I don’t know how long it’s been going on, but I just learned of the Lost Pubs Project, a wonderful idea. The project is “Charting The Decline Of The British Pub” by listing, by county, every pub closing. They currently list 10,104 lost pubs. According to the website, “there are 60,000 pubs still in existence in the UK today, [and] they are closing at the rate of 25 per month. Once closed they rarely reopen as most are either demolished or converted to housing.” It’s a collaborative project, and they’re asking for help from locals all over Great Britain to let them know about any “pub which has closed at any time in the past,” and they”re also collecting “any memories, information or photographs” of the closed pubs. Sounds like a very worthwhile thing to do.
Beer In Art #69: Alex Caldwell’s Typographic Beer Destinations
Today’s work of art was originally created while Alex Caldwell was still in college, a project presumably for one of his classes at Philadelphia University. It’s called Typographic Beer Destinations and tells the story in type of a journey from home to Philadelphia.
But not just any journey, a trip involving stops at beer destination every ten minutes along the way. And like any great journey, it begins with someone calling “shotgun.” Here’s the story of the work:
This assignment was to simply create a poster with directions from our home (Central New Jersey for myself) to Philadelphia. I themed it around the idea of getting a beer every ten minutes at a different bar along the way. I tried to convey the idea of a drunken night by making it jumbled and somewhat confusing. I also threw in some random things that one might have said in this adventure. All the directions are there though.
Click through to see the image much larger. Especially check out the warning label, which reads:
Government Warning: (1) The artist does not condone drinking and driving. (2) Consumption of alcoholic beverages impairs your ability to drive a car or operate machinery, and may cause health problems. (3) If drinking, get a designated driver and make sure to call shotgun.
You can also buy a copy of the print, in three different sizes.
Caldwell graduated the year after he made this, and freelances at his own Caldwell Designs. You call also see more of his work at his DeviantArt gallery.
UK Creates New Ministry For Pubs
How cool is this. The UK government has just created a new Ministry — similar to our cabinet positions — The Ministry for Pubs. Wentworth MP John Healey was named the firs Minister, and he had the following to say about his appointment.
“Pubs are often at the heart of community life. And they are important meeting places for many people. While we can’t stop every pub from closing it’s right we do everything possible to back them. But they need help now so I am determined to have a deal on the table with a package of practical help in the next few weeks.”
The Morning Advertiser has the full story, to which Drinks International added.
Mark Hastings. British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) director of communications said: “This is a clear sign of the strong public desire to see British pubs supported and the success of our campaign over the last year. We hope this means that pubs will now have a strategic place in Government policy making, and we are pleased that the agenda echoes so many of the priorities we have identified.
“We couldn’t wish for a better minister than John Healey as the voice for pubs within Government, and look forward to a positive, frank and constructive relationship with him in order to support this great British institution that is so important to the social and economic life of local communities.”
Can you imagine a cabinet post in the U.S. Secretary of Alcohol? Or Drinks Czar? It would give new meaning to the term, “member of the bar.”
Beer In Art #68: Henry Singleton’s Ale-House Door
Today’s work of art was originally painted around 1790, when the English pub was a very different animal. It was created by Henry Singleton, a British artist who lived from 1766-1839. This painting, The Ale-House Door, is an oil on canvas painting roughly 10 x 12 inches, and the original can be found at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. It’s also sometimes known by the title At the Inn Door.
The pub looks like it was probably called The Bell, though I’m just guessing based on the sign. According to my handy Dictionary of Pub Names, the Bell is a fairly common pub name owing to the idea that a “bell speaks all languages.”
You can read more about Singleton at his Wikipedia page and there’s a biography of him from the Grove Dictionary of Art, too. You can see a few more of his works at the Tate and there are more links at ArtCyclopedia.
Literature and the English Pub
If you’re a fan of great English literature and its relationship to the traditional pub, you may enjoy this program from BBC 4. It was first broadcast March 1 and will be available to listen to on the BBC’s archive until this Saturday, March 6. Here’s the description of it from the website:
From Falstaff at The Boar’s Head to John Self at The Shakespeare in Martin Amis’s Money, English literature and the pub are intertwined. It started in a pub — Chaucer’s pilgrims setting out from The Tabard in Southwark — and has been waiting to be chucked out ever since. Robert Hanks presents an elegy for pubs in literature and an exploration of what the smoking ban, the gastro pub and the five quid pint are going to do to writing.
It’s just under an hour long, but goes by quickly if you love this sort of thing, as I do. So settle in with a beer and give it a listen. Thanks to my friend Glenn Payne for letting me know about this fascinating show.
Yet Another SF Beer Week Video
Here’s yet another video from SF Beer Week, this one by the local NBC affiliate for a news segment. It features the Toronado Pub in lower Haight, owner Dave Keene, and Natalie Cilurzo, co-owner of Russian River Brewing.
If you can’t see the video embedded here, try this link.
Beer In Art #63: David Hatfield’s Bartender
Today’s works of art is called the Bartender, and is by a contemporary Massachusetts artist named David Hatfield. Though most of Hatfield’s paintings are landscapes, he does do the occasional portrait, such as the Bartender, though I don’t know much about the painting apart from the fact that it was sold in July of 2007. Also, it was an oil painting and was 40 x 29.5 in. But who the model was or where, if anywhere, the bar was where it was painted remain mysteries.
Here’s part of Hatfield’s biography from the gallery where he exhibits his work, State of the Art Gallery:
David Hatfield showed early talent, creating his first painting in 1952. He received a BFA degree from Miami University, Ohio, and began his art career as an illustrator in New York City, completing studies at the School of Visual Arts and the Arts Student League before discovering the art colony in Rockport, Massachusetts and Hoosick Falls, New York. Here he devoted himself to his own work, painting outdoors, capturing the rural towns and farms in New York, Vermont and Massachusetts; the quaint seascapes and towns of Cape Ann; and picturesque cities of Europe. His sensitive portraits are much admired.
Mr. Hatfield continually paints outdoors, even in the cold of winter, creating large and small paintings in an impressionistic style, often including figures in the compositions. He states, “I am trying to create a rich painting in which each part is interesting in itself and becomes even richer in its relationship to every other part of the painting. This is a very difficult thing to do, which accounts for history’s few masterpieces and the beauty that these paintings possess. The shapes, forms, colors and subject matter all combine to form a complex and aesthetically pleasing unit”. He exhibits his work locally at State of the Art Gallery in Gloucester, Massachusetts.
You can see more of Hatfield’s work at the State of the Art Gallery and his American Gallery.
Loud Music Increases Drinking
I found this interesting bit of research at the PsyBlog, run by Jeremy Dean, a Psychology researcher at the University College London. The post is entitled Why Loud Music in Bars Increases Alcohol Consumption, and concerns some recent research conducted into the relationship between volume and drinking patterns. Specifically, Dean cites two studies, one in Glasgow, Scotland and the other in France. In some ways the findings are obvious, but it does tend to confirm what you probably already guessed. The PsyBlog starts with the premise that the average bar traditionally keeps the lights dim and the music loud.
But turning the music up so loud that people are forced to shout at each other doesn’t have quite the same beneficial effect on social interactions. Because everyone is shouting, the bar becomes even noisier and soon people start to give up trying to communicate and focus on their drinking, meaning more trips to the bar, and more regrets in the morning.
Of course this is exactly what bar owners are hoping for. People sitting around quietly nursing their drinks for hours are no good for profits. Talkers aren’t the best drinkers. At least that is the received wisdom in the industry.
The first study, Sound Level of Environmental Music and Drinking Behavior: A Field Experiment With Beer Drinkers, was published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. Their results indicated “that high level volume led to increase alcohol consumption and reduced the average amount of time spent by the patrons to drink their glass.”
The second study was published in the journal Popular Music & Society, and was titled Alco-pop? The Use of Popular Music in Glasgow Pubs.
Here’s a bit more as to how the research was conducted.
The level of the music was randomly manipulated to create the conditions of a true experiment. It was either at its usual volume of 72dB or turned up to 88dB. For comparison: 72db is like the sound of traffic on a busy street while 88db is like standing next to a lawnmower.
Sure enough when the music went up the beers went down, faster. On average bar-goers took 14.5 minutes to finish a 250ml (8 oz) glass of draught beer when the music was at its normal level. But this came down to just 11.5 minutes when the music was turned up. As a result, on average, during their time in the bar each participant ordered one more drink in the loud music condition than in the normal music condition.
The observers even measured the number of gulps taken to finish each drink — the level of the music was found to have no effect on this. So the faster drinking was as a result of more gulps rather than bigger gulps.
The conclusions from both studies seem to validate one another, suggesting a universal application. The results do seem to favor a causal connection between louder music and increased drinking, but what they don’t answer is why this is the case. As Dean puts it. “Some think that people drink instead of talking while others have argued that they drink more because the music creates greater levels of arousal, which then leads to more drinking.”
Personally, I prefer a bar where I can hear myself think, where pleasant conversation is encouraged, but then I prefer to sip, not gulp, my beer in almost any environment. So clearly, I’m not the target demographic, nor I suspect are most hardcore beer geeks, but it still is a fascinating peek into what makes us tick — and drink.
UPDATE: The BC Brews Blog also came across this study independently and posted about it in Loud Music = Heavier, Faster Drinking.
Beer In Art #53: George Morland’s Alehouse Politicians
Today’s artist comes from the very early days of England’s artistic beginnings. Before the 18th century, there was little that could properly be called “English art.” At that time, most art came from France, Spain, The Netherlands, Germany and a few others. That’s who English painters studied. But that began to change in the mid-1700 with such painters as Thomas Gainsborough, William Turner, John Constable, George Romney, Henry Raeburn and today’s featured painter, George Morland. While others painted portraits and some city life, Morland concentrated on rural life and, naturally, the county inn was often featured in his works. The initial painting that led me to Morland, pictured below, is known as Alehouse Politicians,, most likely painted during the 1790s.
Like most of Morland’s popular paintings, others made copies of them as engravings to be sold to the public, such as this Mezzotint by W. Ward, published by Wards and Co. in 1801.
Plenty more of Morland’s rural paintings depicted inns, such as the Fox Inn, painted in 1792.
Or The Bell Inn, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art:
Which itself was redone as a black and white engraving:
From his biography at Wikipedia:
Morland was born in London on 26 June 1763. His mother was a Frenchwoman, who possessed a small independent property of her own. His grandfather, George H. Morland, was a subject painter. Henry Robert Morland (c. 1719 – 1797), father of George, was also an artist and engraver, and picture restorer, at one time a rich man, but later in reduced circumstances. His pictures of Jaundry-maids, reproduced in mezzotint and representing ladies of some importance, were very popular in their time.
The finest of Morland’s pictures were executed between 1790 and 1794, and amongst them his picture of the inside of a stable, in Tate Britain, London, may be reckoned as a masterpiece. His works deal with scenes in rustic and homely life, depicted with purity and simplicity, and show much direct and instinctive feeling for nature. His coloring is mellow, rich in tone, and vibrant in quality, but, with all their charm, his works reveal often signs of the haste with which they were painted and the carelessness with which they were drawn. He had a supreme power of observation and great executive skill, and he was able to select the vital constituents of a scene and depict even the least interesting of subjects with artistic grace and brilliant representation. His pictures are never crowded; the figures in them remarkably well composed, often so cleverly grouped as to conceal any inaccuracies of drawing, and to produce the effect of a very successful composition. As a painter of English scenes he takes the very highest position, and his work is marked by a spirit and a dash, always combined with broad, harmonious coloring. He exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy from 1784 down to 1804, but few of his academy pictures can be identified owing to the inadequate description of them afforded by their titles.
Here’s yet another one, Outside the Alehouse Door, painted in 1792.
And here’s one final painting, Outside an Inn, Winter, painted around 1795, and part of the Tate Collection:
If you want to know more about George Morland, his Wikipedia page is a good start, but there’s also a good biography at the Online Encyclopedia. The Sterling Times has the most complete collection of his prints and Google Books has an online book about Morland, George Morland: his life and works. ArtCyclopedia has a good collection of links and more of his works can also be seen at The Old Print Shop, Intaglio Fine Art, the Art Renewal Center and the Tate Collection.
Pubs Becoming Hubs?
My friend and colleague, Pete Brown, who wrote Hops and Glory, tweeted this interesting editorial that ran on today’s Guardian Online, entitled Are Pubs Finally Becoming Hubs?. Definitely worth a read.