It can be the most exquisite, beautiful thing

October 24, 2018 4:27 AM

Wetherspoons, an essay by Megan Nolan
posted by mippy (33 comments total)

That was a really lovely read. Thanks.

I was trying to find out more about the author and stumbled upon this:

She is currently working on her first novel which is concerned with the subjection of female identity in romantic relationships and body dysphoria.

Which sounds interesting.

I don't think there's any sort of equivalent to a Wetherspoons here, which makes me sad. Or maybe I'm just yet to find it, but from how often they come up in media they seem to be a bit of a institution it'd be hard to miss.

Is Applebee's in America similar? I sometimes hear it positioned similarly as this sort of cafe/bar place where you're not always afraid you're about to be kicked out with affordable alcohol and food, smoking and wifi? Where you might spend hours? They seem like good places to have.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 5:26 AM on October 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

(For reference, you absolutely cannot smoke in any Whetherspoons in the UK - smoking in any public indoor area is prohibited by law)
posted by Dysk at 5:36 AM on October 24, 2018 [5 favorites]

Very nice. Perhaps even more so for the quality of writing than the sentiment, but I'll take both.
posted by gusottertrout at 5:48 AM on October 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

I assumed that would have been an outside area still in the pub premises, but Google gave confusing results on that.

The author definitely says twice outright that they're smoking "sitting in Wetherspoons" and when "We’re there" though and seems too young to predate that law.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 5:51 AM on October 24, 2018

For far and away most 'Spoons, that would involve standing outside, on the pavement. I'm sure there are some with a small amount of outdoor seating, but it's not the norm.

She could be talking about one of the few Spoons in the Republic of Ireland, of course.
posted by Dysk at 6:21 AM on October 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

If you're going to mill around pubs all day in London you should really be doing so in Sam Smith pubs.
posted by Damienmce at 6:29 AM on October 24, 2018 [3 favorites]

I think Applebee's isn't it - it's too commercial. In Toronto there are crappy/awesome pubs like this (minus the smoking part). Back in Boston there were independent bars like this (oh how I miss thee, Grendel's). But I can't think of any chains that I would treat as a home base kind of place.
posted by wellred at 6:34 AM on October 24, 2018 [4 favorites]

Not all, but a lot the Spoons round here have beer gardens, with seating, where you can smoke... in fact one near where I used to live had a huge veranda type construction with outdoor heating that was an essentially a full extension to the pub but got around the letter of the law.

(I've kinda quietly boycotted the chain since it's founder, Tim Martin, is massively pro-Brexit - to the extent of putting out pro-Leave propaganda on the beer mats.)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:35 AM on October 24, 2018 [12 favorites]

I used to go in quite a lot, to kill time if I was waiting for public transport or going into the dentist or something and use their free wi-fi... you would definitely see groups of regulars - pensioners mostly - who were obviously there for the duration.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:38 AM on October 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

She could be talking about one of the few Spoons in the Republic of Ireland, of course.

Ireland's the same, no smoking indoors. Wetherspoons only moved into Ireland a few years ago anyway, so they're still relatively novel. This means that they don't have the same kind of associations - shabbiness, being "about alright enough" - that they have in Britain and that Nolan touches on here.

Lovely bit of writing regardless.
posted by ocular shenanigans at 6:46 AM on October 24, 2018 [3 favorites]

Also, very much echoing the sentiment that Spoons is lovely in both theory and practice, but effectively not somewhere I feel welcome or comfortable anymore, what with all the pro-Brexit, rah-rah anti-European sentiment increasingly on display, and the knowledge that this is what the place is ultimately funding.
posted by Dysk at 6:48 AM on October 24, 2018 [11 favorites]

This was a beautiful read, thanks so much for posting it.

I think this place might be filled here by the Highway Diner, a 24/7 greasy spoon that is shabby and filled with nice waitresses with funky hair and has good pancakes. But I also know of lots of places where it's the local McDonalds that is the gathering spot for older men in feed caps and overalls to go sit and drink coffee and shoot the shit.
posted by PussKillian at 6:55 AM on October 24, 2018 [3 favorites]

The upshot, of course, is that I basically never go to the pub anymore. There isn't anywhere I feel welcome these days.
posted by Dysk at 6:56 AM on October 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

Weatherspoons - That would be the chain whose Chairman Tim Martin is virulently pro Brexit and who had 500,000 beer mats printed to that effect. Drink somewhere else.
posted by adamvasco at 7:39 AM on October 24, 2018 [6 favorites]

Fun fact - every Weatherspoons has a unique carpet design and the design tries to incorporate local elements. From the article: Weatherspoon's Carpets Tumblr
posted by Molesome at 7:47 AM on October 24, 2018 [3 favorites]

Even though I’ve been on my own so long now that I’m good at it and can barely imagine anything else, it can still be such work at times, to drag yourself around with nobody to help. And after years of letting my heart harden to deal with being here alone, I can recently, at times, feel a thaw begin, a jarring of my assumption I would be that way forever. I’ve begun to remember, only slightly, what it’s like to be close enough to someone that they might hurt you – to be able to let someone close enough that they might. It feels good, like I’m a season about to change, but frightening too.

You know when you read something that encapsulates your feelings exactly? Yeah.
posted by twilightlost at 7:54 AM on October 24, 2018 [6 favorites]

Fun fact - every Weatherspoons has a unique carpet design and the design tries to incorporate local elements. From the article: Weatherspoon's Carpets Tumblr

Back in the day I contributed to that tumblr... I would seek out the spoons in any new town I happened to visit just to get a photo of the carpet. But not anymore, coz of the Brexit thing.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:04 AM on October 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

Good grief, 11 years since the smoking ban so I guess young people don't even remember when you could smoke in pubs.

I'm so old I remember the days before megataxes when people would sit down at a pub table, pull out a packet of cigarettes and casually offer it round in case anyone else wanted one.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 8:09 AM on October 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

Drink somewhere else.

I've never really believed the "presumptive mean liberal elite scoffing at the poor underclass drove them to vote brexit" line, but this made me feel half inclined to head down the road and order ten questionably cheap, possibly out of date lagers, damn.
posted by ominous_paws at 9:16 AM on October 24, 2018

Anyway this all has not much really to do with the piece, which as with all the author's writing is extremely perceptive, and sort of (to use a horrible cliche) gently devastating, enjoyed it greatly, as sad as it is.
posted by ominous_paws at 9:19 AM on October 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

'spoons is the cuckoo in the nest of British pubs. It looks like a pub, you can do all the pub-like things in it, but really, it's international finance on your high street, demanding a cheap rent, paying less for nearly-expired drinks, and giving shit wages for long hours. This, of course, drives out the local pubs who were used to a bunch of borderline cirrhosis patients paying for the privilege of feeling like they had mates, because now they can go to 'spoons and it's good enough, so fuck it who cares?

Of course, then maybe you want to organise a meeting for your union - that's not on, not at 'spoons - or you want to get a function room and maybe play some board games? Oh, it's all booked up/not enough staff, ah well, never mind, it's curry night. You can read the beermat and enjoy the corporate ambiance. Meanwhile, the pub where you could do all that stuff closed and got redeveloped as flats.
posted by The River Ivel at 9:29 AM on October 24, 2018 [13 favorites]

Spoons seem to be either quite pleasant, or absolutely horrible. The one near us has a vague yet persistent scent of threat and gravy browning. The one we used to go to in Reading had an outdoors canalside area and we'd often go there for a drink in the summer. The nicer ones are often in old cinemas or other buildings that would have been left to rot were it not for a wealthy pubco spotting an opportunity. The awful ones sit on high streets, the one on my way home so bad that, when I went in desperate for a pee, I immediately regretted it. There is nothing in-between.

I am surprised more of the lefty people I follow aren;t against the chain, given their founder having been anti-EU for years, and pro-Brexit as soon as that was invented. Yet the idea of A Cheeky Spoons remains. I think the answer is that it's a place in London where you can get a coffee and somewhere to sit for a pound or so, a pint for less than £3 and something to eat for less than £5, rare indeed in central London, and oddly rare in my suburb when the pub round the corner (just as sterile as any city centre faux-enamelled JD) charges £40 for two burgers, two coffees. We're all getting skinter. Austerity Britain is a snake eating its own tail.
posted by mippy at 10:53 AM on October 24, 2018 [5 favorites]

I think Applebee's isn't it - it's too commercial. In Toronto there are crappy/awesome pubs like this (minus the smoking part). Back in Boston there were independent bars like this (oh how I miss thee, Grendel's). But I can't think of any chains that I would treat as a home base kind of place.

Perhaps a bit off topic, but I'm glad that I can share in my love for Grendel's Den. My first time there was a meeting that someone had set up that led to me being interviewed for an internship. The guy was working elsewhere, but was an alum of Harvard, so he decided to post up at the bar for the entire day and just hold his meetings at Grendel's.

Also one of the only pubs that's been party to a Supreme Court case that limited the power of churches to object to liquor licenses in Massachusetts.
posted by redct at 11:41 AM on October 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

So I wrote and I made friends and tried to get up every morning and breathe until I could remember what sort of person I was, who I had been before I met him, and who I might like to be now.

This was lovely, thanks for posting!
posted by ellieBOA at 11:55 AM on October 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

Is Applebee's in America similar? I sometimes hear it positioned similarly as this sort of cafe/bar place where you're not always afraid you're about to be kicked out with affordable alcohol and food, smoking and wifi? Where you might spend hours? They seem like good places to have.

I don't think you could say Applebee's is universally this, but probably some individual Applebees are. (No smoking, though, at least not most places.) It's always struck me as more a function of the staff and the community than anything about the actual chain or indie pub.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:30 PM on October 24, 2018

I moved to London from Dublin after leaving one relationship and failing to convince someone else to love me.

But I didn't hang out at Wetherspoons because it was the mid 90s and drinks were still affordable at other pubs in London.

I suspect the bones of it isn't an uncommon story, though. We move to London because it is familiar but still far enough away to feel like an escape.

I left to go to Edinburgh which I describe as being like a Dublin where people don't know what the school I went to means.
posted by hfnuala at 1:41 PM on October 24, 2018 [3 favorites]

Meanwhile, the pub where you could do all that stuff closed

Yeah, you could as long as your face fitted, which for a fair number involved being a man.

I read a theory ages ago that suggested that one of the reasons Spoons and similar pubs became really popular with women was because they are often glass-fronted or have big windows so you can see inside.

Or it can be cheap, and careless, and objectively quite gross, but glorious because it’s an excuse for you and your people to come together.

This is it summed up perfectly.
posted by threetwentytwo at 1:47 PM on October 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

I would like to boycott 'spoons altogether, but I can't because I run with musicians and actors who go there because it's cheap. Asking them to spend even more money they don't have in order to drink somewhere with principles feels wrong. But I'm also aware that every penny spent in 'spoons supports their treatment of their staff and their undercutting of 'real' pubs, as well as the vicious politics of their boss. 'Spoons is both a cause and a symptom of late stage capitalism.

So I never initiate, or suggest, a trip to 'spoons. But if everyone's off to 'spoons after rehearsal, I'll grit my teeth and stand my round.
posted by Pallas Athena at 6:41 PM on October 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

The one thing Spoons does that other places need to learn from is they refuse to pay for the licence to pipe music in. The result is a place you can actually have a conversation. This invariably leads to a conversation about how I'm happy to sit in one but I will not be buying anything, and why.

They're the moral equivalent of Denny's, but I probably date myself with that analogy as I'm told most of those have moved out back where I grew up.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 1:47 AM on October 25, 2018 [1 favorite]

No music, and no while a lot of them have an area if the pub where you can see a TV, they're not everywhere, and they're all always silent.
posted by Dysk at 2:32 AM on October 25, 2018

I want to avoid Wetherspoons, but every single other pub within walking distance of my house is cramped, noisy, and/or regularly full of football hooligans, and the Wetherspoons is spacious and usually not too crowded. I don't go there often, not least because of their Brexit stance, but occasionally all I want is a relatively quiet corner to sit in and have a burger and a pint for under £10. (I do go to better and independent pubs more regularly, though.)

Incidentally, my very first exposure to an actual UK pub was a Wetherspoons in Exeter--The Imperial. It's still a Wetherspoons, but the 19th-century building it's housed in is gorgeous.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 3:13 AM on October 25, 2018

I got Wetherspoons and Waterstones mixed up there for a while, so AnhydrousLove's comment made me very, very confused.
posted by soundofsuburbia at 3:35 AM on October 25, 2018

It’s a truly democratic institution. And pints of proper ale for less that £2!
posted by Middlemarch at 10:19 AM on October 25, 2018