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Post the gak taverns you have ever been in.

Mine would be Mike's Ten Pin in Alton Illinois. Dudes were doing coke in the storage room and 50 years-old biker women were stripping.

So Dakka what are the crap bars you have been to?

LANGUAGE PLEASE !

Went to a pub in Dundee in the early 80s that literally had sawdust on the floor.

Wasn't the Ascot in the westport was it kilkrazy?

i would also like to know what other people call their respective watering holes. Where I live they are referred to as taverns or bars.

Well it wasn't exactly a tavern, it was more like a pub/resturant at the Isle or Wight. I went there for a meal at 6:30 with my family. By 10:00, our food still hadn't arrived. By then, we just decided to get our money back and leave, but they hadn't recorded how much we had given them, so we just claimed back double what we had given. The whole place was dank, and the bar was filled with obvious "regulars".

What were you guys doing for for three and a half hours? Though it is nice you got back double money.

Blokus wrote:What were you guys doing for for three and a half hours? Though it is nice you got back double money.

Well firstly they said "We're a bit understaffed so it'll take about an hour", we thought "fine, let's just wait"

After about 1h25, the waitress kept coming up to us saying "it'll just be a few more minutes"

Then we lost track of time, at about 9h50, we asked the waitress who told us we had already had our food and the kitchen was now closed.

Wow, that is indeed a crap establishment.

Never trust a pub with sticky floors....

Any pub run by Weatherspoons.

Full of Alcy's, teenagers, crap drink, worse managers and microwaved food.

Same goes fo any chain "food" pubs like the Hungry Horse, beefeater et al.

Also the sort of pub with threadbare red carpets, usually found on or near South London council estates filled with chavs, beer in diirty glasses and a general air of casual racism and ignorance.

I enjoy drinking in some fairly rough n ready pubs in Bristol. I like a proper spit n sawdust pub when I'm in the mood.

The worst place I've ever been to that called it's self a pub was a 'British Pub' called the Elephant and Castle in Washinton DC, our table was served by a snotty, aloof prick with from Eastern Europe somewhere who peered down his nose at us the whole time and was so rude you'd think he was asking for a fight. We ordered food. It arrived and the waiter with the attitude then dropped half of it on the table then scrabbled to put it back into the plates... My American mate, who's enjoyed curries over here in the UK, recieved something consisting of 2 barely cooked chicken breasts covered in half heated salsa and served on cold rice. My 'bangers n mash served in a giant yorkshire pudding' also arrived cold, the onions in the gravy were still raw and the yorkshire pudding was still in a partially liquid state.

They charged $12 for a can, a single bloody can, of my beloved Abbott Ale.

I hope that gak hole falls into a crack in the earth.

The roughest pub in all of Middlesbrough is just around the corner from where I used to live. I made the mistake of going there once. It's called the Eagle and it has no windows (they got sick of replacing the glass every time they got smashed in, so they just replaced them with steel boards), it has barbed wire around the edge of the roof and two rotweillers on TOP of the roof. It's like a bunker!

It's a typical 'estate pub' in that all the local scrotes drink there because they've been barred out of every other pub in town. It's ultra-violent - it kicks off pretty much every night. People have been stabbed in there and all sorts...

notprop wrote:Any pub run by Weatherspoons.

Full of Alcy's, teenagers, crap drink, worse managers and microwaved food.

Same goes fo any chain "food" pubs like the Hungry Horse, beefeater et al.

Also the sort of pub with threadbare red carpets, usually found on or near South London council estates filled with chavs, beer in diirty glasses and a general air of casual racism and ignorance.

They are, basically, Social Security offices ; with a bar.

Albatross wrote:The roughest pub in all of Middlesbrough is just around the corner from where I used to live. I made the mistake of going there once. It's called the Eagle and it has no windows (they got sick of replacing the glass every time they got smashed in, so they just replaced them with steel boards), it has barbed wire around the edge of the roof and two rotweillers on TOP of the roof. It's like a bunker!

It's a typical 'estate pub' in that all the local scrotes drink there because they've been barred out of every other pub in town. It's ultra-violent - it kicks off pretty much every night. People have been stabbed in there and all sorts...

There used to be pubs in Aldershot like that when the Paras were based there - steel grills over the windows, tables and chairs screwed to floors, that sort of thing.

MeanGreenStompa wrote:
They charged $12 for a can, a single bloody can, of my beloved Abbott Ale.

That's just DC pricing. The Elephant and Castle's in Chicago don't charge nearly as much, though they are still atrocious.


As far as dive bars go: There used to be a place about 45 minutes outside my hometown called "The Squirrel Cage". Mind you, this name wasn't posted anywhere, its simply what everyone called the place after they had been there. You see, the owner enjoyed setting traps for the squirrels that frequented the wooded area to the rear of the place. He would then take these squirrels, and keep them in cages in the bar. Not for the purpose of fighting, just to contribute to the atmosphere. I went there three times; once when I was taken there, and twice when bringing others there. Cheap, godawful beer, the normal crowd of regulars that you would expect in such a place, and between 8-15 squirrels in cages.

I have had the pleasure of drinking in more than a few gak holes, most of them are the ones my family used to run!

The Golden Lion in Fishponds affectionately known as "the swamp" was a favorite, I helped to run it for a while. Also the Redfield on church road which was a grotty hell hole full of incest born drug addicts who's idea of culture was something that grew on stale cheese.

Sadly I don't get too much time for boozing anymore which is probably just as well given the cost. When I do though, I prefer proper pubs to the soulless chav holes you find dotted along Bristols harbourside.

Grizzly Bar in Bedford, Michigan. Go in there in February and marvel at the hordes of drunk snow-mobilers. Do not start trouble unless you want to get your skull cracked by a pool cue.

I once went with my friends (We were dragged their by our bubbleheaded girlfriends, which should have been a major warning sign) to a crappy little wannabe-preppy dancehole called the Roxy. We had been drinking all day and were in a mood to raise hell, so when they objected to our choice of attire, (Various metal tour t-shirts, obviously torn from hard use in the moshpit) we were not amused. We never actually got in, but we held up incoming traffic at the door for nearly an hour while the bubbleheads begged their pathetic excuses for bouncers to make an exception. We finally left, and we made the girls come with us, against their strenuous objections, because at least one of them had to be the designated driver. Our great memory of that encounter was that the bubbleheads were banned from that place forever, and so they left us. It was my next girlfriend who tried to kill me. Now that was a badass chick.

When i was working in Manchester, there used to be a pub just down the road called 'The King's Arms'. There was trouble there every night, me and my bouncer often used to chuckle heartily at the panicked messages coming over the radio. One night, it got to about 12:30 am and we had heard nothing from the bouncers there, fearing that they had finally been killed by some mad rioting bastards we were about to pop round the corner and check when the window on the front of the pub burst outwards accompanied by a table and swiftly followed several un-shirted and bloodied chavs. Satisfied that all was as it should be, we locked our front door and waited for the police.

I suppose this doesn't actually count as i never set foot in the blasted place, but then i wouldn't be here to tell stories of chav-based defenestration...

I'd love those housing estate chav bastard types being listed here to travel down to Cornwall and try their hand at that sort of scampery in The Swordfish in Newlyn on landing day.

First night I went there, after half an hour, some Scottish cave troll off one of the scallopers was being carried out with half of one of those giant glass carlsberg ashtrays rammed into his skull. Hardworking bastards getting pished after breaking their backs at sea for months, big landing days meant they were all crammed in there at once, then some poor sod would learn his missus had been playing away whilst he'd been out risking his life for the mortgage and go sodding insane, then pushing and shoving and then all those gits would tear the crap out of each other. The place was bloody lethal, like Mordor on Giro day.

Mu wrote:Wasn't the Ascot in the westport was it kilkrazy?

It was about 28 years ago and I got drunk so sadly I can't remember.

This song is apropos for the thread

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J.Black wrote:When i was working in Manchester, there used to be a pub just down the road called 'The King's Arms'. There was trouble there every night, me and my bouncer often used to chuckle heartily at the panicked messages coming over the radio. One night, it got to about 12:30 am and we had heard nothing from the bouncers there, fearing that they had finally been killed by some mad rioting bastards we were about to pop round the corner and check when the window on the front of the pub burst outwards accompanied by a table and swiftly followed several un-shirted and bloodied chavs. Satisfied that all was as it should be, we locked our front door and waited for the police.

I suppose this doesn't actually count as i never set foot in the blasted place, but then i wouldn't be here to tell stories of chav-based defenestration...

Is that the one on Oldham St? I got offered a gig there once - I'm fething glad I swerved it now, like!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

MeanGreenStompa wrote:I'd love those housing estate chav bastard types being listed here to travel down to Cornwall and try their hand at that sort of scampery in The Swordfish in Newlyn on landing day.

First night I went there, after half an hour, some Scottish cave troll off one of the scallopers was being carried out with half of one of those giant glass carlsberg ashtrays rammed into his skull. Hardworking bastards getting pished after breaking their backs at sea for months, big landing days meant they were all crammed in there at once, then some poor sod would learn his missus had been playing away whilst he'd been out risking his life for the mortgage and go sodding insane, then pushing and shoving and then all those gits would tear the crap out of each other. The place was bloody lethal, like Mordor on Giro day.

One does not simply go for a quiet pint in Mordor on giro day....

Albatross wrote:..................................................................................................One does not simply go for a quiet pint in Mordor on giro day....

And we have a winner!

I have been to plenty of estate pubs and clubs.

My old local never had a fridge behind the bar and staff could only guess as to what any bottled drink like WKD was.
Took a bit of pasting from a fella who thought I was moving in on his wife. Apparently most of the other regulars had been attacked by the same loon and most of then were hard cases!

The pub nearest me is at the top end of dives. I have seen a big boggled eyed defect of a child running around in there, looking a lot like Gollum. I can only assume its eyes have adjusted to the perpetual gloom.

Anywhere reccomended to avoid in Stockport? Here for the next two weeks.

I lived in a small country town for two years in rural Western Australia. Like many small towns in rural WA there were two pubs, one a slightly dingy, run down affair for locals to drink a beer or two in in almost complete silence, while they all stare at the teletext screen showing the latest racing results.

The other one is colloquially known as the animal bar. Chairs screwed into the ground and no tables, just concrete blocks on the ground. Beer sold in stubbies only, as no-one could be trusted with bottles or glasses.

The food in the animal bar was better, so I went there more. Didn't stay mind you, just picked up dinner and got the hell out of there.

When I was in college there was a local Irish dive bar called Scruffy Murphy's. It had the aesthetic look of a concrete bunker, complete with barbed wire fencing around it. The parking lot was dirt, the walls were covered in a sort of glazed crap from all the smoke, the outside tables and chairs were just haphazard pieces from yard sales, and the urinals wouldn't flush, and barely drained. In short, it felt like STDs could be contracted if you touched anything other then the glasses you drank out of. But they had $2 beers and $4 mixed drinks, so it wasn't all bad

Ive been to some crummy basements, but all the bars near me arent complete dives.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:Anywhere reccomended to avoid in Stockport?

Stockport.

Seriously, it's a dump. The town centre is VERY rough on a friday/saturday night, by all accounts.

Here for the next two weeks.

That's a shame. On the plus side, you aren't very far from the epicurean delights of Manchester! A short hop on the train from Stockport station to Manchester Oxford St. brings you out at my favourite bar in the town: The Thirsty Scholar. Awesome DJ on a friday/saturday night - Northern Soul/Motown, Ska/Reggae and Rythm and Blues. You're also close to The Ritz and The Green Rooms, but really there's gak-loads of good bars in Central Manchester.