Death of the Boozer

My Local

Is there such a thing as a proper boozer/pub these days because I see many pubs are up for sale with a few being turned into themed pubs or worse still, flats/housing?

A good boozer was a friendly and unpretentious place presided over by a smiling, ruddy-faced landlord with half a tub of Brylcreem (1960s throwback) in his hair or some hard as nails landlady who took no shit. The only food on offer was a packet of crisps, pork scratchings, a bag of peanuts slowly revealing a dolly bird and a jar of pickled eggs. You could happily sit there with your mates talking crap while listening to others talking bollocks around there table. We all had a local then and went into town on a Friday or Saturday to strut your stuff.

Where I grew up in Cardiff, we had boozers on nearly every street corner. I lived in the Cardiff Docks area now all poshed up under the name Cardiff Bay and in the small area I lived in, we had two pubs both now housing. The Packet pub is the last boozer left surrounded by new upscale gastropubs but even there we can see an upgrade with real food on the menu.

The proper boozer have all but gone and I have watched many a good watering hole go to the big boozer in the sky. Those replaced return in either two forms a gastropubs where food and ambience is the name of the game with drink a secondary thought or the cheap and tacky chain brand like Wetherspoons and others. We are now besieged by hordes of ghastly chain bars of satellite television, blaring music, and lairy customers.

If you find a proper boozer, you should treasure it. Some of the most pleasurable nights of my life were spent in pubs. In a touch to modernisation with jukeboxes and a Fruit Machines/One Arm Bandit, I could live with them but somehow todays pubs/boozers just don’t feel right. Your local today is more likely to be the off-licence or an aisle in your supermarket.

Funny thing is I don’t frequent a boozer these days. My pub of choice is a gastropub where food and ambience is all important and you can have a pint or a coffee.