BITE user comments - Groovehound
Comments by Groovehound
'Before this pub decided to turn metal, it was alright for a few beers and a chat. Now you have to shout to be heard by someone directly infront of you. Shame'
1) Before it decided to turn metal was the very early 2000s. I remember seeing a metal tribute band Dead Seed here often, even though it wasn't really a 'metal' place 7 days a week. That was over a decade ago. What period is maddymads referring to, or is s/he a bit selective-remembering?
2) It's not metal before 7pm or even 8pm on a gig night, it's a relaxed, sport-showing, backwater-of-Camden area pub. You CAN have the both in the one pub, and if you are looking for a quiet pub on a gig night (which are clearly denoted on a blackboard on the outside wall) then look elsewhere and we've no sympathy for you. Being into metal and finding a decent, down-to-earth real pub venue that doesn't charge an entry fee and ISN'T PRETENTIOUS, is really difficult.
3) Metalheads are statistically supposed to have higher-than-average IQs... also I NEVER see fights at metal gigs, it's really rare compared to most other scenes. So apart from the loudness of the music, which I agree is intrusive to conversation (although I've managed to have plenty in this venue outside the back-room gig area) there's nothing wrong with being a metal pub.
4) Camden is turning or has long been a commercial sh*thole, with a few outstanding venues and scenes still mixed-in. This pub is one of the few decent places resisting that commercial, non-valuable (identikit, high-street stereotype nightlife) rubbish. So I salute it.
5) I don't even drink any more for health reasons. So I'm not reviewing the booze here. Tell you one thing I'm qualified to say, though - if a pub is crap, one can drink ones way into having a good time. If one doesn't drink, one cannot tolerate a crap pub. Many pubs out there make lots of money off the fact that their clientèle are drunk and incapable of discriminating, especially around places like Camden, Clapham, etc. This isn't a crap pub, it has enough to offer, ales aside.
30 Dec 2013 06:20
The refurbishment is a GOOD thing for the run-down area. It's quite English and makes a point of it, if you see what I mean, but does it better than any number of token St George's flags can do.
I've only been past, not even in although I hear good reports, and it bothers making an effort for its admittedly high prices and indeed 'yuppie' vibe. Some obnoxious self-satisfied 'yuppie' places definitely don't, so this is a good thing in this case (and I'm sceptical as hell when it comes to a bad vibe or pretentiousness!)
They even bother putting a herb box out the front which some utterly pathetic specimen decided to uproot one night, in jealousy, it seems. Tooting doesn't have to be a hole, shame some people don't get that. Sour grapes from the Paddy poster before.
There's a great Irish pub down the road that does everything right (The Ramble Inn) and they're not going anywhere any time soon, don't worry...
16 Aug 2013 03:01
UPDATE 2013:
Apparently this pub was closed in 2010 or so, now been taken-over by a rock and metal-friendly couple, which will be interesting, as it's off the beaten track in Camden. Should be an improvement!
9 Jul 2013 16:57
I don't get how some people think they are 'the shit' for being rude to people. If they were doing it to authority figures, their landlord or boss, or some bullying person, THAT would be cool. Otherwise it's just ignorant, and that's allowing for personality differences. I hate people who dress up nice then act like twats - worshipping image over substance - but I only even let it bother me when they rub my nose in it. Like saying my (severely un-trendy looking mate, who is a rocker at least) had to get out if he wasn't drinking. He was hungover, not homeless, and I was drinking (and fast enough to count as THREE people, let alone two). Stuck-up people... the first quality on your 'I'd like to pay their wages' list, isn't it? Ignorants.
This was some years ago (say 2009) but I believe the staff haven't changed much nor the attitude... The music's not bad though, but clique-y places are not even healthy for the clique, let alone punters. I guess if you look 'right', they treat you 'right'. But isn't that the same ignorant attitude that gets alternative-looking people abused daily? Ah yes, passing the negative karma back around, how enlightened. They're just pub staff, why expect enlightenment? Well, this is London, you CAN find PhDs to work there... or at least sociable people. I've had nice staff serving too, but anyone who thinks you have to be dressed from the 40s-50s to be cool is pathetic. Cool is not how you look, it's how you act, with a SIDE-serving of how you look. Same principle applies to food, right?
28 Nov 2012 14:34
The Tooting Tram & Social, Tooting
Incidentally, it hasn't been an It's A Scream pub since the Tramshed days, now it's an Antic pub.
18 Dec 2011 16:21
The Tooting Tram & Social, Tooting
One might say that this place is part of the gentrification effort that's somewhat going on in Tooting. That's so far a good thing, as it's been hard to find a decent pub round here for a long time. This place is a bit more expensive at the bar, but you get pleasant, even friendly bar staff and this also pays for the free nights that happen here regularly, more or less. A net gain for Tooting, along with the Antelope. Manners are not just ones stance on personal interaction, they are how a business treats its customers in general, and they are on the right side of the balance here.
18 Dec 2011 16:18
It has more downsides these days, but it's certainly not that bad a pub - people aren't scared to mix in here, which is very important in these paranoid times... sure there's 'rizla-rustlers' in back, but that should be legal and available in a coffeeshop anyway, and if you don't like such people, I suggest you are too fussy! Potheads never hurt anyone, the worst they'll do is bore you!
I don't like some places due to drug users: like the place under the arches next to the railway station in Brixton that after 2am is full of coke-heads queueing 6-deep to use the horizontal surfaces in the toilets, refusing to look anyone in the eye and generally creating a thick, aggressive, paranoid vibe, enabled by the bouncers using favouritism and sub-criminal behaviour on the door... not fun - even for the coke-heads themselves, the lost fools! But sure now, criticise the potheads first, they're one of the worst things about the insane prohibition laws, surely?!
This place makes me feel fairly relaxed (not perfectly, as it has its own undercurrents depending on who's in) and one can approach the DJs without being seen as an annoyance - unlike the Hootenanny (which otherwise is pretty decent for the size). The bar staff will talk to you like a human being, and uncivilised behaviour IS seen as a disgrace and not encouraged. All this without the need for a heavy security presence is quite impressive for the times and place, really.
Free live music instead of money-grubbing like the Dogstar (�5, for a DJ to play me music whilst I pay expensive prices for drinks and have very little friendliness unless I'm blonde/female and the other person is black and male, for example - not my stereotype BTW, don't shoot the messenger). No thanks, the Albert is better.
27 Jul 2011 20:07
Still empty. I'd give it a try if it had live music that attracted me, like ORIGINAL bands, not covers bands or such.
But I don't blame the management for booking bands playing more tried-and-tested material. At least it's not the front room of the Gorringe with its one man bands posing as live music.
Happy to help with some custom, when I'm not too busy travelling to places that offer something I need - but Tooting is a pretty diverse place (read: socially-segregated).
Divided along the lines of race, nationality and culture with very LITTLE mixing (even Brixton has more with their snobby places), and it's not the British people's fault as I detect very little racism there... lovely sociable, educated immigrants only come in the form of doctors and the rare open-minded people who're above being held-back by invisible, old-fashioned, pathetic social barriers). Everyone shares the desire for a new LCD TV on their wall, why that instead of sharing the desire to socialise together and mix? Scared? At some level, yes! Poor people monetarily seems to mean poor people socially, how sad. I live here, incidentally, but it's bloody true if you look around! That's the problem with many pubs and public places in Tooting - ignorance of how to live nicely, rather than rushing around to the next earning opportunity, ghetto it is indeed! Only love can overcome the ghetto's pressures, whoever you are and wherever you come from... Where's the love, Tooting?
27 Jul 2011 19:41
@ 'David' "The security is good,with CCTV cameras monitoring continuously to ensure your safety."
How does CCTV ensure anyone's safety? More like the contrary where people wear hoodies to hide from the CCTV and hence are harder to identify from any angle by witnesses who're actually there themselves, not sitting watching CCTV in a control room miles away with the camera pointed in the wrong direction (etc). CCTV is next to worthless, get it? Bouncers are better, the combination is OK, but stop spouting the brainwashed line that CCTV makes you safer. If it doesn't stop Joe Bloggs from having those extra two pints of stella or physically shield you, then it doesn't make you safer, get it?
12 Apr 2011 02:10
What a p*ss-take, something like �6 for a vodka, possibly with no mixer, even. From a barmaid who didn't know basic manners, and it wasn't due to her native English... Oh, the price could have been due to the music festival in the park next door, which is reprehensible given the prices in London already, but anyway, I'll be b*ggered if I'm paying to be looked-down upon by someone who I'm giving a better example to. Here's a tip, landlords - instead of employing people who are abjectly rude and incompetent generally, employ people for customer service roles who are GOOD at customer service - there's plenty of those on the dole happy to work at the above minimum wage rates the staff MUST get for those prices... (right?)
12 Apr 2011 01:56
James445, a good music pub is very rare, even in a city of 8 million! People come from miles around to this venue. Do you moan about the constant traffic on Streatham High Road? It makes loads of noise, too. A large % of which is unnecessary car journeys of people who could use other transport. That's as voluntary from them as the noise chosen to be made by the venue's music (which objectively sounds better, too). Why not moan at the drivers? They're a much more pervasive target than one of the only open-minded music venues in the whole of South London!
Oh, it it because someone indoctrinated you that one thing that annoys you is OK to target because it's some 'hippy musicians' or whatever, but that people HAVE TO drive (even for vanity and fun on one of the heaviest-used roads in the capital)? That's bollocks mate, be fair. If this venue is exceptionally inconsiderate, then they deserve criticism, but compared to traffic and other noise pollution, it brings more pleasure to people than yet another moaning resident who's happy to pay too much to his landlord to live too close to a known music venue, work too hard for his pay and then pick on the only targets he can get away with complaining to - rather than the real stresses in his life. I'm assuming all that here, for the purposes of argument. You're not alone though (there'd be a lot less fights on Friday nights if people could get directly angry with those who cause them stress rather than displace their anger).
It would be better if the idiot planning department in the council didn't allow building so close together, but they can likely be bought by developers backhanders, whilst slowly making the concrete jungle ever more dense and life worse for everyone in it. Target them and you'll have a quieter life - stop picking on the organisation doing something special.
29 Mar 2011 18:18
Wilmington Arms, Exmouth Market
Just a response to MD16, nothing personal, but you ask for Budweiser, alcohol being a depressant, then like to listen to Joy Division, a depressive band (even if good)? Recipe for a great time, that! Which I'll do now, ironically, hahaha.
Still, thanks for the heads-up on it being trendy wanker territory, most will agree on that.
17 Jan 2011 12:24
Pub now re-open. Severely empty. Someone spruce the place up, hire some bouncers, and put in a stage - it would make a decent live music venue in theory, with the layout. Shame the only thing they ever had was awful, cheesy one-man-band type stuff. Who the hell wants that when you can listen to the radio for cheesy pop music instead? Good luck with this place, it has a bad reputation.
14 May 2010 18:04
You guys gonna get some Doom Bar in then? I might steer people down there a bit more (e.g. for the footy tonight)...
27 May 2009 13:38
The Fox and Grapes, Wimbledon Common
Good place. Irish rugby semis were on, so was curious. Then I saw they served 'Doom Bar' Cornish ale, even in its own glass. That was enough to decide us to stop here a while even if it meant cycling back across the common in semi-darkness... Good stuff.
3 May 2009 17:36
Now under NEW management AGAIN... Not sure what happened to the old guy, but possibly illness, hope not for the worst...
The new guy on the bar today was a complete muppet... as far as I tested... They still put on gigs, I was just looking to give them some money to use their room upstairs for band practice as it's near my house... The guy couldn't even give me a price, and wasn't interested in selling it at all... Clever!
They still have gigs apparently, (do check them out, the venue is not the promoters' fault) but I will be more cautious spending my money in the venue, it has to prove itself again...
1 May 2009 18:57
The Holland Tringham, Streatham
This pub is still reasonable... but their WiFi providing company TheCloud are a bunch of muppets, with NO security on their connections. Yet, you still have to provide personal details to register and use the service - yes, over that unsecured connection... One can use made-up details, so I don't get the point at all... Hence, 'muppets'. Anyway, not the particular pub's fault, but I thought I'd note it. Yes, it's free, but so's dogshit - doesn't make it worth using...
1 May 2009 18:48
Fullers do good things, if one has to generalise...
Better than Youngs in general, or maybe I'm biased due to one too many pints of the lovely ESB?!
1 May 2009 18:44
The Miller of Mansfield, Borough
We went here at random after following some alternatively-dressed people outside London Bridge station. Pub is great for drinking and chatting downstairs, quite cosy, beer garden of sorts, too. Upstairs the gig venue wasn't bad, but the beers on offer were my pet hates, like spanish and american bottled lagers at high prices...
23 Jan 2009 19:59
The Robert Peel, Kingston Upon Thames
Stripper wasn't bad looking when I came here (some guy off his face on something enlightened me as to the rest of the building's function at an Orange Goblin gig). But I honestly find that kind of thing under bright lights tacky, and walking around with a jar asking for donations afterwards, is super-tacky. Makes you feel sorry for the girl, not horny. Still if you're going to do it, time the best looking strippers to coincide with the most boring bands and you're onto a winner...
I've seen a few good gigs here, just a shame the trains don't run a bit later and the station isn't right next to some dodgy estate, and dark as hell - I might come down more often.
20 Oct 2008 21:13
"And its a neat little fingerprint system to get in :)" - why, because people will blag and lie their way just to get into this kind of place when they're barred?
It's not most peoples' fault that Croydon is a violent shithole, so why do most people have to pay via this kind of system? Why don't the police do something properly OR - AS PER LICENSING REGULATIONS - the bouncers, barstaff and managers DO NOT SERVE ALREADY-INTOXICATED PEOPLE! Oh yeah, they'd lose money from people going home early, boo hoo.
16 Oct 2008 22:03
The Marathon Restaurant, Chalk Farm
"Usually love this place but went there last night and found a thin piece of sharp steel in my kebab. Bit into it quite hard. I went to take my kebab back but as I'd eaten half of it they only offered me a �2 refund from the �3.50 I originally paid! Won't be going back anymore."
ollienz - 28 Sep 2008 20:48
So you don't know that Camden Council have a Trading Standards department then? What do you think they are for if not this?
Drop them an email or something and at least the place will get hassled like they deserve for that kind of service.
7 Oct 2008 22:09
Was outside on Sunday night, just asking for a light, and got chatting with someone who was cool. Then some guy comes out to smoke and started having a go purely because I had long hair and a rock t-shirt on. Most people know better, like this guy's mate who was cool, but if I want a fight with some prejudiced piece of human waste, I know where to come!
7 Oct 2008 22:06
The Fiddlers Elbow, Kentish Town
Yeah, like the last poster, I'm a massive supporter of good local/small live music venues (I hate corporate rape-artists who won't give you even a glass pint glass...) Yes, it's cheap on the door, so beer has to be more costly, but you could be better, instead of riding on the promoters' coattails (however nice you might be to them/us)... Nicer toilets, (soap is mandatory, or I'll wait at home/ go elsewhere until I've had my dump instead of spending money).
Might be a gripe too far in some eyes, but perhaps I smell legend around this pub if the rough edges are smoothed off and the music continues.
5 Sep 2008 05:54
The Marathon Restaurant, Chalk Farm
I don't think they serve any more :-( I went in on a weekend night I believe, too, and they wouldn't serve me. Also it was closing early I think, e.g. 2am. As usual, the reputation of a place catches up with it and it gets worse. Damn stupid councillors etc.
1 Aug 2008 16:26
The Wetherspoons in Streatham is far better than this. It's almost pleasant. The toilets are nice, the place is specious and the garden is great - heated and leafy. Amazing for a Wetherspoons. This one is shit though.
29 Jul 2008 00:13
Why don't the stupid BITE team mark this as closed? It's not like it's going to take a whole hour of their time, more like a whole minute.
28 Jul 2008 23:28
Why do BITE take so long to mark these 'closed' pubs as closed? This one must be more than six months dead! The web is something that's supposed to move information about quickly.
28 Jul 2008 22:43
The Holland Tringham, Streatham
Usual Wetherspoons place. I don't see how saving �2 over the course of an evening's drinking is worth the hassle versus a full-priced place. Great intimate and leafy garden though. Good in Summer when you can look up at the stars.
19 Jun 2008 22:40
Jack Stamps Beer House, Streatham
"Will be replaced by a Foxton's.
So watch out for Streatham being renamed as South Brixton, Balham East or Clapham Common East. ;)"
LOL, I'd rather live in 'Streatham' than (South) 'Brixton'! I've never been mugged in Streatham...
19 Jun 2008 22:35
This pub is under new management since four months ago, apparently. It's still the same place, but the manager is extremely rock-friendly. I saw a gig there downstairs two days ago and the sound was good, the place was busy, and the vibe friendly. Provision for smokers is good. The funny thing is there was a latin dance night going on upstairs, and blues-rock and metal downstairs, in the same pub on the same night.
Rock-friendly, yes but everyone's welcome, which is the most important bit. They have a 3am license for music which is great. The beer could do with some work I believe, with the "gas system problems" making getting a pint of lager more like getting a pint of Guinness, but hopefully that will be sorted, and anyone who brings rock and metal to Streatham of all places gets my respect.
1 Jun 2008 17:55
"Haha, if its going nowhere why is it packed every friday and saturday night" - anonymous.
Well, because EVERY crap drinking shed in Croydon is packed on a weekend, obviously - have a look around! People don't have troubles then, because they're getting pissed to forget the trouble of living in the world's ugliest suburb! Like the Wildheart's sang "Why do we stay here? Nobody knows - it's not the scenery"! Good live music policy, so alleviating the drudge, nice one.
11 Jul 2007 14:50
The Devonshire Arms, Camden
Still the same (metal-orientated) incarnation, but last night after coming from a really good death metal gig, they were playing cheesy stuff like 50s rock n roll, then progressed to cheesy classic rock / party rock, which can be forgiven due to it being a Saturday night and party night - and good metal being a bit serious and technical.
However, beware the cheese that can be played by the glam-rock loving red-haired DJ. Who's OK as a person, all else being equal, but really does love his 80s pop-metal and plain POP a bit too much. If you don't want to play metal, or something at least impossible to hear in mine or any other local, move over and allow new blood in, mate.
1 Mar 2014 22:36