Pub 83, Day 31 – South Sea

By Rob

Question: when is a pub not a pub?

Answer: when it's a bar, or a club, or a supermarket. Nor is it a pub if it's a newsagents, a butchers, or a bank. Laundrettes aren't pubs either. You can also safely categorise cobblers, pet shops, and designer outlets as things that are definitely not pubs.

So what about total fucking dumps? Are they pubs?

That was the question we were faced with upon arrival at the South Sea in Broomhill, which claimed to be a pub, despite looking for all the world like it was, in fact, a total fucking dump (TFD).

That was the impression we got from the outside, as we looked at the squat, black-bricked, flat-roofed building that stood in front of us.

It was the impression we continued to get from the inside, as we glanced down at the threadbare carpet, complete with interwoven chewing gum and stains of indeterminate origin. Weird shit hung on the walls, the furniture looked like it had been retrieved from a skip, and the bar wasn't dissimilar in appearance to one that your uncle might knock up in his garage as he crashes headlong into a midlife crisis.

Now, despite how it sounds, I don't have anything against TFDs. Thanks to Pubquest, I've been in quite a few. Pubs that are shabby and rundown are perfectly alright in my book. However, the problem with the South Sea was that it was deliberately cultivating the TFD aesthetic in order to qualify, in some bizarre manner, as trendy.

For instance, where most venues might try and dissuade their clientele from scrawling shit all over the walls and doors of the toilets, the South Sea actively encouraged it. I'm not sure why. Perhaps they were hoping that, mid-piss, their customers would suddenly look up from the urinal and be struck by the freestyle artwork and grimy urban feel. Maybe this would have been the case if the graffiti had been even slightly Banksy-esque, instead of 15-year-old-boy-smoking-weed-in-the-school-toilets-esque.

Slightly perturbed, we approached the bar to scan the pumps for any appealing beers.

Except we couldn't.

There were no pumps.

"We don't have anything on tap," came the explanation from the barman, obviously prompted by the look of confusion on our faces.

"So what do you have?" Andy asked.

Helpfully, the barman replied: "Bottles".

This statement wasn't delivered as an apology. It wasn't a mistake. The pumps weren't broken. The pub just didn't have anything on tap. Ever.

Swallowing down a mouthful of bile, we inquired further and discovered that, if you weren't drinking spirits, then your options were limited to a few bottles of lager, cider, or Newcastle Brown Ale. Left with no choice, we picked two of the latter.

Back at the table, I could see Andy staring at the label on the back of the bottle. Slowly, he lifted his gaze to meet mine. I knew what he was going to say before the words even came out.

"There isn't a full pint of beer in these bottles," Andy said flatly.

Considering that the whole point of Pubquest is to drink a pint in every pub, we couldn't tick the South Sea off our list with one bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale, and I had no desire to return to the TFD.

It transpired that one 'Newkie Brown' held 550ml of ale, which was just 18.261ml short of a pint. Therefore, to ensure we were abiding by the rules, we were forced to buy a third bottle. Of course, we didn't want to drink more than was strictly necessary, so to be certain of the measurements we opted to serve the additional beer in a shot glass, thereby guaranteeing we would have drank just over a pint each.

I'm fairly confident that, for the barman, it was the first time he'd ever been asked for a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale and two shot glasses.

Needs must

Now, it's at this point in the blog where I have been known to say something along the lines of 'sitting there at the table, with our drinks, I actually found myself warming to the pub'.

Not this time.

In fact, sitting there at the table, with our drinks, I actually found myself wondering what the point of the pub was, which has to be a Pubquest first. All they offered was bottled beer, which I could have picked up for a fraction of the price at my local shop. The atmosphere was dead. The surroundings were shit.

I disliked the South Sea so intensely that, were it left to me, I would award the pub one solitary star. However, Pubquest is a joint enterprise and Andy, ever the more generous of the two, felt that the pub deserved slightly better. He said something about the pub having 'character', or some other vaguely ridiculous notion.

Therefore, by the good grace of Andy, the pub is saved from sharing bottom spot with the Hollin Bush.

It's still a TFD though.

NOTE: As if to justify absolutely everything I've said, the pub has since closed down!

Pub: South Sea (3 Spooner Road, S10 5BL) 

Rating: 3.5/10

Pint: Newcastle Brown Ale

Brewery: John Smith's Brewery (Tadcaster, North Yorkshire)

NEXT UP: A visit to the Children's Hospital, at The Doctor's Orders...