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Tag Archives: pub

Let the Vulcan die with diginity

April 26th, 2012

If you live South Wales you’ve probably heard of the Vulcan pub, perhaps only as a result of the long-running campaign to save it from being demolished.

The Vulcan is a pub that has been around for over 150 years, and the area that it is in has seen radical changes in the past 40-odd-years. It’s been around so long that the area that it was originally built in no longer exists, yet somehow it lives on, just.

Where it is now is a nowhere area – in between the city centre and Adamsdown – everything around it has been demolished, new buildings have been built up and it’s no longer a residential area – save for the 21-storey block of student flats right next to it.

Local brewery, Brains, keeps threatening to close it and knock it down, suffering the fate of every other building around it – but a high profile campaign that started in 2008, which drew in celebrities like The Manic Street Preachers, politicians like Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and thousands of signatories on a petition has saved it thus far.

Here’s the problem with the campaign to save the Vulcan – despite 5,000 people saying that they want it to remain, none of them actually go to drink there. It’s a love affair with the past that has to end, and will inevitably end, probably soon.

Hell, if they can’t even get the students in from next door – of which there are about 650 – to help them pay the bills by buying a few cheeky pints, what chance have they got?

I’m not one of those people that thinks the past should be unnecessarily levelled to “make way for progress”, but in some circumstances it is right to do so. The Vulcan now stands out like a sore thumb, and it’s preventing anything else from being built on the land around which it stands, where workshops were demolished a couple of years ago, and now is just a tarmac car park. It’s almost there out of spite.

The Vulcan had a reprieve, its supporters had a chance to make a go of it, the fought the good fight, but it didn’t come off – send The Vulcan to Switzerland, it’s time to end it all.

Save the Vulcan campaign

Pen & Wig closure rumours are Chinese whispers – Official

July 3rd, 2010

A friend of mine posted on Facebook this morning that there were rumours about that the Pen & Wig on Park Grove in Cardiff is going to be closed down and/or turned into a high-end wine bar. I’m tired now of internet rumours so I decided to do some digging.

The first details started coming out on Thursday July 1st, put out there by Buzz Magazine on their Twitter feed. There is apparently also a petition on the bar at the pub itself, though I cannot verify this.

So, here I have some information straight from the horses mouth:

The Pen & Wig is not being closed down. Nor is being taken over by another company.
The establishment will however be going through a rebranding exercise. It is currently run under the Town Pubs brand, one of Mitchell & Butler’s. It will be transferred into the Nicholson’s Classic brand, also by Mitchell and Butler.

There is a big difference between these two brands.
Town Pubs is a cheap and cheerful brand, they focus on low priced food (like the Pen & Wig’s £2.99 meals) and cheap beer. See this link for more details on Town Pubs.

Nicholson’s Classic are big on real ales, this will see the Pen & Wig’s repertoire of real ale double, from 5 to 10. The food will also change drastically, focusing on well-made hearty food like sausages, pies, real mash and the like. Also the pub may have all its furniture renewed, something that it definitely urgently needs, in my opinion. See this link for more details on Nicholson’s Classic.

In the back of house the kitchen area is being doubled in size to accommodate the new styles of food that it will be offering, so that fresh food can be prepared, instead of the pre-made meals that they mostly serve at the moment.

The assistant manager, Aslim, seems excited about this and is very quick to quash any rumour that it is being remodelled to change the clientèle. The Pen & Wig was one of the first pubs in Cardiff to adopt the “cheap and cheerful” ethos that now every bar in Cardiff has and that it has to stay ahead of the curve in order to remain popular.

So, no need to fear, your beloved Pen & Wig is not closing down. Not being turned into a wine bar or a fancy restaurant, but it is going a bit more upmarket.