As Tim’s backstreet boozer search continues I keep being dragged back and back to the same old pubs. A pub name which has gotten a disproportionate amount of publicity from this site is The Blue Posts and there was a time when a week did not pass without a trip to one of them – usually the Rupert Street one. I mention this firstly because I haven’t been in a Blue Posts for well over two months, and secondly I found myself outside the Rupert Street Blue Posts last week. It was quarter to eleven – a time when traditionally the pub would be quite full (it is after all not a very large pub). It was a Wednesday night, but if you counted you post theatre crowd and the usual throng from the Leicester Square / Piccadilly Circus drag you can probably understand my surprise at the place being completely empty.
When I last talked about this pub it was in a last straw way. The jukebox had been removed, the bar staff had changed and all the stools downstairs had been taken away. Previously we had put up with the overcrowding, the spurios Private Party which was never going on upstairs and the overpricing. But to remove its last bits of personality, its flair seems to have driven this pub almost into the gutter. I suppose it can often be the ephemeral things which make you like a pub – once destroyed it may be hard to rebuild. I fear what will happen here is a slow limping on for another six months and then a big time refurb. But then this is nothing to fear if I am never going back there. I may investigate further….