idle gaze 067: dead pub factor
A conversation with TikTok’s premier pundit of proper boozers.
Lately, I’ve been tracking a bunch of different socio-digital trends shaping cities around the world: the demise of third places, the meme-ification of gentrified neighbourhoods and impact of social media on the aesthetics and ambience of restaurants and drinking establishments.
And nowhere have these trends seemingly planted themselves more firmly than in London. From idle gaze’s HQ in Berlin, I sometimes go for a scroll down the TikTok algorithm to catch a glimpse at what’s happening in the UK capital. And from the outside looking in, it sometimes feels like the city is turning into one big social media fulfilment centre.
Every neighbourhood I had grown to adore during my 7 year stint there in the heyday of my twenties seems to have turned into a sprawling, interconnected eco-system of hyper-local memes and microtrends. Hackney, Dalston and Bethnal Green; places which had once kept hold of at least some their original patina, appears to have evolved into their final form as shiny meccas of third wave coffeeshops and shoppy shops. Soho, meanwhile, looks to have been entirely annexed by corporations and sanitised of it’s fun and sordid past; refurbished with LED-screen-lined private streets and multi-million entertainment multiplexes.
But I always knew this was just one particular version of London that was being curated for me online. I knew there were other layers that only revealed themselves whenever I step foot in the city, places that the digital algorithm didn’t want to show me. That’s until my For You page decided to reward me with a peak beyond the tastefully beige backdrops of minimal natural wine bars and TikTok-optimised small plates purveyors. It started to show me content from a TikTok account called Deadpubs.
Dead pubs is (mostly) dedicated to showcasing old school boozers in London. Some of my favourites include a review of The Nag’s Head in Belgravia; (“a very good pub in a very weird part of town..located on the type of mewsy backstreet beloved by insufferable hidden London content miners everywhere”), and one of the The Crosse Keys in the City (“amongst the glass and steel monoliths of the square mile, where the cinq a sept is as commonplace as bailouts and embezzlement”).
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The narrator’s sombre, deadpan voice layered over eerie ambient background music gives the videos a mysterious, almost otherwordly essence. As the protagonist explores dimly lit watering holes to sink Mediterranean lagers, he assesses the patrons participating in karaoke, while marvelling at the amenities and decor at hand. Sometimes it’s a decent selection of fruit machines and a framed bullet hole from a gunfight, sometimes it’s the weekly meat raffles and an admiration for the pub’s resident speed garage DJ. An evaluation on the state of the urinals is a mandatory.
On the verge of suffocating on the stifling monotony of my social feed, stumbling across Dead Pubs’ reviews felt like a breath of fresh air. Suddenly, in the palm of my hand, was a portal to a side of London I had missed for a long time; a version of the city that hides down dark laneways, away from the panopticon of content capture.
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For me, the videos are on one hand a fun, entertaining approach to championing the dying breed of ‘proper’ pubs across the nation, but on a deeper level they also have this uncanny ability to capture a certain haunting undercurrent that flows through London. An inescapable feeling that the city is entrapped in a sort of liminal space; where old boozers in forgotten corners of the city - warm, welcoming, anachronistic relics of the past - mingle with the city’s steely push towards a dystopian future: high rises filled with vacant luxury condos, cut-and-paste retail box parks and soulless winter wonderlands.
My essays this year on how social media shapes the cities we live in sparked quite a bit of interest, so I was keen to reach out to the creator of Dead Pubs to have a chat about this particular cornerstone of London culture that’s currently caught in the crossfire of digital content creation.
Below is our conversation where we discuss what makes proper boozers special, and how to celebrate them on social media in a way that does justice to their unique aura. An aura I personally feel should be protected at all costs.
To kick things off, could you please give a swift intro on yourself and why you decided to launch the Dead Pubs TikTok account?
JM: My name is Jimmy McIntosh, a writer from London. Dead Pubs came out of my Instagram account londondeadpubs where I was chronicling the closed and demolished pubs of London. That started during lockdown, but the seeds of the Dead Pubs TikTok were sown at the beginning of the year. I was watching a lot of Jonathan Meades, and thought it might be fun to do surreal reviews of London pubs.
I think this surreal - funny but also hauntingly eerie - nature of your videos is what makes them so compelling. I can definitely see the Meades inspiration in terms of exploring very ordinary public spaces and architecture with a level of profound (and sometimes scathing) cultural commentary, delivered in a serious but also ironic tone. What exactly do you think it is about the videos that makes them feel so surreal?
JM: I think the kind of places I go into — maybe a bit off the beaten path, a little bit rough around the edges — lend themselves to this noiry, moody feel. The early ones were all shot in the winter, so it was always dark, but I’m finding as we’re now in summer in the UK I either have to wait until 10pm to get that same feel, or just go for it in the daylight. I was very conscious to make sure the videos themselves were shot well, and a bit weird — I have an excellent cameraman called Luke — as I think often pub reviews on TikTok are just some bloke going into pubs with a front facing camera in one shot. You want to tell the story of these places, and get across just how good they are!
Your pub reviews feature a scorecard based on ambiencé, interiors, drinks and DPF. Could you please elaborate a little on what DPF entails?
JM: DPF stands for Dead Pub Factor — I had to shorten it to get through TikTok’s stringent word filters. It’s that mysterious quality every good pub possesses — the invisible, ineffable je ne sais quoi that’s somewhere between vibe and soul. A pub either has it or doesn’t — and you normally know it as soon as you walk in.
Speaking of blokes going into pubs with front facing cameras, it seems that TikTokers have recently become quite infatuated with traditional pubs ('pints, chit chat and good people', splitting the G challenges and so forth), which, some people say, has contributed to certain pubs, especially in east London, to become totally rammed with 20-somethings on the weekends.
Of course, what makes your content different is that you don’t try to treat these boozers as Instagram backdrops or whatever, what you seem to be interested in is actually the opposite, celebrating all the things that make them a bit unfashionable and ‘dank’.
So with this in mind, I was curious to get your thoughts on whether an influx of crowds and increase in popularity is an automatic DPF killer? Do you think these pubs should stay off the beaten track and retain their rough edges, or could they benefit from some love and attention from Londoners who might not usually venture into dark and dingy boozers?
JM: I think (maybe hope) there’s a movement brewing that wants to return to these very maximalist, seventies pub interiors — you see it in the influencers like Max LePage with the blue posts in soho. If I was really intellectualising it I’d say it’s a reaction to the millennial pub aesthetic of exposed brick and austere interiors. That was just sooo boring, and not really a conducive place to meet your mates, have a few pints, and then get off. My twenties were characterised by very average gastropubs in north and east London, catering to a bunch of people with kids and no idea of a good time. I think the hopelessness of the current economic situation has led a lot of younger people to want something more from their night out beyond a roast dinner and pint of boring craft ale.
I genuinely think no pub should ever be gatekept. There are soooo many amazing pubs out there that people don’t want to go into because they’re deemed too “dodgy”, but as soon as you walk in they’re the best place you’ve ever been. I think I’ve always wanted to turn people on to those places, especially in a time when pubs are doing so badly economically. Saying that, there are very few “untouched” pubs in zones 1 and 2 now. Places like the Army & Navy in Dalston, which I remember back in 2013 having a garden which was just rubble, have now become these Time Out must-go places. It’s good though. But I do think it’s a good thing. Hopefully it’ll make any new publicans think twice about stripping their place out, and make them realise that people want the genuine pub experience — carpets, banquettes, and darts. It’s just inherently more glamorous than a boring giant Victorian pub that stinks of cooked meat.
If it’s a question of class — well, I think the best pubs should be classless places: somewhere where everyone can go, no matter their background. That’s what a lot of them were at the very beginning on their existence. Ultimately they’re just places where people can let loose, and make friends. And that’s the same whether it’s some bare-bricked gastro in Nunhead or a 70s estate boozer in Debden. It’s about the people.
Yeah I think the discourse has recently turned into a question of class, with accusations of people 'cosplaying' working class lifestyles by frequenting 'proper' pubs, which I agree is a shame. Ultimately, there's a dearth of places in cities like London right now where people can genuinely relax in public and connect with others, and pubs have always been a cornerstone of that
With the wisdom of all the pub reviews under your belt so far, what would you say are the 3 most important or common features/traits a boozer tends to have to score highly on the DPF score?
JM: I think for me the three things they often have in common is a sense of coziness — a feeling of being a home away from home. You walk in and you can imagine yourself spending an entire evening there; it’s a place hard to leave. Then I think the clientele play a big part. The best pubs cater for everyone, from all walks of life. You want an interesting spread of people! Then finally, and this is maybe the most subjective of the three, I think the decor plays a huge part. Pubs should be a spectacle — there’s nothing more boring than a stripped back, battleship grey boozer.
Have you come across any new spots that have been able to ‘replicate’ the rustic charm of a ‘dead’ pub? or does it always require a certain patina that can only grow over time?
JM: I suppose the most recent famous pub opening is the Devonshire — which does go some way to replicating the old school vibe of a proper pub. It is, objectively, a very good pub. But it does still have a strange, otherworldly feel to it, a bit like drinking in a pub in Disneyland. Is that just because it’s still so pristine? Is it because it’s always so rammed? I can’t quite make my mind up.