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Other pub sites

The educational stance is very absent

Posted by ⋅ ⋅ 5 Comments
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When I started Get to the pub.com I had a number of goals in mind. It would celebrate the pub, in all its aspects, and encourage readers to do likewise. It would be a pub blog that mentions beer, rather than a beer blog. It would be written with a bit of love and care. And it would hopefully show up better in the web search rankings than those awful generic pub sites, conceived to make money through advertising, left abandoned or semi-abandoned, full of placeholder pages, bereft of either useful information or attractive writing, and getting in the way when you’re looking for pubs using Google.

You know the sort of thing, right?

Well, if you don’t, I’ve just come across the worst example yet, in a site called My Pub Guide. Here’s what it has to say about the Coopers Tavern in Burton on Trent.

Coopers Tavern has been described as having: an entry in the good pub guide, food service, lunchtime menu, and quiz night. You might want to contact them on 01283 532 551 and mention My Pubguide to whomever picks up the telephone. The nearest bus station is not within five miles of this public house and the closest Cineworld cinema on record appears to be Cineworld: (0.24 miles away).

By contrast, Get to the pub.com visited the Coopers Tavern in May 2010 and discovered it to be possibly the greatest pub on God’s sweet Earth.

Still, what do I know? I’m just the amateur blogger. You won’t want to hear about the tiled floors, wooden tables and stools, with ornamental mirrors, a fireplace, pretty cushions and brewery paraphernalia. Or the expertly chosen and beautifully served ales. You won’t have the remotest interest in the visitor who spontaneously started playing the Coopers Tavern piano that Saturday afternoon, or the way a dozen strangers gathered around him, pub serendipity lighting up their eyes in joy and wonder.

No. The main thing you’ll want to know about, before you consider setting foot in the Coopers Tavern, is that educational stance. It’s very absent, I’m afraid.

The Coopers Tavern

Front room at the Coopers Tavern

Window at the Coopers Tavern

Very absent.

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About Pete Green

Poet and musician. Sheffield. Maps, coastlines, walking, whisky, and potentially dangerous levels of wist. Grimbarian. Pedestrian. King of the impossible. Big girl's blouse.

Discussion

5 thoughts on “The educational stance is very absent”

  1. I can scarcely believe My Pub Guide exists. It’s auto-generated non-journalism. Probably the worst use of characters to form sentences I have ever witnessed. I hope they’re site is miserable financial disaster.

    Posted by Richard Eason (@richerde) | 30 November 2011, 8:05 pm

  2. I was so angry I misspelled “their” and missed out “a”. (It’s the online equivalent of having to go back for your coat after you’ve stormed out of a room.)

    Posted by Richard Eason (@richerde) | 30 November 2011, 8:07 pm

  3. What a pile of bollocks. Why do they even bother?

    Posted by Brian Trevelyan | 1 December 2011, 1:24 pm

  4. I like to come across as cleverer than I actually am. I wonder if anyone could give me some ideas as to how to cultivate “the educational stance”?

    Posted by looby | 6 December 2011, 8:11 pm

  5. Would it boost the pub’s educational stance if we wrote some ghost stories for it?

    Posted by Simon | 12 December 2011, 10:54 pm
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