Tag: pub

pillars of hercules

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manette street, sohoI love sketching in Soho. You can do a sketch of something, and then just pop into an old pub and sketch in there. Sketch, and repeat. There are so many old pubs in soho to choose from. My friend Simon and I sketched down in Manette Street, just by Foyles Books (one of my favourite bookstores in the world), which as you may see I have called Mallet Street. Mallet Street is in fact somewhere else; oh dear, my A to Z London memory is starting to fade. We sat in the cold outside the Borderline club, a regular haunt of mine in the mid to late 90s (those indie nights) and I drew the back of the Pillars of Hercules pub, with the covered alleyway leading into Greek Street. Fingers freezing,  we finished up and went inside for a pint of ale. I must say: though I love old English pubs, I’m not really a fan of the beers here any more. I’ve been rather spoiled by the West Coast micro-brews. Oh I don’t dislike them (in fact give me a Youngs or a Fullers any day), but these Adnams ones, well I would much rather have had a Fat Tire or an Anchor Steam. I think if I had English pubs with West Coast beers, I’d be a very happy man. And probably hung over quite a lot.

pillars of hercules, soho

please beware: this is the bald-faced stag

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"please beware: this is the bald faced stag"

It actually says that on a sign on the door, honestly. This is the (infamous) Stag, on Burnt Oak Broadway, scene of many a late-night punch-up over the years. Everyone knows the Stag, it’s one of those pubs which are always there, central to a neighbourhood, not just any old boozer, a character in its own right. I don’t go there, personally, but I did pop in to finish the colour in this drawing in the warmth. I did feel a little self-conscious getting my little watercolour set out, not exactly hard-as-nails, but nobody cared. I hadn’t set foot in there for many many years, since I was a kid. My nan (‘nam’, we called her) used to drink in here every single day, she was a true regular. I imagined her sitting in that seat by the window where she always sat. I got all nostalgic. I could smell the cheese and onion crisps. There weren’t many people in there, but the conversations were generally littered with “f***ing this, f***ing that”; having lived in the swear-free States for a few years now I had forgotten how many times you are supposed to put the word “f***ing” within sentences when you come from Burnt Oak. It’s really a f***ing lot.  

After sketching this, I popped into a Romanian cafe/bakery across the road, and had a cup of tea with the owner, a Romanian man I hadn’t seen in over twenty years, an old family friend. That was nice; he gave me a huge plate of Romanian cream cakes to take home to my family. A fun first day back in Burnt Oak, the f***in’ town where I was f***ing’ born, innit.

power of vito

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Second and final drawing of my short sketchcrawl yesterday, which was interspersed with getting hair cut, shopping for Christmas cards, and generally cycling round thinking, ‘oh I’ve drawn everything in Davis, I’m so uninspired’. So I stopped for lunch. A beer (New Belgium 2 Below, if you’re ordering), and a mountain of garlic fries.

uncle vito's

I made it a little over halfway through the mountain of garlic fries – I’m still suffering, next day – before going home. A big trough of garlic fries, it’s so unlike me. But I came in here – Uncle Vito’s, on the corner of E and 2nd – to draw the bar, so draw it I did. You can see me in the mirror there. There’s a bit of beermat philosophy that was going through my head as I made my way through the garlic fries surplus.

This place is fairly new, and occupies the space formerly tken by the Davis Driving School, and a little (cheap and not particularly good) chinese place called, I kid you not, Wok and Roll. They didn’t do garlic fries, but I can’t say they didn’t do stomachaches.

between a rock and a hard place

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central bar, hard rock Las Vegas

The Central Bar at the Hard Rock Hotel, Las Vegas. Stopped there first on my overnight trip to Sin City. Not much sinning going on, but lots of beer and some great Bavarian food at the Hofbrauhaus afterwards, and excellent company too. My idea to come here first, but then I remembered I’m actually off guitars at the moment. This bar kinda looks like the inside of the TARDIS. That pink light turned yellow from time to time, and then blue, sometimes green as well, though that may have just been through the bottom of the beer bottle. Those people there, playing video blackjack or whatever it was, at the bar. This was the only sketch I did in Vegas, I wasn’t there for long enough. Came back 24 hours later, much the wiser.

froggie’s

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froggies

Froggies, on 2nd and G in Davis. Hadn’t been here in quite some time, so came here on Thursday night for a quick beer and a long sketch. Actually I took my time drinking the beer and drew faster instead. Froggies is alright; the serving staff are friendly, and the beer is good and not expensive. They do really nice food too. But I’m generally not a regular; the acoustics are bad in here, it’s a little too sports-bar in it’s character, I don’t know; can’t quite explain it. It gets a bit packed with young students on the nights when there are DJs, and can be a bit uncomfortable. I like it a lot more than the Grad (Davis’s big sports bar), though, and even the G Street Pub (which is certainly more pub-like, but appears to have been modelled directly on the worst possible late-80s Camden Town dive, particularly in the toilets). Froggies is better than those places. I prefer Little Prague though. Ah, the bars of Davis. So anyway, I fancied popping in here to do a slightly less brown pub drawing. And look, I even drew some people. 

My oldest friend Tel, who now lives in Korea, loves this place. He last came here in 2006.

stout hearted

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stout brothers, santa rosa

For one reason or other, not been easy for me to sketch lately, but I found myself in downtown Santa Rosa on Saturday afternoon, doing a little shopping, a little reading, and I stopped into the Stout Brothers pub to do a little writing, and perhaps a little drawing. I had a couple of beers and a big glass of water (I’m trying to drink more water these days), and drew the bar. I really did need a wee, but didn’t want anyone to nick my seat, and lose me my vantagepoint. So I held on until I finished. I’m sure you don’t need to know that, but hey, these are the realities of being a modern urban sketcher.

czech out

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little prague

I cycled downtown last night, while the air was cool, and looked for the latest World Soccer magazine (not to be found), looked through countless books written for year-and-a-half-year-olds (didn’t end up getting one; I’ll let the one-and-a-half-year-old choose for himself, he knows best), and stopped off for a beer in the Czech-style pub, Little Prague, always an excuse of course to do a drawing. Bar-sketching is tricky for me, as there are always a lot of bottles, plus the light is never that great, and my eyesight isn’t either (I think I need a new prescription on my glasses). But this pub has lots of interesting things to draw, at least. Up there, Fox 40 News, the mouthpiece of the dreaded Murdoch (but even so they were kind enough to show one of my drawings on TV a couple of months back).  I noticed that they had the closed captioning on, and that it was lagging a little behind, so they would talk about one story, eg Steven Tyler falling off stage, while the pictures would show an elderly woman and a shop fire; I did wonder at first, Tyler has really let himself go. I focused on the details. The pub’s music wasn’t very good. A couple were dancing.  There was a Russian wrestler sat to my left who complimented me on my drawing.

Ten years ago this month, my friend Tel and I took a trip to Prague, Big Prague, spending almost two weeks there. Oh, there are stories alright, memories, it was a fun trip but so long ago now. I’m less hectic now. I’d love to go back to Big Prague, but I imagine the beer is more expensive there now. In Little Prague, I drank Krusovice. It’s a nice beer. I’m pleased with how this turned out. It’s the height of summer, and it’s pretty cool.

ein märzen aus alten zeiten

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a litre of sudwerk

Oh man it hot. I managed to cycle downtown last night, to read a few comics and take in the warm evening air, listening to live bands who were out playing tribute to Michael Jackson in their best non-Jacko sounding indie acoustic guitar. I cycled off and went to Sudwerk, the local German-style brewpub, whose locally-brewed beers are excellent. I would miss them a lot if I ever moved back to Britain, they don’t have anything that comes close back there. Pictured above, a nice big litre of the Märzen, my favourite one. Very refreshing!

Drawn in Itoya finepoint pen – I was trying something new – and watercolour.