I first found the pub in January 2007. Honestly, it came onto the radar simply because it was walking distance from a likely Irish pub that claimed to have live music on Sunday nights, and because it was close to the light rail home. It dovetailed with an interesting time in my life, when I was starting to explore who I might be in the process of becoming (now that I was plainly no longer who I’d been). The memory is thick with 2-Tone songs plucked from the wife’s collection or from Virgin Party Classics of a Friday morning, songs that featured more than a little in the pub.
It was dark in there, most of the light coming from a couple of bright red neon signs, with a gas potbelly stove in the front and a gas fireplace in the back room. 20 ounce pints, real cask ales on tap and no televisions anywhere in sight. No wi-fi, either, or at least none publicly accessible. Lots of soccer scarves – mostly Quakes, obviously, but others as well, along with assorted paraphernalia from sports and music alike. The general atmosphere was like the place had been taken ever so slightly out of time, a feeling enhanced by the confluence of “Ghost Town” and “Set the Fire to the Third Bar” and the occasional Irish song flickering back up through my iPod.
And I sort of forgot to go back for a while, until January 2008, when I resolved to start checking out the Irish place again, and the pub into the bargain. A couple or three Sunday nights, and then that was an end of it. And then 2009 rolled around, and as I adjusted to the changes of a new job, I took on the notion of trying my hand at the pub quiz, at which I won about $75 over the course of a month. All in pub credit of course, and when I left with the monthly prize single-handedly, that $40 of credit sat untouched for some time. I know I must have gone back in at some point in the ensuing three years, but I’m not sure when it was exactly – friends came to town and social life became, well, social, and sitting alone down the pub wasn’t really a thing anymore.
I don’t know when I flipped it back on again – January 2012 maybe? – but by January 2013, I had locked in on it again, and rediscovered that sense of being taken out of time. And last January and February, it was what I needed more than anything, because the world was getting to be too much. Of which more later. But with a Kindle and the Sunday burger (bacon gouda BBQ last night) and a cold pint of cask-conditioned porter, with the Selecter playing overhead as you recline in the leather chair, it’s just about dead solid perfect. Even if it’s going to take almost an hour to get home.