The problem with pub guides
Are paper pub guides still useful in 2024 – as guides to pubs, or for any other purpose?
The fundamental problem with pub guides – or any kind of print guidebook – is that they go out of date between writing and printing.
And that’s especially true in 2024, on the long tail of the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis, with hospitality feeling rather volatile.
It was always a problem, of course. Our copy of Fred Pearce’s 1975 guide to Bristol pubs came with a paper insert with updates from April 1976: “Oliver’s Bar, Victoria Street… The Courage depot’s local is now closed down.”
Actually, to an extent, it wasn’t a problem at all. It was part of the business model. If not planned obsolescence than at least a rather helpful incentive for people to buy next year’s edition.
But now, we’ve been spoiled by the internet. Google’s business listings, for all their many flaws, can work brilliantly. Shall we go to The Barley Mow? Well, it does say here it’s open, and apparently less busy than usual.
Then you’ve also got services like Untappd (many flaws, &c.) make it possible to check what’s actually on tap at The Barley Mow before you commit to schlepping across town.
Fragmented as social media feels, it’s also still possible to ask for personalised, up-to-date advice from people you (sort of) know, whose opinion you trust, and who currently live in the place you’re visiting.
Meanwhile, your paper guidebook might send you somewhere that’s shut, or under new management, or that ended up in the book because one of the contributors caught it on a good day, when they were in a good mood.
So, for most people, online sources beat print ones. But how do you get people to pay for them?
We pay for the Ordnance Survey app because it’s an absolute bargain at £35 a year for live access to every map, at every level of magnification, with all sorts of features that work for walkers. What seals the deal there, though, is the authority and quality of the data to which they are selling access.
CAMRA has perhaps the best data set on UK pubs, and does have its own app, but it’s still ‘user-generated content’. Which OS maps are not.
Even if you can solve all of those problems, recommending pubs is difficult. When will you be there? Saturday night, or Tuesday afternoon?
What’s the occasion? A hen do, or a date night, or a tense local football derby, or…?
And what’s your idea of a good pub anyway?
We know what we like, and even have a sense of whether pubs we don’t like might appeal to others. But, still, every time we’ve written a guide our choices have been questioned or challenged.
Perhaps if you’re not actually using a pub guide as a guide to pubs but, rather, reading it for opinion and commentary, that very lack of consistency and reliability might be half the fun.
Reading Matthew Curtis’s guide to Manchester pubs last week (we found a copy on a shelf in The City Arms and have now ordered our own) we found it most interesting as a record of one person’s impression of a city at a moment in time. In 10 or 20 years time, it will be an invaluable historical record of a city that gets less attention than London.
Perhaps we’re underestimating the appeal of the paper pub guide, too. Martin Taylor and the other Good Beer Guide tickers seem to find plenty of value in it.
And the friends we were staying with in Manchester – not especially beery people – had a copy of the GBG in the boot of their car alongside the emergency torch and wellies. They also told us they miss the Good Pub Guide, the main competitor to CAMRA’s book, which ceased publication after the 2021 edition – a reminder that the needs of beer geeks aren’t everything.
Pub lettering
On his own blog Ray has been writing about fonts or, rather, lettering styles:
What is that font? You know, THAT font? The chunky italic lettering you see on launderettes and council blocks, on post-war churches and new town butcher’s shops, across the UK. The font you’re thinking of might well be ‘Festive’, a lettering style designed by Maurice Ward of Ward & Co, a sign-making company in Bristol, founded in 1952.
As part of his research he acquired a couple of catalogues from Ward’s which, to our shared delight, happened to have a bunch of pub-related content.
They manufactured various types of signs including neon signs, cut plastic letters, box signs, and engraved plastic plates.
The latter especially grabbed our attention because we’ve seen these in the wild, at the fabulous post-war pub The Sultan in Wimbledon.
You could buy these signs premade with various pub-related words including:
BAR
LOUNGE
SMOKE ROOM
GAMES ROOM
LADIES
GENTLEMEN
One of the examples of cut plastic signs in the catalogue is a big Watney’s logo on the side of a pub, pictured at the top of this section. This font (or typeface, or lettering style) isn’t one of Ward’s own – it’s a custom version of Clarendon Bold Expanded by the Design Research Unit.
Rather pleasingly, there is now a digital font based on this custom style which you can buy and use for anything you like.
Such as, for example, a Marks & Spencer own-brand beer label.
On the blog
It was a slightly busier month than usual, perhaps because it was the first month in ages without any particular personal crises.
We filleted a vintage gentleman’s magazine for advice on the best London pubs of 1968, from jazz pubs to cheese toasties.
Ray’s post about the connections between folk horror and real ale gained a bit of traction outside the beer bubble via BlueSky which was fun.
Sitting at bar counters and in quiet corners we often find ourselves observing pub life, and sometimes write up our observations. This time we compiled a few notes on how bar staff support each other, lift each other up, and have fun on shift.
Having acquired a few interesting local histories and memoirs we pulled out some interesting stories about pubs, including one that sat on a parish boundary, and another frequented by salmon poachers.
After a trip to London we pondered whether the secret language that surrounds Young’s beers – Ram’n’Spesh, pint of ordinary – is disappearing. There were some interesting comments on this one.
Jess wrote about St Davids in Pembrokeshire, a place that’s special to her and whose pubs have changed, while also staying quite the same.
Ray went for a pint with his dad in Highbridge and wrote about both the pub, which was new to him, and the joyful experience of being out and about with both parents.
And, finally, we reviewed Christina Wade’s excellent book The Devil’s in the Draught Lines about the history (and present) of women in beer and brewing.
There were also several weekly news and links round-ups, footnotes to those on Patreon, and beers of the weekend posts on Patreon, too.
And that’s your lot for April. We’ll be back with more in May.
Jess & Ray
I agree with all you say, however something I recognise in myself and perhaps others, is always wanting “The Best” whatever, which seems to drive us all to the same venue. I was recently in Sorrento and there was a queue of about an hour outside a restaurant which has 4.9 on Google. We wandered into another and had a perfectly pleasant meal.
Possibly the way ahead is to ditch the Guidebooks and Google reviews and embrace Serendipity, live on the edge. You never know you might just walk into the real “Moon Under the Water” which IMHO a 4.8 google review would ruin.
I agree that books that are not much more than a list are losing their relevance but it’s possible to create ‘guide’ books in a way that, for me, can’t be recreated online. Prime examples being the tour de forces (not sure where the ‘s’ goes there) that are Des de Moor’s London, and Tim Webb/Joe Stange’s Belgium, guides. Although I haven’t read it myself I imagine that’s what you also saw in Matt’s book. Cheers.