The Mysteries of Samuel Smith's

Sunday, 26 July 2009

I know plenty of people who hate Sam Smith's pubs because they don't sell Guinness or Stella. I fell in love with them shortly after moving to London as a student ten years ago. Their resolute stance against all prevailing fashion certainly appealed but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't their remarkable £1.60-a-pint pricing policy that kept me going back to places like the Chandos off Trafalgar Square and the Fitzroy Tavern on Charlotte Street.

Other than regularly boring people with the great bit of pub trivia that Samuel Smith was John Smith's cousin I've rarely given much thought to the company that brews Britain's cheapest pint but Pete Brown makes some interesting observations about them in his new book Hops and Glory. It's part history of India Pale Ale and part travelogue of Pete's attempt to recreate the voyage that took IPA halfway across the world to quench the thirsts of sozzled expats. Before coming up with that idea though Pete considered writing a piece of investigative journalism about Sam Smith's.

I've enjoyed Pete's previous beery books, Man Walks Into a Pub and Three Sheets to the Wind. Not only are they entertainmgly written they're also full of quotable nuggets I can't help but bother Joanne with. Ten pages into Hops and Glory I stopped to read this out aloud: "If Willy Wonka had been into beer instead of chocolate, he would have been called Samuel Smith". Pete sums up Sam Smith's pubs perfectly:

Sam Smith's pubs are cultish in both commonly used senses of the word. They look like they haven't been decorated since the 1970s, but not in a bad way. They only stock their own brands of everything. They don't advertise. They don't talk to writers or journalists, even those who love them. They don't even have a website

What really interested Pete about Sam Smith's though was "why are they so secretive. What they've got to hide. How they come to own so many pubs in London, given that they're based in Yorkshire and these pubs must be worth a fortune."

I'm halfway through Hops and Glory and glad that Pete chose IPA as his subject rather than Sammy Smith's. Still, I'd now really like to know the answers to those questions, wouldn't you?

Related Posts
Three Sheets to the Wind - piece I wrote about Pete's previous book on my other blog, Carnival Saloon

Related Links
Pete Brown's Beer Blog - worth reading even if you're teetotal
Amazon: Hops and Glory- buy Pete's excellent new book
Amazon: Three Sheets to the Wind- Pete's beer world tour
Amazon: Man Walks into a Pub- enlightening (and funny) history of the British boozer
Sam Smith's London Pub Map - where to find a pint of Old Brewery

President Poindexter

Monday, 22 June 2009

I love The Onion. Not only does it usually make me laugh out loud each week it's also an essential weapon in defending America against two common complaints from my fellow countrymen a) Americans are stupid; b) Americans "don't do irony".

Of late though I have been disappointed that The Onion seem unable to really satirise Barack Obama. Whereas George Bush and his neon-con cronies were a humorist's dream all The Onion seem willing to mock the new President for is being a nerd. For example:

• Obama Depressed, Distant Since 'Battlestar Galactica' Series Finale
  
• Obama Disappointed Cabinet Failed To Understand His Reference To 'Savage Sword Of Conan' #24

I thought about this as I finished reading Sarah Vowell's book The Partly Cloudy Patriot at the weekend. In her essay The Nerd Voice she says, "What we need is a president who is at least twelve kinds of nerd, a nerd messiah to come along every four years, acquire the Secret Service code name nickname Poindexter, install a Revenge of the Nerds screen saver on the Oval Office computer, and one by one decrypt our woes." The book came out in 2002 and that sentence now reads like a prophecy.

At the heart of the essay is Vowell's regret that Al Gore denied "his innate nerdiness" because the press favoured Dubya's jock image to Gore's smarty-pants geek. What America needed, Vowell correctly asserts, is a leader who knows a lot of stuff in great details and not a failed oilman whose favourite book is The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

At the end of the essay Vowell writes that

I wish that in order to secure his party's nomination, a presidential candidate would be required to point at the sky and name all the start; have the periodic table of the elements memorized; rattle off the kings and queens of Spain; define the significance of the Gatling gun; joke around in Latin; interpret the symbolism of 17th-century Dutch painting; explain photosynthesis to a six-year-old; recite Emily Dickinson; bake a perfect popover*; build a shortwave radio out of coconut; and know all the words to Hoagy Carmichael's Two Sleepy People, Johnny Cash's Five Feet High and Rising, and You Got the Silver by the Rolling Stones...

I have tracked Obama's geek appeal for some time and read his two books. From this brief survey I have no doubt that the president can complete 90% of those tasks; his upbringing in Hawaii certainly gives him an advantage when it comes to coconuts. I guess time will tell if an in-depth knowledge of Spider-Man comics is an advantage in dealing with Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and the worst economy in living memory.