Right, I'm back from the pub.
Some of you have probably heard horror stories about the grimness of Welsh pubs.
Some of you might even have heard about my hometown, the decaying Valleys shithole that is Aberdare.
Now, get yourselves a drink or a few or a LOT of drinks and let me regale you with tales of the legend that was The Carpenters Arms.
First, a bit of history. Like most Valleys shitholes Aberdare was a coalmining and ironworking town. That meant that in the heady days of the Industrial Revolution it was a boomtown. Lots of miners and ironworkers meant lots of pubs. Like lots of other boomtowns of it's day it also meant overcrowding, poor sanitation, and, unlike lots of boomtowns, even during the industrial revolution, it eventually led to a cholera epidemic that got so bad that questions were raised in parliament. Questions that led to a report that, in passing, described The Carpenters as a 'den of vice, iniquity, opium and stews'
By the mid 1980's not too much had changed. It was the druggies, metalheads, punks, greebos, goths, skins, mentals, outsiders and generally not polite peoples' pub of choice. It had: A good jukebox, albeit one you had to kick occasionally to stop certain 7"s from skipping. Cheap beer. A succession of VERY tolerant landlords and landladies. Cheap beer. A pooltable. Cheap beer. Live music on a fairly regular basis. Cheap beer and even cheaper women. LOTS of fights though. Oh and did I mention the CHEAP BEER?
It was the pub you went to if you wanted to score, the pub you went to if you wanted something shoplifted on demand, the pub you went to if you didn't 'fit in' in most of the other pubs in Aberdare, which were populated by 'normal' people ie proto-chavs.
Now, bear in mind that in the mid to late 1980's, Aberdare bore the sobriquet of 'The Las Vegas Of The Valleys'. It had more pubs and clubs per head of population than That London. Every Friday and Saturday there used to be coachloads of people coming into the town from Merthyr, Maerdy, Ponty, Neath and all the other nearby valleys, even some from Swansea and Cardiff. ALL looking for a good night out, a good fight, a good fuck, or any combination of the three.
Hardly ANY of those good folks EVER came into The Carps. Such was it's reputation. Those brave (or foolhardy) few that did either fucked off sharpish or fit right in and came back week after week.
Crass played their last EVER gig there (EDIT: NO THEY FUCKING DIDN'T YOU MORRON, IT WAS THE COLLISEUM! Fuck, I was there, and all these years I've ALWAYS remembered that gig as being in the Carpenters. :/) . Phil Campbell (now out of Motorhead, then in Persian Risk) was a sort of regular, sometimes playing acoustic sets if a booked band hadn't turned up or had been scared off (EDIT: maybe I'm wrong about this too. hell, maybe I never even went in The Carpenters. Maybe The Carps never even fucking EXISTED.)
There was the night one of the dealers, knowing he was going to be searched as soon as he left, handed his entire stash and his night's takings to my mate's girlfriend, safe in the knowledge she could be relied on to give him most of it back (EDIT: Perhaps this happened somewhere else too.)
The xmas eve when a tiny little 4 foot nothing girl tipped the pool table over and proceeded to beat the living shit out of her boyfriend because he'd put John FUCKING Lennon on on the jukebox. (Now, I despise that hippie cunt, but still...) (Edit: AND this, although it does ring bells).
The night when an EXTREMELY cheesy chat-up line got me a dose of crabs. (Edit: I'm fairly sure that this DID happen there)
The many, many nights when dodgy cigs were handed round freely but surreptitiously at the back and EVERYONE just got mellow and NOBODY fought (EDIT: I'm not entirely sure about the last bit of this now).
The night my mate Ruddles met his ONE TRUE LOVE. (He was a shy boy, and after much giggling with her mates she approached him with the line 'You do realise you're God's gift to women, right?' (EDIT: This really DID happen there though).
The night my mate SOG was led in on a leash by his then Grrlfiend mentally scarring some poor morons (EDIT: so did this).
Of course, it couldn't last. Even Adam and Eve got barred from Eden eventually.
The final landlord, Stew, was a decent enough bloke, but he couldn't exercise ANY sort of control. The dealers were pretty-much self regulating, but some of the clientele were totally self-destructing. There were joints being openly rolled on the bar, smack being injected in the Ladies' (The smackies couldn't see in the Gents' because one of them had broken both the lights.) The roof was leaking, the pool table effectively destroyed, at least three of the balls had been stolen, and half the cues didn't have tips. But there was still the Jukebox
Now, at the time my mate Wally was going out with the daughter of one of the higher ranking coppers in the town, and we heard, unofficially, that while The Carps had always been tolerated in the past because 'That way we know where all the real troublemakers are at any given time' it wouldn't be allowed much longer. I mean, not only was Stew allowing all this, he was even selling bottles of poppers alongside the shots (legal, but still, poppers being sold at the bar?).
Come the fateful night, as usual it's gone one in the morning, and there's a lock-in. I'm playing Outrun. Badly. When about a MILLION coppers bust in. Fair do's, as far as I remember they didn't arrest anyone, they let me and my mates go at any rate, Stew got a caution for the lock-in and that was pretty much that. Or so we thought.
About a fortnight later I was in town one afternoon when I bumped into my mate Jaffers. 'Fancy a pint?' I asked.
'Yup. He replied.
And down the street towards the Carps we headed, until we saw no fewer than 3 riot vans pull up outside it and a BAZILLION, fully riot-geared up coppers pour out of the vans and into the pub.
'Soooooo,' I said 'Cambrian then?'
'Aye.' said Jaffers.
The Carps was eventually bought up by a PubCo, and turned into a 'Vodka bar' the cunts renamed it Rasputin's. Apparently you can book the place for a night if you'd want to. Got no idea what it's like though, never been in there since.
*Raises a Spicy and Sunny D in memory of The Carpenters Arms. I miss you. STILL*

tl:dr? SUMMARY: GREAT DODGY PUB WAS GREAT. AND DODGY.
( stuj (^(^;;^)^) GO TEAM SPIDERS!(^(^;;^)^), Sat 8 Feb 2014, 3:17, 6 replies)

People who turn proper pubs into fucking idento-bars should have their innards slowly pulled out through their noses.

( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Sat 8 Feb 2014, 8:11, closed)

Well-written, descriptive and funny
*Click*
(Captain Placid 24/7 ball gags, brownie mix and clown porn, Sat 8 Feb 2014, 8:18, closed)

Why don't you tickle his balls while you're down there?

( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Sat 8 Feb 2014, 8:23, closed)

Praise for a good QOTW entry being similar to sex in Shambo's mind,
In that he has had neither.
(McChinaman banned, Sat 8 Feb 2014, 18:38, closed)

Arf
Yet another candidate for "why can't replies win?"
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Mon 10 Feb 2014, 13:14, closed)

TBF - these stories are like listening to <insert my home town> and therefore they will all
be the same. However, I am clicking dis for the effort.

My home town was the "per capita" highest Class A drug users, Prostitutes, Murder and Knife Crime. Nice place.
( d.r._and_quinch when will you be famous?, Sat 8 Feb 2014, 8:55, closed)

I likes this
so I have duly clicked like.
There's a few places like that which still exist in Swansea. Most probs because your place closed down.
( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Sat 8 Feb 2014, 21:50, closed)

shame
the Coach House never made it though.
(magic the cat will someone please think of the kittens, Sun 9 Feb 2014, 12:46, closed)