The Delightful History of Pubs

In today's episode, Chuck and Josh dive into the wonderful history of the public house. So pull up a stool, grab a pint and have a listen.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles Depe, Chuck Bryant and Jerry's here. I'm
mute and this is stuff you should know. Good day.

(00:25):
Why are you doing in Australian greeting? There's pubs in Australia. Okay, okay,
fair enough, Okay. Did you uh had a really great
pub experience in Manchester? I know you told me about it.
Was it the one I can't remember the name of
it where Morrissey? What had his Heather the Smith's sad

(00:46):
that photo shoot? Or was that just in the same
story that probably the same story that was outside of
the Salford Lads Club, very famous photo. But I wandered
inside a gin you in old school, uh like basement
cask Ale pub in Manchester and it was great and

(01:09):
authentic and on such a lean like I've never seen
a floor of this slanted in my life. That wasn't
like a house of tricks. Oh, I remember that. And
then in the end of Greece, I don't know a
long time because you need a man, I don't remember that.
Did they go into a leaning house, yeah, I believe

(01:30):
they do, or a bounty house or really something like that. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah.
This one is so leany that you felt like if
you were in the front of the pub and put
your point on a table, it may actually slide. Wow.
It was really leaning. So the point of going to
this pub was to get so bent that everything straightened
out for you. I don't know. No, I had a

(01:52):
couple of beers. It was just great, and I just
I'm a sucker for for that kind of stuff, really
old places and having a beer in an old place. Yeah,
I love it, definitely. Yeah. I had a couple of
nice pub experiences too. I went to one I can't remember.
It was in Dublin, right down from the Guinness Factory,
and don't remember the name of it, but it was
super old, very it was a really old pub and um,

(02:17):
I wish I could remember the name, but shout out
to the that pub. I can't remember. But I'm with you,
and I think it's not just us who appreciate pubs
for their homeliness, Um and Chuck. I believe that what
you went to would be called a local, a traditional
independent English pub, a neighborhood pub, and um pub we

(02:39):
should say short for public house to the few people
who didn't know that, now you do. And these things
are so pubs are so um essential to England into Ireland,
as we'll find too that the essay is Hilaire Bellock
wrote that when you have lost your ins, mean pubs

(03:00):
for all intensive purposes, drown your empty selves, for you
have lost the last of England. I love it. Yeah,
So where do we get pubs from the Romans? Uh? Uh?
It is true, Um, before there was a United Kingdom
and there was Roman occupation. We're talking about forty three

(03:22):
to four ten CE. That was we talked a lot
about Roman roads and how their big network of roads
and that was one of their big accomplishments, linking places together.
And so along these routes they had what we're called
tavern a t a b E r in a e
what we know is taverns and it was what you think,
it's like a place where a traveler can stop, have

(03:43):
little food and and these establishments have wine. Yeah, because
the Romans were not so for wine pretty much wine
no forever right, So um, the way that you would
know what house to stop him, because this isn't a
time where they were, you know, designing shopping malls and

(04:04):
strip centers, like the tavern looked a lot like everybody
else's house, because it probably was somebody's house. But if
you were a new in town traveling along this Roman
road and you wanted to figure out which place was
the actual tavern, you would just look for, um, some
grape vines hanging over the door. That was the basically

(04:25):
the universal symbol among Roman occupied areas for a tavern.
But when they pushed further and further west, when they
got to England and occupied it, they said, well, there's
not that many grape vines here, what else can we
we use them? They started using bushes, right. Uh. And
you know, we'll talk a little bit all over the

(04:45):
place about the interesting pub names, because that's kind of
one of the fun things about pubs is their interesting names. Uh.
And if you see pubs name the bush or the
bull and the bush or the holly bush, Uh, it's
sort of thrown back to this old tradition where they
would hang stuff above the door to let you know,
come on in and have a drink. Right, pretty great,
That's it's kind of what all pub lore circles back

(05:08):
to is how awesome their names are? So what happened
to the Romans? Chuck? Did they stick around? And is
there a Roman president of the UK today? No, they
left and the Anglo Saxons took over and they liked
to drink ale. Yeah, they said to this wine stuff.
We were just pretending all this time to like wine

(05:30):
while the Romans were here. We actually like ale. And
the Anglo Saxons I didn't realize this. I was like, okay,
what's the difference between the Anglo Saxons and the Normans
and the Vikings? And apparently there's plenty of differences. The Normans,
I guess, came up to conquer Um and I think
ten sixties six from the south from France, but they

(05:51):
originally still were Germanic Um they were they I think
they had some Norse people mixed in. So like I said, okay,
well who who you who lived in England originally? And
apparently it was the Celtic Britons. Okay, so this is
this is the first group that came in after the Romans.
The Romans came and conquered the Celtic Britons. They left

(06:15):
and I don't think I'm saying that right, because they like,
I have a tick or something like that. Um and
uh they were so. Then the Romans subsequently left and
the Anglo Saxons came in and replaced them. And the
Anglo Saxons were the ones who said, let's all start
drinking some ale. That's right, and aile is not beer.
Ale didn't have hops, which is the big differentiator there.

(06:39):
Hops would come along later. Uh, and people still like
that ale. But people also liked the beer for sure.
I think it was the Dutch who said, hey, you
should try these hops, man, they'll knock your socks off.
And when they did in the fifteenth century, Um, the
Britons said, well, let's let's do this where kay with

(07:00):
alef or We're okay with hops from now on, we're
like beer. They said, it did knock my socks off
because I'm wear shot garters. Right. But they loved Ale
so much that it was like a part of their
like like their meals. Whenever they drank something, they usually
drank ale. Um. And I think we talked about this

(07:21):
in the beer episode. I don't remember bars maybe maybe,
but if you were a housewife, housewife, um, you were
probably in charge of making ale for your family. And
if you were really good at making ale, the town
might know about it, and they might come and try
to buy some of your excess ale, and you might

(07:43):
end up supplying ale to thirsty travelers who passed through,
and the next thing you know, you're running what's known
as the ale house. That's right. They were called ale
wives or brewsters. And if you want to indicate, like
the Romans hung the grapevines and bushes and things above
the air door. Uh, they would have an ale steak
or an ale pole, which sort of from this drawing

(08:05):
Dave sent Dave Russ helped us with this. Uh, you
just give Dave a wou sure. Uh, it looks sort
of like a witch's broom. It was a big stick
with branches tied to the end and they would hang
it out a window or above the doorway like a
flagpole over the doorway, kind of sticking out of the house.
And that meant come on end and have a drink. Yeah,

(08:28):
and you you would like that like this is it
was really important to the Anglo Saxons and other subsequent
groups that kind of came over and took over England
to say like like the hospitality is really really important, um,
And they actually started to kind of regulate it a
little bit in part because ale houses became so popular

(08:49):
that they're like, this is something we can tax, but
also we don't want um any kind of social issues
arising from this. So I think it was King Edward
the Peaceful Um who started path saying like the first
uh laws that regulated drinking establishments in England. Yeah, and
he said, hey, how about one of these in every
town or village And he said and everyone went, okay,

(09:13):
I guess we can live with that, but I don't
think but I don't think it was just too limited.
I think it was also to make sure that there
was at least one in every town, that every town
had one to like, there were probably towns that didn't
have and they're like, you need to get on the trolley. Yeah,
some people are probably like hooray. And then towns that
had more than one went okay, yeah, we gotta flip
a coin. Yeah exactly. Uh. And then he also moved

(09:35):
on to say and maybe we shouldn't drink as much
as people and everyone went way at a minute, like
we've been drinking ale for breakfast literally, uh. And he said,
how about this thing. It's called a peg tankard, and
it's a it's a big like two lead uh drinking
vessel that has these pegs, vertical pegs and you're only

(09:56):
allowed to drink down to the next peg, and then
you gotta pass it along to your friend and then
they can drink down to the next bag. And if
you drink past your peg, then your tax too. Penny. Yeah,
it was a super hygienic setup. Yeah, and two leaders,
I mean that's not that much. Well, I don't mean
for like per person, but like they think about it,
two leaders or soda? How many people were sharing that? Sure? Sure,

(10:19):
I mean like you know too, three four? All right,
so a leaders thirty two ounces? Yeah, so it's about
two points no points sixteen ounces? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right.
So yeah, it was about two points. No, I'm thinking

(10:40):
of a court. I think a court and a leader
are pretty close. Regardless, you're right, it's not that much.
It's a couple of forties. Man, oh man, I've had
a forty since college. It's been a while. Sat Id's
I had sat Id's at least's been says that great
song st Iights Heaven um My jam was not forties,

(11:05):
but I would for a little while in college I
would drink schlitz or And I know I mentioned this
before the Mickey's big mouth. Yeah sure, but I can't
imagine drinking that swill. Now, That's what I was gonna say.
Even at the time, st IDs was terrible stuff. Yeah,
I never understood. Even among the malt liquors that came
in bottles, IDs was gross. What was the eight ball?

(11:29):
Old English? Old English? Yes, I think that may have
been tied with st Nights. It was all pretty gross. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The early drinking days are just nothing to be proud of. No,
it's like you call this orange juice, you call this
a cape cod right. Uh, but now we're more refined

(11:51):
in our old age, and we drink very tasteful small cocktails. Sure,
forty ounces at a time. I've actually dialed it back
to almost nothing these days. Uh yeah, get better sleep, yeah,
and better next days. Really, but yeah, better sleep too.
That's where the next days. To me. That's why I
was just like, this is not this is not okay. Yeah, yeah,

(12:12):
it's good as you get older that you gotta gotta
dial that back. Didn't you say you don't get affected
by it very much like hangovers. Yeah, I don't really
get that hungover, and if I do, then I willingly
wade into those waters. Oh I see, you know, like
I know what's coming and I'm like, you just one
one of those nights. But yeah, those are few and
far between these days. You schedule a blood transfusion for

(12:34):
the next morning, No, no, no, uh? Should we take
a break? Yeah, let's take a break and then we'll
go to the Emerald Aisle right after this. All right,
let's do it. Are we in Ireland? We are in

(13:06):
Ireland here, yep. Um. So they had their own kind
of pub culture, despite the fact that the Anglo Saxons
never made it into Ireland, which I didn't realize. Um,
but they they devised their own kind of um system
of hospitality as well. Like the Anglo Saxons to that said, Hey,
if you've got people coming around your town, you need

(13:27):
to make sure that you can take care of them.
That's right. And what is the law pronounced? How is
it pronounced? Bron okay b r e h o N.
Is that what you're gonna go with? R Briton. I'm
sure we're pronouncing that wrong, but that was sort of
the system of like legal hospitality that you were talking

(13:48):
about from originally from the sixth century. Uh, and you
know it was it was a lot. It comes a lot,
but it definitely put a lot of emphasis on hospitality
and kind of like in England they said, hey, uh,
every town has to have a hostel, which is also
sort of code for pub but you could spend the night.

(14:09):
I guess, um, yeah, but this is like I didn't
quite understand this. It said I had to be located
at the main crossroads with four doors open in each direction.
Is that symbolic or did they literally mean like, uh,
don't make them walk around the corner to get in.
I don't know, and I really don't. Maybe travelers were

(14:30):
generally dumber than they are today back then, I'm not sure.
But they could only move in straight lines, That's what
I said, right. But Um, Additionally, under the law, you
had to have and you couldn't have an empty cauldron.
It always had to be ready to go with ale.
You had to have on hand raw meats and cooked
meats ready to serve, also animals ready to slaughter, and

(14:53):
that any time traveler showed up twenty four hours a
day you had to serve them. That was just the hospital.
It was that emphasized. It was almost like the local
Chamber of Commerce was in charge of writing the laws
for them. Law. I love it. Yeah. Like Backstreet? What's

(15:13):
what was that? Remember that club Backstreet that was open
twenty four hours and in Atlanta, right, that was the
late night place. Yes, but it was like open twenty
four hours for real. Yeah. And I didn't go there much.
I didn't. I mean I was I was not living
in Atlanta during its heyday. This is what I mean
to say. I got you that was all about backstreets.
I just didn't live there, I see. Uh. So in

(15:36):
England we're kind of marching forward through time. I think
it was between thirteen and sixteen hundred. This is when
things kind of made the shift over those few hundred years,
from someone's home where the lady made great ale, uh
to an official like licensed what we would call a
pub today. Um. I still don't think they were called

(15:59):
public houses at the point, right, No, not until the
Victorian era in the I think the late nineteenth century,
all right, but they were actually licensing places in the
fifteen hundreds. Uh. And they made a distinction between the
three different kinds of places where you could serve booze.
The ale house, which we talked about, Uh, you could
only sell ale and beer though. Then you had your

(16:19):
taverns which also sold liquor and wine and food, and
then the end where you could spend the night. Yeah.
And one other really big shift that took place during
that time from ale houses to common brewers with licenses
was that the licenses were given to men, So the
custom of making ale and eventually beer moved from women

(16:42):
to men exclusively. Basically it was taken out of women's hands. Yeah,
and it feels like an industry that's still very much
male dominated, uh, as is the wine industry. But I
know there's a lot of support behind female brewers and
the wine makers these days, so that's always a good
thing to seek out. Yeah, well there should be. But

(17:04):
there were a lot of pubs per person back then.
Uh there's a census from fifteen fifty seven that basically
showed that there was one licensed pub for every one
hundred and eighty seven people, whereas it's about one for
every six and fifty seven people today, Which I mean
if you've been to England anytime recently, like there are

(17:27):
a lot of pubs there. Yeah, so to imagine there
were that many more back then or that fewer people,
I guess is probably the likelier thing. The same amount
of pubs, just a lot of fewer people. Yeah. I
always love working out dumb stuff in my head live
on our episodes. But there's a good example of it. Uh,
we had a great episode on gin. I didn't think

(17:48):
that was done by the way. It doesn't matter. It's
a combination of both. I think, Uh, more pubs in
fewer people. I appreciate you. You're being very magnanimous on
your birthday. Uh, jin that we had a great episode
on gin um. But if you remember from that episode,
in the seventeen hundreds, jin became a very sort of
evil liquor and there were moves to ban it and

(18:11):
limit gin drinking. But while this was going on, beer
was on the rise, and and England was all in
on beer, basically saying like we're not saying don't drink,
we're saying gin is bad and that ale and beer
is really good. Yeah, they definitely accepted it from their
ire um and there was a there was a really
good um. I guess the political cartoon it was to

(18:33):
two different panels in it that was produced in the
eighteenth century by William Hogarth. I think it came out
in se And on one side is Beer Street on
the left side. On the right side is a very
similar picture, but it's on Jin Lane. And if you
look into what's going on in those pictures, they're very

(18:55):
two very different pictures, Um and Jin Lane. It's basically
like just has been ravaged by gin. There's a mother
who's like stop. Her child is toppling over a wall
where it had just been breastfeeding because her mom is
now like trying to figure out how to buy some gin.
There's some children, um fighting over a dog or fighting

(19:18):
over a bone with a dog. Um. I think a
tradesman is pawning his his tools all for gin. And
then if you go over to Beer Street, it's a
different different picture altogether. For sure. Yeah, everything's happening on
Beer Street. People are working hard, they look good, they're
making art, and they're drinking beer. But what's funny is

(19:39):
if you look closely on the Beer Street too, there's
stuff that's there's there's a there's it's struggling a little
bit too. There's like boards over one window. Um, people
are definitely crocked. It's just hilarious that they didn't try
to make it like perfectly perfect. Like there's still like
just some some freight edges around there on Beer Street too.

(20:00):
I thought that was kind of funny. And then the
third panel was Weed Avenue. Nothing bad was happening there.
Everybody's just kind of sitting around. Yeah, there's a lot
of PlayStation happening. I forgot what people do what when
they spoke pot I can't even come up with a

(20:22):
decent joke here. Well, let's move to the Victorian area,
the era and area, because that is when we finally
get our name the public house, And this is when
things really sort of as as did much in the
Victorian area. Man, why do we keep saying that the

(20:42):
Victorian era took on a shine and a fanciness and
these places became pretty swank. Yeah, because while Gin was
vilified and run out of town in the middle of
the eighteenth century, by the middle of the nineteenth century
it had come back, Remember in a different form. Originally
was Dutch Gin and then London Dry Gin made its

(21:03):
its mark in the nineteenth century. And everybody's like, oh, well,
this is fine, we're making it here. And we liked
jin again. And so they built Jim palaces starting in
the eighteen forties and they were very very nice. They
had like marble bars and they were just really well
decked out. And um, the pubs started kind of replicating
that vibe when they were being built or remodeled or whatever.

(21:27):
And so pubs started to add like bars. Apparently they
didn't have bars before. I guess it was just all
comfortable chairs and like many tables and yeah. Um, and
so they added bars at this era as well. Pretty awesome. Uh.
In Ireland, you know, if we're again going chronologically around
this time, Um, they had some interesting like the pubs

(21:50):
over there, and I think this is true to a
certain degree in England too, but they were there were
more than just the place to go drink. It was
sort of the center for public course and activity. Uh.
Some of them operated other businesses, like some um acted
as banks during the daytime or post offices. Uh. And
then there was the Coroners Act of eighteen forty six

(22:12):
that basically said pubs have these great cool sellers and uh,
that's where dead body should be taken in our village
to be stored until the funeral, because every pub has
got a very cool basement, and that wasn't just the
most common thing at the time and home. So the
Corners Act of eighteen forty six, I think, demanded that

(22:34):
a dead body was brought to the nearest pub. Yeah,
and some publicans, people who own and operate pubs, um said, okay,
I can make some money doing that, and they started
installing like marble bars in the basement the sellers of
their pubs to better accommodate corpses and cadavers that came
their way. So they became undertakers as well. And it

(22:56):
makes me wonder like how many how many Irish pubs
have these marble slabs that the corpses used to be
laid out on still today, I would love to see that.
That would I can imagine going in for to a
pub for a pint and and end up getting a
tour like that. Yeah, that'd be really cool. Like you
suddenly woke up on Weed Street, Weed Avenue, dang uh

(23:20):
and then what about this other thing? This was really cool?
I think I love it when someone creates a drinking
law that also has a tremendous gaping loophole for people
to jump through. Uh, And that was the case in
eighteen in the eighteen seventies in Ireland, to kind of
tame down the pub scene, they said, all right, you

(23:40):
gotta close before midnight and you can only go to
these pubs um at any hour if you're what's called
a bona fide traveler, which means that you have traveled
in good faith at least three miles, like not just
three miles to go get your drink, but you're really traveling, right,
So some Dublin pubs picked up stakes and moved about

(24:04):
three miles outside the town. There anyone in Dublin who
went there had to be, by definition traveling, and then
it was just a blurry line whether you were a
bona fide traveler whatever. So they found that that gaping
loophole to drive through, drive their horse and carriage through. Yeah,
it's like, uh, it's one of those hard to enforce
things like cutting through a gas station to avoid a

(24:27):
red light. So you also said, Chuck that, um, the
Irish pub served as these like community centers, and English
pubs definitely do too. But I feel like the Irish
pubs actually kind of codified it with things like the
Coroners Act um. But they really served as as even
greater community centers, maybe even more vital community centers are

(24:47):
vitally needed ones over here in the US. When the
Irish started coming over to America beginning in the eighteen forties, UM,
they brought with them their knowledge of how to build
and operate a pub. So Irish pubs started springing up,
and they they very much served as like the glue
for the community there. Yeah, taverns especially, UM. I know

(25:11):
that here in Atlanta anytime there is a big political
discourse and activity, and they need the persons I know,
you know what I'm gonna say, they need like the
person on the streets take the news cruise will invariably
go to Manual's Tavern uh sort of right near the
Virginia Highlands in Atlanta. And it's a it's a great
old traditional uh sort of American style tavern that's been

(25:34):
around for a long time that was owned by a
local politician named Manuel Maloof and as a result, he
would have events there and it became sort of a
sort of just known for political discourse in Atlanta. So
that's where the news always goes. I thought you're gonna
say they went to Backstreet that's not still open, is it?
I don't think so, but they so, Yeah, Manual's man

(25:57):
is it manuals? Or Manuel's it's manuals? Okay. So Manuel's
Tavern was established in nineteen fifty seven. Seems kind of old,
but apparently there's still taverns in operation today that day
back to the colonial period, even like there's one in Newport,
Rhode Island called the white Horse Tavern that says it's
been open since sixteen seventy three. Yes, not the New

(26:20):
York white Horse that is two years old or younger?
Oh is it? Yeah? I mean you think like the
white Horse Tavern, know, it's the oldest thing in New
York and not even close because the I guess it's
pronounced The Francis Tavern in New York is from uh
the seventeen eighties. Yeah, apparently George Washington took his troops

(26:42):
there to toast them after the British finally left the
North American continent. I've never heard of this place. I
was disappointed because I like to try and check out
the old haunts in New York, and I thought I
knew them all but this one, you know, it's down
there in the Financial District at the very lower tip
of Manhattan. Than it's just not an area I get to.
I came across um a mention of a place called

(27:05):
Lafitte's blacksmith Shop down in New Orleans. And it's not
a tavern or a pub, but it's supposed to be
the oldest bar in the United States, and that it's
supposedly dates from SWO and that it was called the
blacksmith Shop to throw off the authorities. It was actually
not only a bar and a llegal bar, but also
a hideout for pirates who would plan and sell their

(27:29):
um stolen goods there. And it's still looking to day
from what I understand. Have you seen the new pirate
show Our Flag means Death? No? Is it any good?
It's very funny. We just finished Dope Sick. Did not
see that. It's not funny, but it's really good. Uh,
what is it? Does it? What's what's the story there?

(27:50):
It's about the Sackler family and Produe Pharma and how
they created the ooid epidemics single handedly in the United
States and does not know it's It's a drama well
acted by every single person in it. Incredibly well written,
well directed. It just keeps moving through eight episodes. Um,
it's on Hulu and it is um Like, it's just

(28:14):
nuts to realize that we all just lived through that
and didn't know what was going on, and they're just
still only waking up to the damage that this this
family did. Well. Our Flag Means Death is much more
fun than that. I'll check that out. You check out
Dope Sick, and I'll check out our Flag means Death. Okay,
I guess we should take a break, uh, take our
second break and we'll come back and talk about pub

(28:35):
names and pub games right after this. All right, names

(28:57):
and games. Nice, you're not gonna not gonna bite no,
all right. Uh. One of the fun parts about pubs
is their names. Um, some of the names at the beginning,
like we mentioned the broom that they would put out front.
Sometimes they got tired of that and they would just
put out other things, uh, like a boot or a

(29:18):
copper kettle. And that's where you would have pub names
like the boot or the copper kettle, especially if you
were um and a literate population at the time, which
a lot of people were. For a lot of the
history of pubs. Um, you would like you would say
I'm going to the Copper Kettle, not because there was
a sign that said the Copper Kettle, because they had
a copper kettle out like That's that was really helpful

(29:42):
in that sense. And then over time, as literacy became
more and more widespread, they would they would write the
name out and include a picture still for the people
who couldn't yet read. Yeah, that's why they had this
cool signs. Uh. It's funny, like if there was only
one per town, they should just say I'm I'm going
to beer, right, That's all they needed to say, going
to ale House. But those those pub names, they are

(30:05):
really weird in a lot of cases. Even if you
are English, you might think some of them are really
really weird. Um. And a lot of times you can
kind of trace the history of that town or that
area through the name of the pub. A lot of
times they trace the larger history of England, like the
pushing pulled between Catholics and Protestants, the pushing pulled between

(30:26):
the monarchy and um, the Cromwell and his cronies during
the English Civil War, um. Like they the names kind
of reflect these these changes over time in some ways too. Yeah,
the I think it was King Richard the lion Heart.
During the Crusades, there are a lot of these pubs
that were on the routes of the pilgrimages and soldiers

(30:49):
making their way over there, and so you would see
there was one that's uh I think still around uh
called ye Old Trip to Jerusalem, a little on the
nose called the Saracen's Head, also on the nose. Yeah,
I saw that ye Old Trip to Jerusalem. They have
like caves um underneath the actual current structure that they

(31:14):
still use for seating today that are definitely dated back
to the thirteenth century. Yeah, so I mean like it's
legit um some of the other names that kind of
have come along. Like I was saying, when when Um
Cromwell and his Puritanical people took over and I'm sorry
I miss book. That wasn't during the English Civil War.

(31:34):
This came later, I believe, Um but Cromwell when when
the Puritans took over and deposed the king um that
there were a lot of pub owners who said, well,
you know, these Puritans aren't super into a lot of
the names that we have, like back in Aalia. So
that got changed the bag of nails God encompasses us,

(31:56):
which is you're You're like, why would they change that
that name? Um, and I remembered like the Puritans would
have taken that probably is like taking God's name in
vain and would have very much frowned on that, Okay,
So instead they went with the much less satanic goat encompasses.
My favorite is Katharina Fidelis, which is a reference to

(32:19):
Queen Catherine of Aragon became Cat and Fiddle because right
there in the middle of Hollywood in Los Angeles there
is still the Cat and Fiddle pub. Oh yeah, yeah,
And it's a place I used to go to and
and back then, I don't know if it's still the case,
but back then there were um, not rumors, but verified
accounts of Morrissey hanging out at the Cat and Fiddle

(32:40):
during the day drinking guinness. And he used to always
go by there and wonder if he was sitting out, Yeah,
would you like to put your hands on the window
and look inside. No, they had this great, uh sort
of hidden outdoor courtyard off the street that was really
really lovely. But uh, I had some really good times
at the Cat and fiddle back in the day and
still around it think um chook. Another thing that people

(33:03):
would do is cast their lot with the monarchy. So
you can see just the crown, which I saw that
they would consider. They would they would take the name
of the crown, because if you did something like the
Cat and Fiddle or Cat Catherina Fidelis when that monarch
was no longer on the throne, you might have to
change your name. But if you just say the Crown,
you're basically saying I'm done with the monarchy. Yeah, and

(33:26):
a boy. The Crown, I think, is one of the
more common pub names. It's number two from what I saw.
Number one is red Lion, which comes from all sorts
of coats of arms, and royal oak is number three,
after the tree that King Charles the Second hid in
from Cromwell and his Protestant cronies. I did look up
up there are a bunch of websites that have like
the top twenty weirdest names or whatever, uh, And I

(33:48):
was looking through there was one that was pretty good,
like sometimes it was what the people did way back when,
and the one called the blacksmith and the toffee maker,
so it was kind of on the nose. Can you
imagine living in town with like a bona fide toffee maker. Yeah,
I U I just lived there. I'd live outside of

(34:09):
their house. Once called the job Center and this is
in Deptford for real. Yeah, and it was a former
job center and they just renamed it the job Center. Uh.
And then what is the I can't find the one
with a really long name that was kind of fun.
Here's one the camel and artichokes, that's pretty fun. Or

(34:30):
the pyro technists Arms. Well, that was a big one.
So so there was probably a fireworks factory around there
that it was built on the side of the fireworks factory. Yeah,
so clearly that was a fairly recent one. But it
follows a longstanding tradition. Like if you if you served
um carpenters, you call your place the carpenter's Arms or

(34:52):
the Golden Fleece. If you had like a bunch of
woolworkers who frequented your place, or if like you were,
if you set up shop to attract like the sporting types,
you'd have like the fox and the hound or something
like that. Yeah, the dog, the lady in the tramp,
Lady in the tramp where you can share spaghetti with
no silverware. That's right, It's very cute. You end up

(35:15):
kissing at the end. So you you said names, but
the second half of your titilating rhyme um said games
that promised games. What kind of games are you delivering on? Well,
of course darts. I used to be quite a dart
enthusiast and played in dart leagues. Yeah, through college and
then in my post college I guess early two thousand's

(35:41):
Atlanta stay. For a few years before I moved back
to l A. I was still into darts. I loved it.
I think we should do a whole podcast on darts.
When I moved to l A, they had nothing but
the soft tip electronic game darts, which is no, you
can't even do that, so I didn't even bother so
I kind of fell out of playing. But my friend Justin,
who I've referred to a bunch of you know, still

(36:03):
very big into darts, and in one of the best
dart players around. He he does uh quite well and
like regional tournaments and like stuff. Well does much. Mr
fancy pants Justin, who's so good at darts, know that
it originated with English archers. I don't even know if
he knows the history. I'm gonna ask him. Oh, you
gotta tell him, and don't tell him. I call them

(36:24):
Mr fancy paint. I don't, you don't care. So apparently
it did um, that's right, and sells wine. Um. They
apparently it was English archers who would like draw targets
on um oak casks behind the bar and would shorten
their arrows and use those to kind of keep their

(36:45):
their marksmanship steely edged. That's right, And you know what,
I feel bad. The other day I thought about mentioning
uh he Melissa's wine shop without saying the name, because
we say so many names of places, and this is
one of my old friends. So here in Atlanta, in
the neighborhood of Kirkwood, you can go to Dombe Juice
wine shop, Melissa's Portuguese and Dombes Juice is Portuguese. They

(37:09):
have a great selection of Portuguese wine, but all kinds
of great wine. And knew dude that they just hired.
I just met the other day. I was talking to
him for a minute and he went by the way
big stuff. You should know fan, Oh yeah, yeah. So
we chatted up for a little while, but Uh, you,
you were more likely to see me there than anywhere
in Atlanta. If you ever want to stop by, there's
a chance in there. And it's conveniently located in the

(37:31):
old back street building. Is communely located next to the
police station. Oh is that convenient? Yeah? So for the police. Yeah,
but here's the deal. You're next to police station. They're
either just getting off work and they don't want to
be bothered, or they're just getting on duty and they
don't want to be bothered. I guess you're right. So
it's kind of a perfect place to drink. I guess.

(37:52):
So you just sit outside and drink and mock them
as they come, you know, to and fro. Yeah, and
I can walk home or ride my bike. Oh well,
they you go. So it's convenient for you, is what
you're saying. That's right. So another game, Chuck is skittles. Yeah,
I didn't quite get this. It's very easy. It's a
bowling game, but instead of ten pins, you have nine pins,
and instead of a ball, you have a disc that

(38:14):
is about the shape and size of a cheddar cheese wheel. Okay,
you just roll it at the pins, all right. In
the South, they call that tire bowling. That's great. I
could totally see people doing that too in the South. Uh.
And then there's one other one. I mean, darts really
rules all I think of it there for pub games,

(38:34):
but it's something called bat and trap. Dave dug up
as an outdoor pub game that seems to be a
sort of early version of cricket. It's pretty neat. I
watched the video of it, and these people seem to
be taking it quite seriously at the pub. But there's
like a little a little gadget that holds a ball
and you tap one end of the gadget which knocks
the ball into the air, and then you hit the

(38:56):
ball and it looks very much like you're using a
cricket bat. I'm not sure it's called bad or not.
And then the other people field the ball and rather
than being out or not, it's now their turn to
knock down a target that's located ways away from them
where you just batted with the cricket bat. Mm hmmm.
You know bocci is big here in the States at

(39:17):
at bars now it has a tad bit of an
element of Bocci to it, but knocking things down with Bocci.
So I guess Bocci and Domino's plus crickets, Batton Trap
plus beer. That's right. Oh yeah, you gotta You're not
gonna play Batton Trap unless you've been drinking. That sounds
like fun. I think you'd be like, what what is this? Uh?
So should we wrap it up with what's happening with

(39:39):
bubs these days? Yes? So the decline started a while ago.
Dave mentioned the late nineteenth century, and this is when
sort of the first move of what people see as
the the beginning of the end for the all encompassing
neighborhood pub is when brewers struck up deals with pubs

(40:00):
to only sell their beer. Uh. And they became known
as tide houses because they were tied to the one brand. Uh.
And in the nineties, it's hard to believe this is
happening that long ago, but of the pubs in the
big cities were tied houses. Yeah. And it just kept
going and going, um and escalating through the twentieth century

(40:21):
to and Parliament said this sounds really weird, like we
need to get a we need to get a handle
on exactly how widespread this tide houses thing is. Because
a bunch of the brewers started kind of consolidating into
mega breweries and they found that s all of England's
pubs were under the thumbs of six brewers, and by

(40:44):
far Bass controlled the most. They had seventy pubs that
were tied to them. And here's the thing, like, if
if you have a pub that's tied to you, all
you all they can do is sell your merchandise. All
they can do is use glasses with your logo on it.
All they can do is sell your beer, and you
basically set the price whatever you want. It's almost like
having a franchise basically, um and so Bass had seventy

(41:07):
d Whitbread had, Encourage had fifty one, and then there
were just three other brewers that owned the rest of them. Um.
And that has a really homogenizing effect on everything. It's
kind of like, you know, wherever, if you drive to
any town in the United States, UM, you're gonna find
like an old Navy and the TJ Max and the

(41:29):
same everything. Well, that's one thing. If you're talking about
like reasonably priced genes and you know, off brand bars
of soap, it's a totally different thing when you start
messing with the institution that is essentially the soul of
the nation, and that's what was going on through the
twentieth century. Yeah, and I think it's gotten even more

(41:49):
out of hand now because a lot of these pubs
and you know, we've seen this sort of the same
thing with uh craft brewing here in the United States
getting out by big brewers, but hasn't really happened to
my knowledge in the United States is the actual bars
haven't been bought out on mass. But that's what's happened

(42:10):
in England. And they're called pub cos. These big corporations
UM have bought up like tons and tons of these
pubs as sort of a real estate plague, all of
McDonald's and a lot of people the criticisms are like
this is a real estate play, Like you're not even
you're not even in this to make a good experience
at the pub. It's just about sort of the building

(42:30):
in the land. And they also are really strict over margins,
like if the stock prices UM fluctuate, they might, you know,
UM find ways to cut costs back at the pub,
and yeah, they don't. They don't care at all about
customer experiences or consumer experiences. And apparently UM the Smoking
Band of two thousand seven and then also the lockdowns

(42:53):
from coronavirus really put a hit on a lot of pubs.
A lot of pubs were lost. I think five thousand
pubs were lost in the last like five years or
something like that in England alone. Um but I strongly
suspect they're not going to ultimately go anywhere. And evidence
of that is um a group called the Campaign for

(43:14):
Real Ale, which I think kind of suggests that there's
always going to be this um man, I guess I
might as well just say it, this thirst for genuine
pubs in in England in places like Ireland as well. Yeah,
so they're trying to kind of go back to that
throwback to where it was true ale or real ale

(43:35):
before it was hopped up and carbonated like beer is
uh and that sort of you know, cast condition ale
in the basement type of thing run by a sellerman
or I guess you would say a seller person these
days hopefully, uh. And there's a more push, there's a
push to get those going. There are lists that the
Campaign for Real Ale PUSS puts out a Good Beer

(43:57):
Guide that lists forty five hundred camera approved pubs. Um
but yeah, coronavirus. I saw. You know, Dave listed some
of the oldest ones in England. Uh it's still in operation,
and he listed ye Old Fighting Cocks founded in seventeene.
That was for a while in the Guinness Book of
World's record for oldest pub before they said, you know what,

(44:19):
we can't really verify this stuff anymore, so we're not
even gonna uh list these places. But that one closed
in February. Chuck seven yeah, yeah, yeah, seven nine three.
It closed in February and the owner they still used Republican.

(44:41):
He said, I'm just a publican, I'm not a politician,
and so he was kind of just speaking to the
lockdowns and you know, someone else will probably open it up.
Peter has gotten involved and said, uh, you should open
it up and change the name from the Old Fighting
Cocks and only sort of vegan food. And of course
people over there just love that idea. So we talked
also about Shawn's Bar. It's supposed to be the oldest

(45:05):
pub ever and it is pretty close to being verified
because archaeologists in the seventies found stuff in the walls
and actually the walls being made of daub and wattle,
which I think we talked about in the Bars episode. Um,
and it's supposedly dates back to the um invasion of
the Vikings around nine so and it's still going strong

(45:27):
as far as I know. Yeah, that's old man. There's
also the Old Ferry Boat In, which claims to have
been operating since five sixty in Cambridgeshire. It's a great name.
Um and I don't know if that's documented or not,
but I was looking at that place and it maybe
the most charming beer garden out back I've ever seen

(45:50):
in my entire life. Which one the Old ferry Boat in?
Oh yeah, I looked that one up five sixty. You know,
Cambridgeshire is probably pronounced curvester. I know. As it was
coming out, I was saying, I'm going to get an
email for this good stuff. Uh. So that's it for pubs, everybody.

(46:12):
If you have a pub near you, especially a local
which is an independent pub, go support it. Uh. And
since I said go support it, that means, of course
it's time for listening mail. Yeah. And you know what
last facto I don't want to throw in. Uh, we
don't need to get into it. But I just had
no idea that the term gastro pub came from London.

(46:34):
It seems like a very American sort of name, but
it was coined in in London in the early nine es,
is when some of the pubs started saying, hey, let's
let's stop serving UH bangers and nash and let's start
serving some uh. They call it stuff that you would
eat on vacation, basically on holiday good stuff. Uh yeah.

(46:56):
And since Chuck said gastro pubs, now, everybody's time for
a listener mail, I'm gonna call this suggestion for something
that we're actually gonna do this from Ron g Hey, guys,
just want to offer up a suggestion for land acknowledgements.
The way I found out about them was through a
seminar attended last year. The host of the seminar was

(47:18):
a minister of a Buddhist temple up in Sacramento, and
before he began the seminar, he read a statement acknowledging
that the land that the temple was on was previously
occupied by uh and I think he named one two
four different indigenous peoples and said, when I looked into
creating a land acknowledgement for our own temple here in

(47:38):
Los Angeles, it seemed like a lot of organizations, mostly
educational institutions, have already done so. But there's some controversy
behind it. But there seems to be a lot of
good stuff out there on the topic, and I think
listeners might enjoy it. You may even want to create
a land acknowledgement for your studio so your listeners can
hear what it sounds like. And that is from Ron G.

(48:00):
It's a great idea, ron G and ron We're we're
gonna do this when this is in the works already. Yeah,
that's what I was saying. It's a great idea. I
remember when we were on our Australia New Zealand tour.
I think at pretty much every venue they did a
land acknowledgement at the beginning. Did It's pretty cool? So
it's a little bit of catching up we have to

(48:20):
do here in the United States. Yeah, it's all part
of the least we can do, right. Uh. Well, let's
see if you want to get in touch of this,
like Ron G did with a great suggestion. We love
those kinds of things, send them to us. You can
wrap it up in an email and send it off
to stuff Podcasts at iHeart Radio dot com Stuff you

(48:43):
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