frank kogan needs to know the diff between a pub and a bar

What about taverns?

My sister is a bartender and waitress at a bar/short order grill three blocks from her house which some ilXors have even been to drink/eat at (see Minnesota thread). It has regular, local customers (inc. one pro US football coach) who are in there a few times each week, know the names of bar staff, and don't go anywhere else in the area for a quick drink.

My dad, for years, was manager of 'sports bar' full of regular, known-to-staff-by-name guys who participated in the bar's softball team, which went to play other teams from other area bars also comprised of locals (sports bar locals are alwayus the guys who were jocks in school, long since retired to armchair sports, like my dad the 300-lb former Junior Olympics athlete).

A local bar in the US will have a few different beers on tap and burgerish food is served with fries in those plastic baskets lined with wax paper. In fact, 'local' rule of thumb for the US is whether or not the bar exhibits some kind of Burger Pride.

Frank: a 'tavern' is a local bar in Wisconsin.

JtN, the function is *exactly* the same as the function of local pubs here (such as the nice one under our flat). Americans go to their local bar to watch the game on Sunday and eat either brunch or burgers or even Sunday roast, you *do* have affiliated sports teams, a dart board and billiards, and usually you can bring the family in with you to eat the food.

Headfuck of the Day: you can only buy Tavern Snacks crisps...in pubs.

*invalid if australian

But Jer (if I can call you that), this now is the middle. Back in the '50s, when Fiedler wrote his essay (about comic books!), the process by which the art freaks allied with the juvenile delinquents to create successive bohemias and those bohemias were then absorbed into the middle and so new JD-art-freak bohemias had to break off, this played out over years, whereas now it takes about two weeks. And I think Leslie underestimated how much art-darkness already was a part of the "middle's" values: when the freaks separate out, they don't at first come up with values counter to the culture but rather take those values to extremes, act out contradictions.

But I'm being glib here, and don't really remember the essay. I think what underlay it (though I don't remember his addressing this directly) was official America's refusal to acknowledge limits on equality, and so the rejection of literacy embodied by comic books was also a rejection of standard class mobility but still further a rejection of conventional "working-class" immobility - so it's sort of like how Elvis was a movement up into flash and style rather than a movement up the ladder. And the well-spoken Leslie-Jew-boys moving into lumpen flash and style is not at all like hanging out in proper boozers. He's seeking the hero boys doing the battle of good and evil in the City of Night.

I remember sometime in the '70s reading about a New York bar called "The Saloon" that ran into trouble when someone unearthed an old, unrepealed prohibition-era ordinance that forbade an establishment's advertising itself as a "saloon." So the bureaucrats said, sorry guys, you're going to have to rename. So the bar reopened as "The Balloon."

-- gareth (gareth@norfolkwindmills.com) (webmail), February 3rd, 2003 1:14 PM. (gareth) (link)

I prefer to call them Places of Hell and Rugby Shirts.

Just because I'm a girl doesn't mean I want handbag clips and big windows. Just fuck off with your marketing. Fuck off. < / bete noir>

Jerry, I think the whole point about locals is that generally only locals go there, so you not beiong local tended to prohibit you feeling a sense of belongng and finding out about the bars baseball team ect ect.

Anna's spot on with the Rugby Shirts.

This sounds like the ultimate test of an ILX FAP -- how many of us would gather specifically to go to this place?

Sorry, that was off-topic, but seemed relevant to "The Middle Vs. Both Ends."

Alas, on the 'other routines please,' Our Hero has asked for a reduction in use of this phrase. He must be summoned by alternate means.

(i still think i'm right: it's an anxiety of influence deal)

It begins!

It is unfortunately untrue.

Though mention of Queen Mum brings up the spectre of Gin Palaces.

I.e., called Julie Burchill penny dreadful and a dreck columnist, but when I first read your post, Mark, I thought you were saying that he launched into the writerly equivalent of "Please Please Please," complete with cloak routine.

What is the feminized pub again?

I had a bit of trouble distinguishing bars from clubs in England. Gareth: Was Mother a bar? And if so, why was there a line to get in?

Let us not foget the late '90s bar offshoot (US) -- the lounge!

I don't what Mother is or was, but if there was a queue I cann't accept it as a pub. People do queue for bars, as they can be trendy.

The one US English-style pub I was taken to, in San Diego, was horribly wrong, a bad pastiche rather than an authentic transcription.

But that is right for us, I mean, I think you got the real thing, the real pastiche.

San Diego has lots of Blarney Stars, yes? Or is that just where I end up my relatives?

Jerry's description of a pub-like Denver establishment sounds like a sports bar, which I don't see entering into the UK picture: I assume sports get watched at pubs? Sports bars are terrible. Absolutely terrible. They are like bars, not pubs (pubs, in their constant attempts to be like something out of Dubliners, only show European soccer) -- only they're not like bars, insofar as the point is mainly to serve people chicken wings and beer while they watch events.

Sorry, had to point that out but otherwise the American 'pub' locator you suggest is flawless.

Urgh, Hooters. A pastiche of this has opened on Clerkenwell Road called HONKERS and it is morguishly empty every time I pass.

(Ha, okay Amateurist, I have not been to Nevin's in years, but yes it used to be a fine example of a "pub" without the word "pub" in its name. But now they have, like, John Cale and Yo La Tengo bookings -- and where are they doing this stuff? did they take over the ex-Cajun place next door to put in a stage? -- so clearly they are trying hard to become a "bar" and not just a bar but a venue. Which sucks so far as I can tell because surely their oh-so-terrific shepherd's pie will eventually be a thing of the past.)