I was just about to post in defence of Farnborough, given that I’ve enjoyed playing at the Tumbledown Dick on several occasions – a couple of hundred year old pub with a good sized music venue out the back, run by nice people. It turns out that Farnborough has recently granted McDonalds permission to rip the place down and build a ‘restaurant’ instead, which is about as crap as town-based crapness can get.
**cracks knuckles**
I used to spend a LOT of time in the Tumbly. I worked there for a while too.
Here’s the facts that the ‘Friends of the Tumbledown’ won’t tell you:
The place was falling down. The rooms were damp, the carpet and decor filthy, the kitchen a health hazard (Which is what eventually closed it down, someone got ill and complained, HSE went in) and the beer badly kept. I wouldn’t drink anything that didn’t come in a bottle form there, and a friend of mine got very ill on the bad beer once
Nice people? Yeah, they were, but the management and staff didn’t give a SHIT about the place. It was treated as a doss house. That’s why I didn’t work there long, I was sick of being the only one doing anything. When it closed, all the regulars and staff just went elsewhere, they didn’t care then*
It was bought out by another brewery who decided it wasn’t a viable proposition as a pub, so they sold it again.
By all accounts the inside was wrecked after years of standing empty too.
So yeah, whist i’d rather see it as a pub too, that’s not gonna happen, ever. So it’s better to let McDonalds do something with it rather than let it fall down or demolish it. It’s all work for someone.
*These are the people that have been kicking up a stink since McDonalds announced their plans. I know a couple of them from wayyyy back. But it’s cool to hate a big company these days, isn’t it, so on the bandwagon they jump, wailing and gnashing their teeth. Too late now.