The tricky part being to try to tell a lie that isn't actually true about some goths somewhere.

[reddragdiva]

A quiet day hanging out with ickle_yuki. hirez decided to brave London for the first time in two years (he has a doctor's note excusing him from London) so ickle_yuki and I went into Camden to meet up with him, girfan and three other people who apparently have LiveJournals and whose LJ usernames will be in the comments to this entry, won't they, John. One had invited a sociology student called Maryanne who was doing something on Goth. Just the subject to ask a table of twenty-year goths for opinions on. (If you ask two goths to define goth, you'll get four answers. Twenty-year goths do ten answers each without drawing breath.) We confused her utterly with the truth; she would have been much less confused if we'd just played Bait The Sociologist and lied outrageously. (An endlessly amusing game I predict you'll see much more of in the near future, as young sociologists really start to notice our potential as term papers in black.) I referred her to Hodkinson, with the caveat that I thought it was a pretty good book if you translate it back from academic into English, but that I knew many goths who cursed its name. She said she really likes goths and finds them interesting and likes their clothes ... I predict we'll see her down the Dev every night within six months.

hirez and girfan had come for the Icon Of Coil ("I took too many drugs/I took too many drugs/I took too many drugs/And wrote a crap but catchy chorus") and Assemblage 23 ("I ripped off VNV/And then my dog died/Oh woe") show at the Underworld. We hung around in the queue in the pissing rain for a short while saying 'hi' to people, then came to our senses and nicked off to the Dev for a quiet Sunday evening drink. The Dev was, of course, packed with showgoers skipping the Swarf support. (But hi to duranorak, sheridanwilde, Flavio, cyberpunkgrrl, untermensch and gothicbarbiecat.) Left for Euston station and the Coopers pub therein. Do not go to this pub. It has real beer, but it also has football yobs (a pile of whom were being loud and racist to bait the almost entirely black barstaff and bouncers, who showed remarkable forbearance but did stop serving them) and Britney on the jukebox. And they won't serve anything in glass, in case of trouble. The Dev may have been packed and smoky, but I just don't get the same urge to kill the entire clientele. One little fitba' skinhead tried to start a fight with me on the way out.

Is real ale in plastic pint glasses a victory for beer? A point to ponder.

Fortean phenomenon: John Hawkes-Reed in L*nd*n, out front of Underworld. No smoke! No mirrors!

(I am so loving this camera thing. By the way, the above is the first output of the camera to achieve public unlimited release. Aren't you lucky!)

Comments

[reddragdiva]

I suppose I would choose the real beer in the plastic glass. But really I'd choose to drink elsewhere, unless the company was particularly wonderful.

[damerell.livejournal.com]

On reflection I'd choose crap beer in real glasses over real beer in crap glasses _and football_.

[reddragdiva]

And I too would actually have chosen the crap beer in glass glasses - i.e., the Dev.