I'd Tap That

The York Tap's success reflects a slowly growing interest in local breweries over multinationals. And the beer's amazing.

My first drink of beer was in my parents' house aged 14. I had a half a lager with some lemonade in it, and I remember quite enjoying it. As far as I can recall the brand was Fosters lager, an Australian lager that's brewed here in Manchester, England.

The most Australian thing about Fosters as far as I can tell are the hackneyed TV ads, which themselves aren't really reflective of Australians (I've been, FYI). And that's one of the reasons I've not really drank lager as a preference for about eight years. The other, more significant reason is less sophisticated. Basically I can't stand the taste of lots of lager. Carling, Carlsberg, Tuborg, Fosters, Budweiser, Stella Artois - I hate all of it. It makes me feel a bit ill drinking it.

Ill physically. Despite the clear inference of snobbery in that first paragraph, I'm not using the term 'ill' pejoratively here; I just don't like the taste. Don't get me wrong, I'll drink lager if the taste doesn't require a conscious effort to concentrate my thoughts elsewhere. I quite like Amstel and Heineken for example. And I've not even mentioned Budvar, the gateway pint to full-on Eurolager snobbery. It's just that there's something offensive about a drink that's so conspicuously unpleasant being so heavily marketed.

So trips to North Yorkshire are usually full of exactly the sort of experience my wary drinker persona loves. Especially places like the York Tap, possibly the nicest pub I've ever seen in a British railway station. It's got a mosaic floor and hardback chairs for God's sake; there's a certain Catholicism to these places that's never gone out of fashion with a large portion of British society. Predominantly Yorkshiremen, I'd wager.

The York Tap (right) mostly just sells what is colloquially termed as 'beer' and I'm not sufficiently enlightened nor pretentious enough to distinguish the varieties here. I will say there's a few IPAs (Indian pale ales for the uninitiated), a couple of porters (a sort of stout-y drink that commonly recalls chocolate, liquorice and coffee), some milder stuff and a good selection of mid-strength ruby coloured beer that you would happily trade a day of aspirin and water to sup your way through. The only food they sell is pork pie, which is slightly one-dimensional even to a lover of pork pie, but then no one's here for the food.

The Tap's just won the Best Cask Beer Pub in the Great British Pub Awards 2012 and its monastic style to food and décor extends to its marketing. It has a website, just about advertising the above. Want a menu? There isn't one - until you're in the place. It all infers a certain never-mind-the-bollocks-here's-your-pint (they'd probably snort at 'je ne sais quoi') and it's also riotously popular with drinkers.

Sitting in the York Tap, slowly going numb in the hind quarters, supping a half because you actually want to taste the next beer as well as get a bit more drunk, it's easy to assume this is simply part of the beauty of Yorkshire. After all, towns like Knaresborough and Otley offer so many pubs you wonder if anyone ever goes to work. But does this county offer a glimpse of a more diffuse future in British pubs? More bare floorboards, less ItBoxes, pubs that are pubs and not horribly ignorant approximations of 'continental drinking'?

As well as the nationally famous John Smith's, Black Sheep, Timothy Taylor and Theakston breweries, Yorkshire is home to dozens of microbreweries. There are 43 breweries in West Yorkshire alone. Whilst there's no point - or indeed solid evidence - in suggesting that the original English variant of beer - live, just below room temperature, un-carbonated - is claiming its rightful territory back from the invasion of lager beer in the 1970s, the undoubted increase in popularity of places like Manchester's Port Street Beer House (below) is part of a wider cultural change. Smaller is better if you like, as perfectly evidenced by Tesco's blatant grab for the market with its purchase of Giraffe last week.

It's likely an audience would always have existed for the Tap in York, as evidenced by that mass of breweries above. But the success of pubs eschewing the multinational Fosters, Carling et al would have been unthinkable only a decade ago.

As I suggested in an article about embarrassing TV shows, economic downturns prompt many people into overdue introspection which leads to questioning your lifestyle choices - what you're eating has recently come under the microscope (literally in some cases) and inevitably people who were happy spending money when there was lots of it suddenly want more for their buck.

It's an inevitable characteristic although not a little depressing in its origins. It's actually not got much to do with cost per pint - Port Street and new kid on the block Brew Dog are more expensive than their high street counterparts - but they offer a perception of sincerity, commitment to excellence and ingenuity that Yates and Wetherspoons can't - or won't - invest in.

So is beer getting more popular? Possibly not - but people are choosing more carefully. The most encouraging, and maybe ironic, element to this story however is this: the less that people have, the more adventurous they become. That's a great and positive story and bodes well for a small pub in York train station.

Pictures courtesy of Port Street Beer House and Planet Confidential

(Don't) Mind The Gap

It scares the hell out of me. But is understanding art really key to enjoying it?  

Whenever I go to look at an exhibition, a great sensation grabs hold of me. It's part excitement - who doesn't enjoy looking at things they could never create themselves? - but also a state of nervousness, which is rooted in the fear of feeling nothing upon seeing whatever you're intending to look at/ interact with.

The nothingness is linked to ignorance of course, which is probably what every person is most afraid of and engenders different reactions depending on environment and nurture. Broadly speaking I can deal with ignorance; I cross its path so often we're almost bosom buddies, but art unnerves me to an extent that I tend to just look at it and move on.

I 'studied' (was taught) art at school and am a reasonable artist myself (strictly drawing and generally I like cartoons but I can do still life and stuff like that) - indeed my work hangs in my hallway (a jungle scene, with a chimp wearing Air Jordans since you didn't ask) which you can visit any time. So on a primitive, purely intuitive level, I 'understand' style, which is probably why I enjoy pop art so much.

But ask me what it means and you'll get a blank look. So my trip to Tate Liverpool in February represented a chance for me to better understand my relationship with art and actually have a crack at understanding what they're on about, if you'll pardon the colloquial nature. So this might be the only blog you'll read that has no professional/academic/other insight into art whatsoever. It's just what I think.

This was one of my favourite pieces from my visit and is by an artist named Frank Stella, an abstract expressionist. Now I actually know what abstract expressionism comprises of without having to resort to Wikipedia or gallery notes so I enjoyed this picture all the more. Jackson Pollock has always been one of my favourite artists, basically because I have a visceral connection with his work - for want of a better term, it moves me. This strikes me as really personal in composition and the style is almost musical for me; with the colours suggesting something exotic and beautiful. Indeed there's a macaw in there somewhere...

This is a piece by internationally renowned British painter Francis Bacon and was one of the best things I saw all day. There's currently an excellent exhibition showing by Sylvia Sleigh on contemporary Renaissance-style art which, as you'd expect, was incredible to observe in detail and depth, but nothing interests me like this sort of work. Bacon feels like a big influence on JG Ballard and even latterly David Foster Wallace in his warped appraisals of human consciousness and at the risk of exposing my shallow intellectualism, this kind of reminds me of 1920s Picasso in the framing and angular nature of aspects of the work. Genuinely no idea what's occurring here but the somewhat bureaucratic setting and flat, soulless background, in strict conflict with the almost grisly centrepiece of flesh and distorted face in the centre point to something sinister and tortuous.


I recently got done reading Constellation of Genius (I reviewed it on this blog if you're so inclined) and as an entry point into the beginnings of what's now termed modernism it's a fantastic read. This piece is by Hans Bellmer, an artist best known for his sculpture and in particular a very famous piece known as La Poupee. Bellmer was linked with Breton's burgeoning surrealist movement in the 1930s and knowing what I do of Dali (also discussed in that book, btw) I found this an immediately identifiable and therefore enjoyable work (all surface, me). A painting that inspires several thoughts all at once is for me a successful one and this one is another piece that's on nodding terms with human existence but also seems weirdly alien and almost percussive to me somehow. Bellmer's appeal to Breton lay in his sexualisation of youth and feminine beauty (he was a cheeky boy after all was Breton) although I must say I don't feel much sex oozing from this.

Liverpool's waterfront is getting better and better; I last visited the Tate for a Picasso retrospective in 2010 and it's come along even further since then. This picture illustrates nicely the fairly radical approach the city's architects are taking towards reconstructing the old shipping yards of the Mersey. I think they provide a great companion piece to the vast expanses of flat, angled walkways on the waterfront, and it's great to see something challenging with a signature style to it - even if I can't explain what it's all about.

Not Sarong After All

The National Football Museum's Strike A Pose exhibition proves footballers can create great entertainment in other industries. Well, some of them can.

Having a week off work has, oddly, made me more productive. That and seeing a former schoolmate living in Australia as a designer anyway. So last week I decided enough was enough. I was done (for now) with marathon lazing sessions in bed watching TED talks on my mobile and eating croissants with jam. Erm:- not the croissants with jam, then.

My first step away from my safety blanket (which really is my bed, ironically) was a baby one. I decided to visit the National Football Museum here in Manchester, which has been part of the city's cultural makeup for the last three years at the Urbis. Which itself is a beautiful piece of work and well worth staring at, particularly on the fine day I got.

As well as many good friends that are my intellectual superiors, my Twitter feed is populated by comedians and football journalists from various media. In my mind's eye the role of the football journalist is a glorious one; Michael Cox's coffee-fuelled dissections of dummy runs and wing counterattacks which probably involve copious Excel somehow, Raf Honigstein's witty rendering of the whinging that's somehow juvenile and intelligent between Uli Hoeness, Jupp Heynckes and Jurgen Klopp, and "the Sunday column" (my prefs: Daniel Taylor and Henry Winter); this last one assumes almost institutional status in my Sunday morning routine and stands as the ultimate bulwark against internet journalism, a form invariably devoid of statistics (read: evidence) and usually as interesting as a Tony Pulis formation.

Any fan will tell you there's a visceral, near-tangible sensation of group thought that's at its most powerful in football, but it's deeply evident in fashion too. I've seen at first hand how trends, new seasons and the famous four cities that make the worlds' fashion weeks inspire people to discuss, debate and commentate on something that feels theirs. It's a wonderful feeling and it doesn't surprise me to find many people in football are therefore very interested in fashion as well.

The Strike A Pose collection at the museum is testament to a lasting cultural relationship between fashion and football and it was easily the best part of what I felt was a brilliant monument to the sport. Whilst few would argue it possesses the depth and history of more established cultural forebears, football shares a powerfully nostalgic quality prevalent in the best art and music, and in fashion it has a partner passionate about re-evaluating history and revising its most interesting elements.



Hello boys. Who's that second from right?

Everything was in there, from Mourinho's chic grey cashmere coat (above) to the (in)famous 'cricket flannels' Armani suits Liverpool wore to the 1996 League Cup final (right). But the most interesting collections for me were George Best's clothes from his fashion line and an evaluation of fan fashion from the 1970s onwards. 

Best would have thrown La Nausee in the Seine; he was a man who lived, never passive in anything and for that reason destined to burn out before the finishing line. For that reason a lot of descriptive English doesn't really apply to Best and never will; he was never ethereal in presence or aloof in attitude. Typically the clothes he designed embodied that life and were an uncompromisingly contemporary and stylish statement, in comparison to the staid postwar suits of Bertie Mee's Arsenal side in the 1960s. Best's collection possessed a floridity and vibrance that lazy people would term 'quintessential';- I prefer to think he just liked mustard turtlenecks.

It was also great to look at fan fashion objectively, without the sinister inferences found in Nick Lowe films and Jeff Powell columns, and see how and why it developed. I particularly loved the more 'tailor-made' stuff that was directly responded to its environment; Massimo Osti's goggled mac (left) is an inspired bit of outerwear that's both practical and infers that a statement's being made.

And of course, the UK's relationship with the national sport meant the afternoon represented a chance to snuffle around a conscience perpetually tearing itself apart over everything before generally making the right call. Except for those Liverpool suits of course. Just look at the state of Neil Ruddock.

Liverpool team photo courtesy of Liverpool Echo