets-Farage cockfarmer who owns them all.

I was in the Farringdon one recently and it was one of the least enjoyable drinking experiences I've had in ages (and this is coming from someone who was in the fucking Cat & Mutton last night), the sort of place where sitting down is actually worse than vertical drinking because you're just surrounded by other people's backs and badly-placed pillars that people are just squeezing by. If I want to drink cheap booze just for the sake of it, I'll do it at home, or go round to someone's house, I go to a pub for a bit of conviviality, a bit of atmosphere, all the things that Wetherspoons actively refuse to provide.

My memory is that they are marginally less dreadful outside of London, and away from railway stations.

I just think they vary. I wouldn't claim they are all great (and didn't). Nor would I dismiss them all like that. I think it depends on the manager. The manager at the Toll Gate is a really nice guy and he keeps the beer well. The fact that he is pleasant seems to rub off on the other staff, who are all very nice in my experience.

I wouldn't agree with Tim Martin on everything but I do quite like him, from what I've read. I wish there were more people like him, who just ran businesses, rather than establishing them, building them up, then cashing in by selling them off. Of course, now he'll probably confound me by announcing he is selling the business off.

One such dullard started this thread, obviously. xp

xpost- i'm not sure that's exactly right. that loathsome shitbag tim martin, who is almost - almost- comical in his little england/ukip pronouncements, does genuinely seem to want to get details that affect what he perceives to be the client base "right".

also cheapness where alcohol is concerned is never to be underestimated and in general they're clean and well-managed. the being at home but is fine, but not if you want to be around other people.

where they're at their worst is the vinegary end-of-line beer, sticky tables, and fragance of cleaning fluid. not sure the contempt, although corporatised, is that much worse than the numerous number of shit pubs with lazy management or a poor landlord and landlady that grace the land.

fans of said vice polemicist will be amused to discover he now has a verified ✓ on his twitter account xp

his meltdown earlier this year seemed to be predicated on fears about his own authenticity or realness. twitter tick redeems it all.

Yeah I guess I'm halfway between those two viewpoints - the ones that have a decent atmosphere seem to do so in spite of the place, and there's a depressing dinginess to all of them that feels engineered, to what purpose I couldn't guess. The one in cambridge that burned down was the good one, I am bummed that I don't have it as an option for when I'm skint anymore. You could get ham egg & chips for £2.49! Also I liked the regulars there, it felt like they were already a diaspora from assorted shit pubs that closed. Fuck knows where they'll drink now.

Xp I think one of the saddest things about the very sad WD is that he almost certainly wasn't fronting at all with this thread

depressing dinginess

^ this is it. its the grease to the carpets. the boss-eyed art and "local history" stuff. difficult to define in some ways, but can completely see Matt DC's point about contempt without feeling it's exactly that.

Fetishisation of old man boozers

(and this is coming from someone who was in the fucking Cat & Mutton last night)

lol. it's a little better since the refurb, but the main reason it's shit and always will be is because broadway market is boring twat central. apart from the perseverance. i actually am embarrassed for humanity walking past all these mumford types on a sat afternoon playing their fucking double bass cover versions while people walk past with whippets - all the food is shit too.

on the subject of chain pubs - i was in a sam smiths in westminster recently, quite a good pub actually though far too bright - and the barman was a young chap from the midlands in ireland - he told me he lives above the pub and sam smiths are his landlord, 300 a month or something. i couldn't decide if he was onto a complete winner as a young person in london getting to live so centrally for dirt cheap, or whether this was a case of your employer having controlling talons dug deep into your life.

I've just remembered that the last time I was in a Wetherspooons they were selling a 'craft' lager called This Is Lager.

I'm in wetherspoon's right now as it happens killing time between stuff

That lager is produced by the horrendous brew dog

Whose alcohol free beer I tried the other day, it's fucking vile as you'd expect

I will still rep for Sam Smiths in that most of them actually make an effort to be pleasant environments as pubs, an increasing rarity in zone one, even if the cost of a pint passed the totemic three pound barrier ages ago. They are weirdly impervious to fashion in a way I appreciate too.

I spent a sunday in the one on Mare St Hackney last summer and it felt like being on a huge ferry, partly because of the decor and the two floor layout. I dont think i'd want to go there on an evening, but in the sprawling unknowns of a sunday afternoon it takes on a life of its own, no shortage of conviviality, atmosphere or interesting people

Would live in a Sam smith pub

Nakh that thread is funny if confused (man I hate those old man boozers with their wide selection of continental beer) but I'm not saying I like shit pubs

This Is Lager also tasted pretty much identical to Groslch, they really were barely meeting their minimum required point of differentiation.

It's actually This. Is. Lager. fyi

Actually I think the best night I've had in a Wetherspooons was the one in Kirkcaldy, which really was just full of people getting enthusiastically tanked up before moving en masse to the local club (which was called Kitty's) and it really felt like both the Wetherspooons and the medium sized Scottish town were combining to form their platonic ideal of one another.

I think in small towns the Wetherspoons can be pretty good - I mean, if it's just a pub people go to and there isn't much choice anyway.

Most of them have craft beer now - lots of it.

I haven't eaten in a wetherspoons for a few years but when I did it was the worst, cheapest and nastiest pub food I'd ever eaten - rusky crispy burgers and reheated curry. and the one near me when I grew up, in tooting, was just a depressing hole with the vibe of a bad hotel foyer populated by career alcoholics who would be waiting outside at 9am waiting for it to open. I'm glad I grew up on a council estate and don't have to pretend to like them in order to gain some fake prole cred, though I'm guessing they're probably a fair bit nicer than they were in the 90s.

Also dwight yorke was one of the most pathetic posters ilx has ever fielded

Also I hope this was mentioned in the zing thread at the time:

the Wetherspoon's magazine is an all time classic as well.

― the Shearer of simulated snowsex etc. (Dwight Yorke), Tuesday, June 18, 2013 12:19 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

perhaps you could write some music reviews for it

― Ward Fowler, Tuesday, June 18, 2013 12:23 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It was

Surviving Cambridge Wetherspoon is horrific iirc

Dorke was a refugee from Drowned In Sound, the only successful one is probably Spottie

and you would know that how

been there upwards of 40 times as a student. just too big for me

I meant the DIS thing lol

No results found for "jd twitcherspoon"

How did you arrive at 40?!

Oh, I know that Dorke was on DiS because he said so once, also I told Spottie to come to ILX #claimtofame

Verified Vice writer seems to have tried to start a weird pass-agg Twitter beef with my seventeen year old cousin last month. What a small world it is.

lmao

I remember him coming here and meekly asking for advice on his reviews, and then mentioning that a Graun pop editor basically thought he was nutso and would have nothing to do with him, and then shortly after that he was randomly and spitefully beefing with ilxors in a psycho way to big up his rep in these quarters and I could only reflect, this is the lowliest wretch I have ever seen in these parts, and i was here in the era of people pouting over buffy dvds

And now he's dead, so Wetherspoons then?

I've been in the Tyburn and quite like it.

As a wide eyed colonial, I was fascinated/worried by the plethora of warning signs to watch out for bag thieves.

I once met an old scouse friend who had relocated to Berlin + was visiting Leeds + he contacted me to have a swill so I arranged to meet him at The Head Of Steam at hudds station (which is a very fine drinking establishment). He was moaning "The only good pubs around here are the shit ones, lets get out of this shithole". So I took him to a nearby shithole, The Station Tavern at which which my mum used to pull pints in and was as usual full of the same grim dozen or so alcos and then came his bollocks student spiel, superficially enthusing about the place - like this is what drinking is all about. It is an appalling mentality.

A huge 'Spoons has just opened in our town. The beginning of the end? It's not a bad looking place really - very spacious with a good outdoor area and apparently a dancefloor. The busiest I've seen a pub 'round our way at 4.30 on a Friday afternoon. That said, this comes after the closure of several local community pubs on the outskirts of town, and will prob beckon the death of a number of venues in town as well.

Greggerspoons needs to happen. Jumbo sausage rolls and cheap guest ales, together at last; perfect for stations and airports.

i worked in the Letchworth branch one summer while i was at university. they are all good and depressing in different measure i guess. there's definitely a pre-fab, clinical atmosphere that pervades even the nicest ones. I would get into work at 10am and there'd already be a queue of people lining up to get in, many of whom would stay there until the evening. I didn't love working there but I didn't hate it too much either.
Worst one I went to was in Highgate of all places circa 2003. The guy at the bar pretty much barked at me to get on with my order before i'd even opened my mouth, the food was awful and there was dried ketchup all over the knives and forks.