Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Categories
In this Discussion
Top Posters
- Arkady 5356
- miss annie 5139
- andy 4506
- Ali 3405
- krappyrubsnif 3208
- tosscat 2291
- David 2179
- ADGS 1875
- kreuzkav 1733
- Mirandola 1618
Old Dairy Closure
Hi everyone, sad news, it looks like the Old Dairy is permanently closed.
https://whatpub.com/pubs/NLD/5606/old-dairy-london
https://whatpub.com/pubs/NLD/5606/old-dairy-london
Comments
Or stick a brewery in half of it with the coppers on show.
Marstons own over 90% of their sites freehold apparently, it would be good if they bought it.
Bigger problem is that the new Chinese owners have already said they are going to dispose of some of the pubs.
The cons of Wetherspoons, going by my experience of a handful of them over a few years: The stink of beer-sodden carpets combined with the smell of cooked food (there was time when pubs were for drinking, not full-blown dining), bar staff who don’t speak sufficient English or don’t know a lager from a stout, the dodgy character of their owner, TVs, gaming machines… ah, wait a minute! Pretty close to most other pubs these days! At least you can still get a decent pint of bitter at a Wetherspoons.
It went badly downhill after Wetherspoons inexplicably redesigned it to resemble an airport lounge with hard edges and plastic surfaces, put the bar in a long counter like a student union down the side, with annoying pillars that got in the way. The posh drinkers deserted it for the Stapleton and Old Dairy. The young crowd went to the FF. It soon became a place regularly visited by a police van on a Friday night. My wife refused to go there. One Christmas I went for a drink outside with someone I know from the posher end of SG, we stood out the front with the street drinkers, and he tried to hide his face lest he was seen drinking there.
Pros: the bar staff were actually always excellent, the beer well kept and everything dirt cheap.
Cons: see above.
I look forward to seeing it's new post-pandemic reincarnation.
Regarding the Old Lion. Of Mortimer. There was a time, not far back in Stroud Green history/herstory that this was one of the roads staring pubs. The Stapleton was full of dodgy Ibiza wideboys and gals. A friend was broken into more near Holloway way in the early nineties. He shared the flat with his brother. There was mistaken identity as two guys got them to stand in their underwear in the sitting room before realising they had the wrong guys. My older friend then a few months later went into the Stapleton in the nineties ten years before it went trendy and realised the manager was one of guys who broke into his flat waving a baseball bat in a probable gangland feud. Anyhow the Old Lion was full of old Irish and Jamican boys, middle class in another corner, and odds and sods scattered around.
Stroud Green is grotty Society of the Spectacle cesspool now. When some poncy Italian market came to the village. Sorry inner city, it all went downhill. Jumpers over Shirts. Tacky Sugar Lounge. It's the the song and dance of London. Nero fiddled while Rome burnt. Ciao.
An idea for an installation. A tub in the centre of the gallery. Men with beards with jumpers over shirts jumping on grapes. In the corner an estate agent on an ironic big 1980s calculator. But ale being given as free drink as a juxtaposition.
This could be the Tracy Emin Bed of the 2020s. But instead of sensation, it's all a submission to commerce and the spectacle.
.....whatever you have been smoking or drinking it must be good.
kreuzkav, I wear jumpers over shirts, and liked Italian Farmers! Where shall we meet to duel? Wray Crescent cricket pitch at dawn?