Pumpkin Publog

The 21st Freaky Trigger Annual Between Christmas And New Year Pub Crawl: Back To TCR

Twenty Years Ago (1999) I decided to organise a pub crawl on the quietest pub day of the year, and thus the Freaky Trigger annual between Christmas And New Year Pub Crawl (henceforth #FTABCANYPC) was born. Since then we have crawled annually on the 29th December (except from when it wasn’t) around nineteen different parts of London. But for this special 20th anniversary I thought I would go back to the source, the very first route. I am not doing exactly the same pubs, some have changed their names (one four times), and a few are off the main drag. But I’d live you all to come and join the day of the year when you can celebrate friendship and London without it being tied to religious and/or calendrical bullshit.
The route on the day will be:

3pm The Flying Horse (Oxford St opposite TCR Station)
4pm The Jack Horner
4.45pm The Rising Sun
5.45pm The TCR Lounge Bar (previously The Bar @ TCR, The Castle and The Olde Surgeon)
6: 30pm Fitzrovia Belle
7:15pm Carpenters Arms (Whitfield Street)
8pm The Prince Of Wales Feathers (Warren St)

The 20th Freaky Trigger Annual Between Christmas And New Year Pub Crawl: The Holloway Road Poker

(A poker as in the kind that comes from a set with a shovel, and a brush that is more ornamental than useful when setting a fire)

Twenty years of the Freaky Trigger Annual Between Christmas And New Year Pub Crawl (or the #FTABCANYPC) and this year we are discovering what all the food and drink supplements are calling “that bit of Holloway Road that has a good Malaysian restaurant on it”. Starting at 3pm on the 29th December, we will take in some interesting architecture, some refurbs, some new purpose builds, a Spoons and a pub which purports to have a crazy golf course in it. I KNOW, right?

The route is:

The 18th Freaky Trigger Annual Between Christmas And New Year Pub Crawl: The Fleet Street Up Index Finger

The Pub Crawl turns 18 – old enough to see a Tarantino film legally if it should so desire.

Every year, on the 29th December* between Christmas and New Year I run a pub crawl in a geographical location and this year it is time to follow the old dame of the presses, Fleet Street. The hot metal may have now cooled, but there are still tales to tell… And of course pubs of architectural interest. Truth be told there are twice as many pubs on this route, so if any are closed (a pub crawl tradition) we will have somewhere to go.

So we start at the Black Friar, next to Blackfriars Tube/Train/Bridge, then wend on and off Fleet Street to end at the Edgar Wallace. Here’s the route in full below the cut:

The 17th Annual Freaky Trigger Between Christmas and New Year Pub Crawl: The Highgate Upside Down Wales

Hurrah – the Pub Crawl is now old enough to join the Army!

To celebrate this milestone I thought on the 29th December this year we should go on a route which several milestones can be seen, and also have a metaphorical expeditionary force, a force for good of course. Good cheer. And considering sixteen years of this pub crawl, I have decided this year to be a little selfish and do one quite near to my house. And also a selection of rather decent fake country pubs rather close in. So I present you a self-indulgent Highgate pubcrawl.

Starting at the Woodman next door to Highgate Tube (high entrance) at 3pm we take a scenic walk to Highgate Village ending at the lovely Duke’s Head. Route below the cut:

Sam Smith’s and the Fitzroy Tavern

It seemed appropriate to return to writing with a piece about the refurbed (although that’s an understatement) Fitzroy Tavern and my continuing love/hate relationship with Sam Smiths. Huge swathes of the pub writing on FT is about Sam Smiths back to, at least, sixteen years ago (Was our Pete the first pub blogger? Yes, yes he was) and six of our twenty five Pubs of the 00s were Sam Smith’s houses, but I’ve not set foot in one of their establishments for a couple of years and not been a regular visitor for much longer. This is partly having more money to spend on beer, partly the increase in excellent places to drink excellent beer in central London but mainly a disdain for Sam Smith’s actions as a company (and Humphrey Smith in particular), whether it was closing a pub on New Year’s Eve because the landlord was selling full pints, kicking people out of a Soho pub for kissing or just replacing the wheat beer glasses so they are pint to brim. And that’s before we get to the farcical situation in Tadcaster where the brewery objected to replacing a bridge (which they’ve just backed down from).

I’d heard that the Fitzroy had reopened after a year and then Eve’s blog post about Sam Smith’s popped up in my twitter feed (thanks Boak & Bailey!). So when we were deciding which pub to go to for our regular Friday evening drinks I suggested we met there.

The 16th Annual Freaky Trigger Between Christmas and New Year Pub Crawl: The Kennington Catapult Arm

Pub crawl time once more and it is about time we went South (or actually East) of the river, and to celebrate the Crawl being able to join the army we are heading to Kennington for a gentle wander from the river to Kennington Station. As ever its on the 29th December, and starts at 3pm (er – apologies for forgetting this key info, but its always on the 29th apart from when it wasn’t).

So your route for the day is as follows:

Breakfast bang-bang: cereal/bagel

Leslie Knope: Why would anybody ever eat anything besides breakfast food?
Ron Swanson: People are idiots, Leslie.

Michael Bluth: What have we always said is the most important thing?
George-Michael Bluth: Breakfast?
Michael Bluth: Family.
George-Michael Bluth: Oh right, family. I thought you meant of the things we eat.

I almost never have breakfast on weekdays. Given the choice between even five extra minutes of delicious, nourishing sleep or some toast, I’ll always go for the sleep. When I get to work, I’m straight onto the coffee and now my brain considers this a meal.

Weekends are different. Weekends are for doing not-work things like ignoring the housework, failing to reply to personal emails and thinking really hard about going outside for a lovely walk. Therefore I end up going out to breakfast most weekends and am always on the lookout for somewhere new and interesting.

Louis CK introduced me to the glory of the bang-bang: going for a meal at one restaurant and then immediately going to another for a second full meal. This idea is insane; the episode of Louie featuring the Indian/Diner bang-bang was impossible and therefore hilarious. Lou’s a big dude but there’s no way he could have managed to eat that mountain of food. A breakfast bang-bang, on the other hand, is achievable and only slightly gluttonous.

The 15th Annual Freaky Trigger Between Christmas And New Year Pub Crawl : The Kentish Town Ducks Arse

Yes, it’s the most wonderful time of the year, it’s FTBCANYPC time!

This year for our 15th crawl we will be having a little saunter around Kentish Town. or at least down the hill from Gospel Oak to Kentish Town West, taking in Vines, pineapples and Tapping An Admiral or two…

Every year, on the 29th (except when it wasn’t) we go an a merry trail around a list of pubs, many of which may be closed, to appreciate the architecture, and, you know, maybe drink. This year’s route takes us from the foot of Parliament Hill to the heart of Kentish Town in our bid to never actually do a crawl in Camden.

The Route is as follows:
3pm Bull and Last (why not get a scotch egg?)
4pm The Southampton Arms
4.45pm The Vine
5.30pm The Pineapple
6.30pm The Oxford
7.30pm The Grafton
8.30pm Tapping The Admiral

There is a Handy Google Map here: https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=zYR9Ng15Ymbs.kfOdKF4nYYvI
Look forward to seeing you!

…Down Paradise Row

We went to Mother Kelly’s in Bethnal Green for the first time last night (it’s only been open a couple of weeks) and it’s LOVELY! Twenty-odd taps of well-kept keg (including seven last night from De Molen), six fridges of well selected bottles and red, white and fizzy wine on tap too!

The space (why yes, it *is* in a railway arch) is bright and airy, the tables well spread out (I suspect this may change as it becomes more popular, there’s certainly room for more) and on a spring evening it feels just right.

The Annual Between Christmas And New Year Pub Crawl 2013: The Islington…Something Or Other…

Yes, it’s the most wonderful time of the year, it’s FTABCANYPC time!

This year for our 14th crawl we will be having a little saunter around Islington.

Every year, on the 29th (except when it wasn’t) we go an a merry trail around a list of pubs, many of which may be closed, to appreciate the architecture, and, you know, maybe drink. This year’s route takes us from one end of Penton Street to the other, but via a somewhat circuitous route (not as bad as when first planned when we were going to go via The North Pole!)

The route is as follows:
3pm: The Lexington
4pm: Shakespeare’s Head
5pm: Earl Of Essex
5.45pm: Wenlock & Essex
6.30: Camden Head
7:30: Steam Passage
8:30 Craft N1

Although, as always, this is a rough timetable and route as It Is Written that at least one pub on the planned route shall be closed (hopefully we’ll do better than last year when I think we ended up losing three of the original pubs…). If you’re following me or pete on twitter I’m sure we’ll keep up a running commentary of where we are if we go off-piste.

The other week when we were planning I got a bit bored so you can now see the glory of all 13 previous crawls in one handy google map. I think there may be a couple of inaccuracies, as several of these were based on planned routes, not actual (for some reason there’s not a lot of Reporting Back compared to planning, even in the Imperial Phase of ilx) particularly the Marylebone (2008) and City (2010) ones where I’m pretty sure I’ve got a couple wrong. I think it’s kind of more interesting where we *haven’t* been, although Fitzrovia and Soho were covered extensively by Trig Brother (and were our usual early 00s haunts).