April 2024. Sheffield.
I guess Sheffield is known internationally for four (4) things;
- Will the Sheffield Hatter, Pub Galore’s top pub photographer
- Annie’s Song by John Denver, a popular tune about chip butties and Magnet at the football
- The number of pubs where it’s still possible to get a sub-£4 pint
- Retired Martin’s garden (incomplete)
- Oh, and 5) the World Snooker Championships at the Crucible.
Despite attempts to move the Championships to another hotbed of the sport like China or Saudi because (checks notes) “it smells”, the players seems to love Sheffield. £500k for the winner must help.
As in 2022, I’d booked a ticket for an early session a year before; they sell out in an hour. The luck of the draw had given me Gary Wilson v Stuart Bingham that Monday morning, which is a bit like getting to watch Brentford v Everton in the FA Cup.
Another fantastic view for your £35, seated next to two Dutch tourists. I reckon they were really there to follow my Sheffield Doom Bar trail. There’s a great line in T-shirts from the real enthusiasts;
Joe Davis really was the Manchester City of the sport, wasn’t he ?
It’s the quality of the view at a sport you always assume is made for TV that really surprises,
and the complete silence for 3 hours of gripping play dominated by Stuart Bingham, a former champion.
3 hours is far too long to be seated to risk a pint beforehand, and the handpumps have gone since 2022 in favour a keg Abbeydale which I suspect was a fiver.
The refreshment pricing at the Crucible will be startling to anyone who’s watched live sport at Ally Pally or Wembley. Coffee and cake for £2.80, breakfast toasties for £4.50.
Contrast those prices with the ill-fated Co-op Arena opposite the Etihad (where a pint of Asahi is a little over a fiver for City season ticket holders);
Blimey.
Oh, and if the Co-op isn’t ready for Olivia Rodrigo’s gig on May 4th I know she’s be welcome to perform in the Hare and Hounds. Just saying.
retiredmartin 
Those ludicrous prices at the Co-op Arena probably explain why its launch has been utter shite.
Nine quid for a Guinness in a plastic cup ? They can F.R.O.
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And that Guinness is almost certainly the most popular according to our spy in the camp.
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Sounds like a re-run of the Berlin-Brandenburg Airport opening, fiasco – the one that kept being pushed back, because the fire authorities weren’t happy with what they found.
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I understood they were awaiting a decision from CAMRA at this weekend’s Members Weekend on mandating beer in oversized glasses.
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Discussing “mandating beer in oversized glasses” was hardly the highlight of the weekend.
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Was that the incident known as BrandenburgGate ?
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Anonymous, the incident you refer to, was climate change activists, defacing Berlin’s iconic Brandenburg Gate.
What I had in mind was the nine year delay between the original 2011 opening date for Berlin’s new airport, and the actual opening, which took place in 2020! There was a series of successive delays due to poor construction planning, poor management decisions, and corruption – or so says Wikipedia.
According to the Manchester Evening News, there are “outstanding elements” at the Co-Op Arena, that need to be sorted before shows can take place . These include a fully tested emergency services communication system, plus some remaining internal security systems and fire safety measures.
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Rather surprising they allowed the Rick Astley test event to go ahead the other week if there were actual safety concerns. I presumed that the issue was training staff to deal with customers asking for a taster.
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I know the Co-op is only sponsoring the new arena next to City’s ground, and has largely demutualised itself anyway, but those prices still seem a long way from the principles of the Rochdale Pioneers who determined to end such gouging of the consumer (although given that they were mostly Nonconformists and members of the temperance movement, who refused to sell alcohol in their stores, they might well have approved of them as a measure to stop the working class drinking).
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I’m not sure if it’s the prices or the dullness of the range that disappoints most; at least they have Beavertown at the Spurs stadium.
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Thanks for making me Number 1 in Sheffield, but I’m afraid I’m only 4th on the Pubs Galore photographers list, with 11,568 pubs photographed. I’m just 238 behind the second, who may have given up the ghost (none posted since 2019), but the top two have done more than 20 thousand. It would take me until I’m about 120 to catch them.
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Yes, but you’ve more photos of closed John Smiths estate pubs, I suspect, Will.
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No, that would be the late, great Alan Winfield.
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