Reading George Orwell’s “The Moon Under Water” I was almost getting giddy at the prospect of such a pub existing.\u00a0 Now I have not spent much time in the pubs here in London not being a huge fan of pub food, excessive drinking, and loud music\u2014however I have made an effort to visit a few pubs and have specifically noted their \u201catmosphere\u201d to use Orwell\u2019s term.<\/p>\n
To be completely frank I had no real interest in discussing this topic until I met up with friends a couple of nights ago at The Sports Caf\u00e9 off of Piccadilly Circus.\u00a0 Prior to this experience I had felt most of the pubs I ventured into were fairly similar. The food offerings were all about the same: pies, jacket potatoes, a burger, the crowd was similar: middle aged men in suits at lunch and after work, with a handful of older gentlemen creeping in the corners, and the music was undistinguishable pop music in every locale.\u00a0 Depending on how close the pub was to London proper I found there were more men in work clothes.\u00a0 At the pubs closer to a college I tended to find a mixed clientele of young college students and middle-aged men.\u00a0 However, in every pub almost all of the pub-goers were British. That was until I went to The Sports Caf\u00e9.<\/p>\n
I wasn\u2019t even halfway into the door when I found myself surrounded by young college aged (or younger) people and (get ready for it..) American accents! It was so loud I could barely hear myself thinking, a combination of the music volume and the stereotypical loud American voices.\u00a0 I never even saw a food menu, I\u2019m not sure if this was because they didn\u2019t serve food or because food had stopped serving by this hour, but either way I would assume that a place like this would serve chicken fingers, burgers, pizza, and fries (not even chips).\u00a0 I recognized almost every song that came on the blaring stereo, and additionally recognized half a dozen people at the bar (most of whom I had never met before, but also happened to be Dickinson students).<\/p>\n
Now I don\u2019t think George Orwell was looking for the first pub I described, but I also don\u2019t think he would have imagined a place like the later that I visited.\u00a0 I have come to realize that pub life is a huge part of the British culture, and I am trying to appreciate it for what it is, but none of the places I have visited have been a place where I would want to spend extended periods of time, or return to.\u00a0 But, if I ever find The Moon Under Water where the atmosphere is just right with good food, no music (okay well my perfect pub would have some music), families in the back garden, and a friendly staff I could certainly spend some time there. But I\u2019m still looking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Reading George Orwell’s “The Moon Under Water” I was almost getting giddy at the prospect of such a pub existing.\u00a0 Now I have not spent much time in the pubs here in London not being a huge fan of pub food, excessive drinking, and loud music\u2014however I have made an effort to visit a few […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[730],"tags":[1326,1324,15241,1325],"class_list":["post-1700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amanda","tag-atmosphere","tag-george-orwell","tag-pubs","tag-the-moon-under-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1700\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}