Lists, lists, lists. Its what we do around here, and the end of a decade gives us ample opportunity to look back with fondness over a decade. Music, films, television were all thrown in the mix, and may pop up. But most important to us is the social. From a site that is run by avowed Geezaesthetics, the pub is a sacred space, a space of learning and entertainment. And this colours the list too. And for me, my first blog was the Pumpkin Publog, which was rolled into FT five years ago. It is nice to get back to the pubs sometimes.
So firstly, before we go to far. These are not the 25 best pubs in London if you are a tourist. They are probably not the best if you live and work in London. Hell, some of these pubs no longer exist. But these are the pubs that the core of FreakyTrigger, and lots and lots of friends visited the most, and had the best times in.
A great pub is a space which allows the magic to happen, and does not necessary thrust itself upon you. So a lot of these pubs tick the boxes by virtue of being geographically convenient for us.
That said this list is about good times we have had. So the write-ups will be based upon those good moments, memories perhaps of the beer, but perhaps of the conversation, what happened next and so on. Some of the pubs will be given special placement by when they were our regular haunt, some pubs have fallen out of fashion, or as mentioned above no longer there (note, neither version of the Intrepid Fox turns up in this list). That said, if you wanted to go drinking with us in any of these pubs, we happily would go, pubs are now a place of memory for us too.
A note of methodology: As ever those of us who regualrly go to the pub together wracked our memories for our regular pubs. This was boiled down to a list of about 50 pubs, which were then voted upon by a ground, in a “neutral” pub – The Exmouth Arms in Euston. this then ranked the pubs, and this ranking was then used to provide a list of the eight best pubs, which then were pitted against each other tournament style. There is a winner, which hopefully we will get to by Christmas. But before then, there will be a few pubs that didn’t make the cut which need talking about and the list itself. And feel free to disagree massively in the comments.