Elephant & Castle is a London suburb.
Nifty!
Great articles, thanks.
Well, I still think it’s an odd name for anything, especially a neighborhood, but at least now I know it came from the English. They’re odd. 
We so need to go out on the piss!
ha ha ha!
[sub](You know Firkin are owned by O’Neils?)[/sub]
As for da Monkey thing… buy me a pint there, and I’ll explain it to you! 
There are some very “interesting” bar names in Pattaya, Thailand.
Personally my favorite was the “All Cock and Pussy Bar” - sounds like a firm of solicitors. (say it quickly). Heh!
Eh, FWIW, when our local Rudyard’s first appeared it was on Kipling Street.
“Do you like Kipling?”
“I dunno, how do you kipple?”
I just returned from London three days ago (my first trip). I stayed with a dear friend from law school who married well, enabling her to quit working and move to Islington, simultaneously. (I know, we hate people like that. But she and her husband are lovely people who fully acknowledge their good fortune.)
So there’s this frightfully twee thing on Upper Street, just above the Islington Green, called:
The Slug and Lettuce
I avoided it.
And what is it about Arms? There all these pubs with the Something-or-Other Arms, which is all very well and good unless the Something-or-Other is something that indeed would have arms. Like, for example, a place I went my last day:
The Draper’s Arms, a gastropub (quite nice, actually, although it took not less than 45 minutes for them to serve us our pudding - a complicated task requiring the unmolding of a long-premade item onto a plate).
I have this vision of some poor sod of a draper with his arms thoughtfully removed and nailed above the doorway - and without worker’s compensation.
Slug and Lettuce are a chain of chi-chi yuppie pub-ettes.
Arms in pub names refers to a coat-of-arms. An emblem or sign, in other words.
Wokingham is blessed with many pubs, not one of which is a Weatherspoons, Firkin, O’Neils, Slug and Lettuce or Rat and Parrot. I love my local, The Hope and Anchor (affectionately known as the Whore and Wanker) - it’s still got the stable area from when people drove their carriages to the inn, exposed beams, all that sort of malarky.
Off the top of my head, I can think of these pubs (all within half a mile of each other, easy):
The Hope and Anchor
The Queens Head
The Duke’s Head
The Lord Raglan
The Redan
The Red Lion
The Rose
Broad Street Tavern
The Roebuck
The Leathern Bottle
The Crispin
The Ship
As far as I know, the Broad Street Tavern is the only one built within the last 100 years. I’d like to know the story behind “The leathern bottle” - think it’s a reference to drinking out of leather skins? I’ve never heard of another “Redan” either. Hm.
Riding the Number 73 bus through London I did always like to see “The No One Inn” but now that name’s been co-opted by the It’s A Scream chain.
And I don’t even want to discuss the number of Edwards, Bar Meds, Rat and Parrots, All Bar Ones and Slug and Lettuces there are in Reading town centre nowadays.
Of course, to balance out the abundance of great pubs in Wokingham we do have to deal with John Redwood.
Ye Olde King’s Head in Santa Monica has the best fish’n’chips I’ve ever eaten. The bangers and mash are very good as well. The “traditional English breakfast”? I can’t believe anyone would eat so much meat at one sitting. We had a little Dopefest there once, and Heloise had the BBQ ribs. Not very English, but they looked delicious. The King’s Head is owned by a British ex-pat. It has a noisy pub section with two dart boards, two dining rooms, a very small pub section where people can drink whilst waiting to be seated, and then a third dining room.
The Cat and Fiddle is the other pub I like. (Not being much of a drinker however, I don’t get to pubs often.) It’s in Hollywood and has a nice courtyard. I haven’t eaten there. It’s less cluttered and less boistrous than The King’s Head, and there really isn’t anywhere to walk around afterwards (unless you want to look at hookers – it’s on Sunset Blvd.). It’s across the street from Club Lingerie (or where CL used to be – I think it moved).
**I dunno, how do you kipple?" **
LOL
How about “Kipples Place” ?
I was just viewing the menu at The King’s Head. $12.95 seems a lot for fish’n’chips, but it’s a lot of food. I get the Queen Size, and it’s all I can do to finish it. Lots of chips, and the fish is a good-sized piece. I usually have some chips left over, but I’ll never leave the tasty fish!
The Scotch eggs are good too. They used to have “faggots and peas” – liver meatballs with gravy. I don’t seem that on the menu now. Too bad; they were good.
The King Size “traditional English breakfast” has a choice of fried bread or toast, 2 eggs, 2 bacon, 1 banger, sauteed mushrooms, black pudding, English baked beans and a grilled tomato. Reading it, it doesn’t look like there’s as much meat as I remember – but it’s still an aweful lot for one meal. Maybe it was just that there was so much grease. I mean, fried bread, fried eggs, fried bacon, fried banger, sauteed mushrooms… For me, a “traditional” breakfast would be en English muffin with vegemite and maybe a little marg. Or oatmeal with some jam. Or cold cereal. But then, I’m not English except by ancestry – and that was 350 years ago.
Well, yeah, I kinda got that ;). It’s just most peculiar when it’s a class of person rather than a family name…
Wasn’t there an Akimbo Arms in some 50s TV show?
In Tokyo (Azabu-juban) I used to drink in The Drunkard and Bali-Hai.
There were hilarious “Japlish” names for pubs. I wish I had taken photos.
Lots of “Knobs” and “Pussies,” as well as the typical, “Happy Fun Bar.”
Them were the days, my friends, them were the days.
My local in Scotland was the Settle Inn. Crappy pun, great pub.
I think some cartoon had the Venus De Milo Arms…
I was raised in Houston… Ringo!! I am amazed that you haven’t mentioned the dew drop inn… Or the “he aint here” bars out on telephone road!!
BTW Ringo there used to be an authentic english bar and restaurant out on 146 south of Kemah and seabrook…Just can’t remember the name right now or if they ever caught on… Really good food and great atmosphere!!
This is almost a total hijack…
Our Crown and Anchor still survives in Las Vegas. I went there for the first time the other night. Having never been to Britain, I have no idea about the authenticity of the place but I do know there is some crap hanging on the walls (beer signs, mostly). Whether you would find this acceptable I don’t know. But the beer was great, the Cornish pastie was comparable to homemade ones (not by me, by a British friend), and they gave me no trouble for being a woman all alone on a Saturday night.
Sure, there were video poker machines in the bar, but we’ve got to cut them some slack, I think. Pool tables, dart boards as well. So I was pleased. I think I’ll be back for the quiz on Thursday.
Bulldog’s in Upland, CA is actually owned by an Aussie and has a really good bartender named Jason. He puts together a mean pub quiz. And the Australian meat pies are pretty good in my estimation.
After discovering a seedy underground bar that serves cocktails in pints for a fiver I’m currently drying out, but a beer is always a good plan.
I just remembered two pubs from the town I grew up in:
The Tumbledown Dick
The Ham & Blackbird