08.4.13 - a local pub, for local people

Not a great picture, I was struggling with night-time lighting – but here is what will become our ‘local’. I don’t mean in the sense that we will be in it every day, but that it’s the closest bar by far – 90 seconds away tops.

Oddly, it’s done out to be a UK pub…but it’s not 100% there.

Things it gets right:

-          A proper bar – built around a corner, solid wood top, rail above head height for glasses

-          Bar stools

-          One of those metal rails that runs along the bottom of a bar – nice detail

-          Tiled section around the bar – old-fashioned, but nice

-          All day English breakfast

-          Premiership football on a loop. There’s even a signed shirt (might be QPR).

Things it gets wrong:

-          No ale

-          It replaces a few tables with the branded, plastic types (Hoegaarden) that only some UK pubs take, and always stick outside

-          Permanent bunting and a Union Jack as a curtain between kitchen and bar

-          A year-round tinsel wreath

-          Strange faux-leather studded green wall in the restaurant

-          Beer costs a fiver outside of happy hour. Oh no wait – on London prices, they’ve got that right.

I don’t mean the above as nasty criticism – I’ve been in twice now, and already feel bizarrely fond of it. Perhaps it’s supposed to look this way. SYP is mainly an HK-Chinese area; and aside from us, I’ve only seen HK people there. So maybe it’s more UK-themed than meant to appeal to a UK audience…

Bonus Thatcher section
Everyone else is taking to social media to throw in their tuppence about Thatcher’s death. I thought I’d have to note it in some way relevant to the blog.

Turns out, she was the PM that opened negotiations on the future of HK and the New Territories. The 1997 deadline originally applied only to the New Territories, so Thatcher wanted to keep HK itself as a colony, for longer. She couldn’t swing it. So as an antidote to all the ringing famous quotations, here’s what she said in later years about HK:

“What I wanted was a continuation of British administration…this proved impossible…it was very sad”.

She tried; she failed; she was sad. Human after all?