{"id":1759,"date":"2009-09-12T18:01:34","date_gmt":"2009-09-12T22:01:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/?p=1759"},"modified":"2009-09-12T18:01:34","modified_gmt":"2009-09-12T22:01:34","slug":"dancing-up-a-sandstorm-at-the-moons-over-my-hammy-pubs-and-pub-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/2009\/09\/dancing-up-a-sandstorm-at-the-moons-over-my-hammy-pubs-and-pub-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"Dancing Up a Sandstorm at the Moons Over My Hammy: Pubs and Pub Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shame on you, Mr. Orwell, for stealing my pub blog post opening gambit: talk about all of the little aspects of my idea of a perfect London pub only to reveal that regrettably (spoiler alert) no such pub exists. That was totally my plan halfway through your essay<\/a>! Sure, you wrote yours 63 years earlier but, come on, mine is actually for a grade.<\/p>\n

With only three and a half weeks of London under my belt I wouldn\u2019t profess to know as much as George Orwell about London pubs, but I had intuitively been coming to the same conclusion before I read The Moon Under Water. No pub (speaking for myself) comes even close to appealing all the time. If I want to have a quick pint or two and a plate of chips with a few friends on a weeknight, I\u2019ll go to the Marlborough Arms. If it\u2019s a weekend night and there\u2019s nine of us and I want to be packed like a sardine and converse in my loudest American voice to cacophonous strains of either Aha\u2019s Take On Me or Franz Ferdinand\u2019s This Fire, I\u2019ll head up to The Court. If I\u2019m feeling adventurous and looking for something new, I\u2019ll head farther afield. I\u2019m surprised Orwell found a single pub that even satisfied eight of his ten criteria, actually, although it was a different era and he\u2019d been to a lot more pubs than I have.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think I\u2019m really getting that much of a sense of British culture through going to pubs yet, but it certainly does seem to be one of the only public spaces we\u2019ve seen that does seem to have any degree of sociability. The English don\u2019t seem to usually be gregarious with people they don\u2019t know ever ( be it on the tube, in the park or at a pub), but it is the only place we\u2019ve seen the English really commune with friends and share stories, celebrations, anxieties etc. This obviously is the same with American bars, but the ubiquity of pubs (although they\u2019re getting less ubiquitous) and the fact that it\u2019s socially acceptable for everyone to go seems to make them more of a fixture in British life. I\u2019ve sensed some disappointment that so many pubs actually seem to have a mostly age 30-50 clientele, but I think that\u2019s proof that pubs are a centre of everyone\u2019s social life , much in the way that bars were in the US until about the 1970s.<\/p>\n

I have a feeling going to pubs in Norwich will give me a lot more insight into pub culture in England than being in London has. I would imagine pubs will be even more central to social life in a city without the myriad other diversions London has, and the lack of tourists and recent city transplants will perhaps make for a more typical English pub scene with more regulars and lower prices. I know I\u2019ll be comparing and contrasting the experience of going to pubs with other students and the experience of venturing into pubs in the city (and comparing and contrasting the places we go as well) once we\u2019re there.<\/p>\n

Oh, and Mr. Orwell, let me tell you about my<\/em> favorite London pub. It\u2019s a little off the beaten path but still close by. It\u2019s called the Moons Over My Hammy, after the borderline inedible Denny\u2019s breakfast entr\u00e9e and thus is full of ironic Americana d\u00e9cor. However, everyone there (but me) is English, and unusually gregarious. There is plenty of seating indoors but a good atmosphere out on the pavement, too. There\u2019s a different football match on every TV screen, and you don\u2019t need to buy a drink to watch. The music is always great and (this is most important) every hour starting at 10 (on the hour) Darude\u2019s techno-pop hit \u201cSandstorm<\/a>\u201d is played, and everyone dances intensely for its duration. Oh yeah, “Sandstorm.” I understand this is fanciful and unrealistic, but so is the idea that there ought to be a pub somewhere just for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shame on you, Mr. Orwell, for stealing my pub blog post opening gambit: talk about all of the little aspects of my idea of a perfect London pub only to reveal that regrettably (spoiler alert) no such pub exists. That was totally my plan halfway through your essay! Sure, you wrote yours 63 years earlier […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[728],"tags":[770,1324,1346,15241],"class_list":["post-1759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aidan","tag-british-culture","tag-george-orwell","tag-pub-culture","tag-pubs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1759","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\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1759\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}