Round Two
 

Actually, we quite like
all of these three . . .
(Masonic vs Robert Fitzharding
vs Tap & Barrel)
 

Brotherly Love

Bob de Builder

. . . but two of them have to go and sad to say the first out is Bemmy’s signature pub the Robert Fitzharding, a lively Wetherspoons tribute to the man (known to his mates as Robert de Berkeley, the ponce) whose family ran the Manor of Bedminster from about 1130 until 1416, during which hectic two-and-three-quarter-hours he also managed to build Bristol Cathedral. He’d have been so proud. The Masonic remains a firm favourite also, its proximity to the North Street launderette having made it @EasyMungo’s local during some challenging times a few years back: we apologise for deeming it the Big Issue-Seller of the Bristol Pub Community back then — and while we’re here could we also take this opportunity to apologise for insinuating that the landlord was portly the other day? All the more pity, then, for both to come up against avonpacket behemoth the Tap & Barrel . . .

 No, rather it’s that the unintended effect of all this modernising effort was to suck out the last what little life the poor old place ever had, so that its now given up the old pub game altogether and become an Italian, or possibly Spanish, restaurant called Il Grano, which means Oh Bugger It. Or something.
 

Some things don't change . . .

North Street: the good ol' days

“If you want a fight”, wise old Bedminster cases used always to tell us, “go to the Hen & Chicken”. Not now though, ’cos they’ve gone makeover mad down shabby old North Street too (though they’ve done it a sight better at the Spotted Cow). Most egregiously of all, they’ve actually got themselves one of those wretched Lounge Café Bars, of which avonpacket has quite had its fill, as you can discover here, here, here and here.

Strictly for dickheads

Posh North Street,
who needs it?
(Hen & Chicken vs Lounge Cafe Bar
vs Spotted Cow)

Wanna fight? Not any more

In fact if we’re in the business of naming pubs after rooms, may we take this opportunity to summarise this striking example of the bizarre and contagious delusion that installing a Hoegaarden tap — incidentally operated by the least competent bar staff we’ve ever encountered — and laying on a few dog-eared board games magically transforms a run-down charity shop into the Llandoger Trow in one simple word: toilet? We thank you.

Southville Isn't Bemmy
(Coronation vs Imp
vs Little Grosvenor)

Several of the pubs in this competition aren’t really in Bedminster at all. Some of them are actually in Southville . . .

Southville's cultural heartland

Not the Coronation Tap

The Cut, yesterday

A narrow salient separating Bemmy from the rest of Brizzle, many suspect Southville not to be a real place at all, just some social-climbing fantasist’s desperate attempt at pretending he doesn’t live in grim old Bemmy by creating some sort of genteel dreamworld south of the river.

Ho yus; and while the Little Grosvenor seems to be following the prevailing trend in the area as a whole and undergoing something of a renaissance, these things are still extremely relative and it continues to offer everything you’d expect from a pub with such an unpromising provenance, neatly summed-up by our last visit on which we encountered a simmering atmos where the smoking ban was only very tentatively enforced and @christhewinter got poked in the anus by a dwarf’s nipple. Maybe that’s just what happens when you locate yourselves next-door to ASDA. That said, we can confirm that the deranged rabble of bibulous mutants which makes up Bemmy’s hardcore cider community and once passed for this place’s core clientele do seem to have given up on it (and can now be found, grumbling into their frightening orange pints, over by the City Farm in the Apple Tree and the Barley Mow), and that can hardly be a bad thing now can it?

Day of the Dead

Dawn of the Dead

And then there’s the Coronation, an earthy old relic which makes a big old noise about serving beer which tastes like it’s come straight out of the aforementioned giant ditch, and is therefore unsurprisingly popular with the student diaspora, which itself is a far cry from the days when @EasyMungo was obliged to squat outside on the pavement in November because Gary was wearing his sister’s blouse.

Skinhead Supernova

It’s a development of which the Rope Walk, way, way to the north and virtually in Redcliffe for goodness’ sake, has singularly failed to take advantage. It’s odd really, since this place was one of the first signs of Bemmy’s tentative-gentrification (stock market updates on Teletext? In East Street?), but all it seems to have done is slowly but surely transform itself from smart-but-dull via scruffy-and-boring thru run-by-travellers (oh yes) to quietly-closed-down, somehow embodying the fact that though being in Bedminster needn’t drag you down, it generally does.

The loss of the Park House, though, does pose a problem for the, er, good people of Knowle, who’ll all have gravitated this way when they lost the Friendship, which in turn had briefly benefited from the demolition of the Venture Inn a couple of years before. If this goes on before we know it they’ll be boozing over in Bedminster Down at the Kings Head, and that really would be a shame.

Semi-Finals

Cannibal Holocaust

Happier times are to be had in the Imp, a sort of rest home for retired skinheads tucked away in a Southville side-street and quite relentlessly cheery despite the loss of the magnificent display of teapots that once so enthralled the casual visitor. How do you go about getting rid of a thing like that, d’you reckon? For some reason, though, its the skinheads-at-large that still say Bemmy (amongst several other things) most loudly to us, so through to the final goes the scary old Three Lions — home of the City ‘Aaardcore, according to a luridly furious racist called Dennis we once happened ‘pon in, of all places, the Colston Yard

Shakespeare’s original theatre, painstakingly dismantled and hauled down the Avon on genuine Tudor barges (ie Anne of Cleves ha ha ha) to be rebuilt as a dazzlingly opulent pleasure palace next door to Cash Converters; the Old Globe has done extraordinarily well to come through as the last East Street pub standing, but it’s this far and no further we’re afraid, as its unrelenting drabness proves that even our legendary optimism where Brizzle’s scruffier outposts are concerned can only be pushed so far.

Back street beauty

Three pubs showing off three very different sides of Bemmy contest our other semi-final. First, the  Kings Head is a solid old gaff way, way down along the Bridgwater Road which serves up the most enormous Sunday roasts we’ve ever seen. Lots and lots of Yorkshire puds is the avonpacket way, in case you were wondering, and this lot don’t let us down on that score. We were so impressed we might even try eating there one day . . .
 

Straight outta Clifton

Don't be a stranger now . . .

Over on North Street, meanwhile, the Spotted Cow has reverted to its original name after a brace of quickfire makeovers, the first of which (139° North) so brilliantly trounced its own upmarket pretensions by upholding that classic Bemmy pub tradition of allowing one side of the bar to be dominated by a slightly out of tune unwatched television blaring out children’s programmes. No such fooling around next time, though, ’cos its Clifton all the way down, we’re both glad and sad to say. Glad because they’ve created a real belter, raging Clearview Bastard and all; sad because it’s all in such contrast to the rest of Bemmy it just seems so exclusive, in the most pejorative sense.