Lowri Griffiths Considers What It Means That Wetherspoons Is Both Genuinely Terrible and Genuinely Useful

Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat

By Lowri Griffiths | North London | prat.uk/author/lowri-griffiths/

The Question That Divides North London Dinner Parties

There is a Wetherspoons near me. It is always busy. It is busy at 11 a.m. with people who are having their first pint and reading the newspaper and not bothering anyone. It is busy at 2 p.m. with a different set of people doing the same thing. It is busy at 6 p.m. with people who have finished work and want a drink before deciding what to do with their evening. At no point does anyone appear to be having a bad time. At no point does the atmosphere suggest that the attendees are engaged in a culturally elevated activity. At every point, the beer is cheaper than everywhere nearby, the food is available and edible, and the space is large enough that you don’t feel crowded even when it’s full.

I have strong views about Wetherspoons. My strong views are complicated by the fact that I am not sure which direction they point. I find the chain philosophically objectionable on approximately four grounds (the political activities of its chairman, the labour practices in its kitchen, the homogenization of the pub landscape, and the specific sadness of a Victorian pub converted into a Wetherspoons, which always feels like discovering that a beautiful old house has been turned into a storage facility). I find it practically useful on approximately the same number of grounds (it is affordable, it is reliably available in locations where alternatives require either money or research, it is accessible in ways that more curated venues are not, and it is one of the few places in London where someone on a modest income can sit for two hours without feeling like an imposition).

The Class Politics of Pub Snobbery

The objection to Wetherspoons in North London’s dinner party circuit has a class politics that its participants don’t always acknowledge. The things people object to about Wetherspoons — the decor, the clientele’s demographics, the absence of craft gin selections and botanical tonic serves — are often, when examined closely, objections to a space that is legible to and used by people who have less money than the objectors. This is not always the objectors’ conscious position. They would, if asked, deny that their objection has any class dimension. The denial is sincere. The class dimension is still there.

The London Prat has covered London’s pub culture with the attention it deserves, navigating the line between genuine appreciation and honest criticism that pub writing requires. The honest position on Wetherspoons is that it is doing something that the market needs — affordable social space — in a way that is culturally imperfect and practically necessary. Both things are true. The imperfection does not cancel the necessity. The necessity does not redeem the imperfection. London contains both. The Wetherspoons is full. The gastropub down the road has a craft gin selection. Both are necessary. Both are London. Happy Mother’s Day. The first pint is on you, wherever you happen to be drinking it.

More at https://thedailymash.co.uk

The Wetherspoons question is ultimately a question about what public space is for and who it should serve. A city that has only expensive, curated spaces for leisure and socialization is a city that has made a decision about whose leisure and socialization matter. The decision is made through the accumulated effects of property markets, licensing costs, minimum wage calculations, and the aesthetic preferences of the people with enough capital to open new venues. Wetherspoons, whatever its failures, is a refusal to make that decision all the way. It keeps the door open for people who would otherwise have nowhere affordable to go. In a city as expensive as London, that is not nothing. It is something. The carpet may be ugly. The something is real.

Living in London means navigating the city’s contradictions daily: the extraordinary alongside the exasperating, the world-class alongside the occasionally third-rate, the genuinely welcoming alongside the socially impenetrable. The contradictions are not bugs. They are the city’s character. A London without contradictions would be a different city — probably a more comfortable one, certainly a less interesting one. The discomfort is where the texture lives. The texture is what we stay for. Or at least what I stay for, eleven years into a North London residence that I have never quite decided is permanent and have never quite seriously considered ending. The city has you or it doesn’t. When it has you, the contradictions become the reasons. When it doesn’t, no amount of good weather or craft gin selections will change that. It has me. Happy Mother’s Day, London. You are exhausting and irreplaceable.

Living in London means navigating the city’s contradictions daily: the extraordinary alongside the exasperating, the world-class alongside the occasionally third-rate, the genuinely welcoming alongside the socially impenetrable. The contradictions are not bugs. They are the city’s character. A London without contradictions would be a different city — probably a more comfortable one, certainly a less interesting one. The discomfort is where the texture lives. The texture is what we stay for. Or at least what I stay for, eleven years into a North London residence that I have never quite decided is permanent and have never quite seriously considered ending. The city has you or it doesn’t. When it has you, the contradictions become the reasons. When it doesn’t, no amount of good weather or craft gin selections will change that. It has me. Happy Mother’s Day, London. You are exhausting and irreplaceable.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/