After spending a month in London, I\u2019ve come to understand the vast importance of pub culture, but I\u2019ve also learned that the pubs fall far from my original expectations.\u00a0 In my mind, I\u2019ve always equated pubs with American bars but have found the comparison to be entirely false.\u00a0 In my hometown, very few people go to bars at all. When they do, the point is to have a drink (usually after work, and often by yourself) and then go home.\u00a0 In my opinion, the bars are rather dirty looking and dimly lit.\u00a0 They don\u2019t attract the most upstanding of people, either.\u00a0 There is no entertainment within, and the bar countertop itself takes up the majority of the establishment.<\/p>\n
In complete contrast, the majority of the pubs I\u2019ve been to throughout the past month have been busy and flourishing.\u00a0 Different bars cater to different age groups (the Court for university students, others for businessmen, etc.) but there often seems to be a mix of people regardless.\u00a0 They\u2019ve all been reasonably clean and large, housing pool tables or jukeboxes for entertainment in addition to a wide variety of drinks.\u00a0 The sheer number of tables makes clear that the pub expects you to stay for a significant chunk of time, and I have always felt comfortable in doing so.<\/p>\n
To me, the pub scene here is most similar to the coffee shop scene near my home.\u00a0 People go to socialize, meet with friends, chat, and relax.\u00a0 As a barista, I know that people make connections with their servers and occasionally become close friends.\u00a0 Attending a pub in London or a coffee shop in New Jersey has very little to do with what you\u2019re drinking, but everything to do with the people you join.\u00a0 As we learned on the pub tour, different bars specialize in different ales or brewed beers.\u00a0 Likewise, I\u2019ve worked in two different coffee shops that pride themselves in roasting their own particular beans and there are countless others in the area that boast of original, unique flavors as well.\u00a0 The only difference is the rich history that bolsters the pub community, whereas coffee shops in northern New Jersey don\u2019t tend to have a long standing historical context.<\/p>\n
My favorite pub was the Jack Horner, which was recommended to me by a friend who lives in London.\u00a0 It\u2019s often overlooked by tourists, so I met a lot of awesome people who live in the nearby area.\u00a0 Being at tourist-attraction pubs is certainly fun (albeit filled with some sketchy individuals) but I prefer the less crowded ones, as they feel more authentic to me.\u00a0 Overall, it was fun to explore an aspect of British culture formerly so foreign to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After spending a month in London, I\u2019ve come to understand the vast importance of pub culture, but I\u2019ve also learned that the pubs fall far from my original expectations.\u00a0 In my mind, I\u2019ve always equated pubs with American bars but have found the comparison to be entirely false.\u00a0 In my hometown, very few people go […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[731],"tags":[1394,1518,1520,1519,15241,1521],"class_list":["post-2062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amy","tag-bars","tag-coffee-shops","tag-jack-horner","tag-new-jersey","tag-pubs","tag-tourists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2062","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\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2062\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}