The Crooked House is a pub in the UK's West Midlands built on coal mining land. Severe subsidence over time caused a 15 degree shift from the left wall to the right. Faced with the choice of repairing the damage or abandoning the structure, the owners took a different tack - buttresses now hold the building in place, and it remains at a permanent slant. Higher resolution photos here. Via.
posted by jonson on Sep 27, 2007 - 13 comments

So this horse walks into a bar ...
posted by kcds on Oct 3, 2006 - 65 comments

Passport to the Pub Initiate yourself in the strange and subtle rules and customs of the British pub. (via The Old New Thing, strangely enough)
posted by Capn on May 11, 2004 - 17 comments

"A pint? That'll be three quid and a criminal investigation." From Fark. What's the line in the sand? Is there one?
posted by effugas on Feb 2, 2004 - 20 comments

The Death of the Irish Pub? "The smoking ban is the work of one man, Michael Martin, the Minister for Health and Children, and one of nature's killjoys... He is generally thought to regard the banning of nicotine from Irish pubs as a personal crusade, explaining that he once tried smoking but didn't enjoy it."

The ban was scheduled to start today, but has been delayed until March. It's one thing to have smoking banned in California and New York, but what's the point of pub that's not dark and smoky? And Scotland might be next...
posted by grabbingsand on Jan 1, 2004 - 122 comments

I guess we all suspected it, but those one-armed bandits were fixed all along. The fruit machines we gamble on in our local pubs follow pre-determined sequences to get you hooked; there is nothing random in their behaviour. How do we know? This U.K. campaign group has built PC emulators to run the actual programme code from the gaming machines's ROM chips. They claim they are not only fixed but illegal (via NTK).
posted by rolo on Jun 6, 2003 - 53 comments

The Bass Museum of Beer. The history of the Black Horse, Findon, West Sussex. A guide to historic pub interiors, from the Campaign for Real Ale. Pub names for all, an amusing pastime. An online guide to pub games. Flash versions of pub games. Unusual pub names of Lancashire. The history of Coaching inns. An interactive map of pubs and clubs of Oxford. Venus and Adonis at the White Hart Inn, St. Albans (you may disagree with the scholarship, but the images are nice). The Star Inn, Bath, an historic pub. A virtual pub crawl of Hull. A virtual pub crawl of Shrewsbury. The Bird and Baby, favoured by Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. (More on Tolkien's Oxford). Guide to Gloucestershire pubs. The Crooked House in the West Midlands (more here via the Strangest Pubs in Britain). The World Marbles Championship takes place every year at a pub in Sussex.
posted by plep on Apr 11, 2003 - 13 comments

Ireland to ban smoking in pubs. The room ... spinning ... reality ... falling away....
posted by Pretty_Generic on Feb 4, 2003 - 90 comments

Britain's Pubs to Entertain Longer Hours? Tony Blair Says Yes! In an effort to curb binge drinking and overall ruddy behavior after closing times at 11pm, Parliament has it before them to allow for extended bar hours, rather than fixed open and closing hours. Communities would have some sort of say in which pubs would be able to have which hours, probably based on distance to residential areas, etc. CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale was one of the formal organizations backing this plan. Open All Hours? is a group opposing the plan. Check it out!
posted by djspicerack on Nov 13, 2002 - 32 comments

Pork chop shoes results in a lawsuit in Australia. A man who slipped on a grease trail left by pork chop shoes in a pub is awarded £23,000. I guess Nike better think twice before they release their filet mignon basketball shoes. What would be their marketing campaign?
posted by percine on Jun 30, 2002 - 8 comments

Tired of trying to flag down a waitron? Here's one solution. But if you want a different drink, you're probably back to yer old aerobics routine.
posted by datawrangler on May 29, 2002 - 43 comments

Remember Hanging Out And The World Out There? This invigorating article by Jay Walljasper in the current Utne Reader, lists 60 favourite gathering places in the U.S. I half-expected MetaFilter to figure prominently. But then, all of a sudden, it hit me. And I felt guilty about forgetting the real outdoor, face-to-face meaning of the lost art of hanging out . Well, I plan to make amends this weekend. I'll be hanging out at my favourite café in Lisbon - the beautiful eighteenth-century Nicola - where table-to-table political discussions, flirting, studying, hot buttered toast and almost illegally caffeinated espressos are de rigueur. So what's your favourite hang-out? If and when you can tear yourself away from your computer, that is...
posted by MiguelCardoso on Mar 5, 2002 - 62 comments

Increasingly, London is its bars. Twenty-seven new drink portals open every week. Luckily Chris Morris has sorted through the chaff to give us the definitive London bar guide.
posted by davehat on Aug 27, 2001 - 7 comments