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Most memorable bar visited "up the road" ?

169K views 416 replies 187 participants last post by  Troppo 
#1 ·
"Sunshine" on Kilindini Road Mombasa (not to be missed)
Pat O'Briens - New Orleans (fell out comatose)

I'm sure there's many more to mention ! (Pint)
 
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#335 ·
'Fairleys' on Leith Walk, Edinburgh....

/QUOTE]

It was my friend's father who owned this bar and it was one place we used to go when up for our tickets.
did anyone experience the "famous" drinking place called "Sally's" which was the watering hole for the crews when on the Aussie coast and loading coal in Carrington (Newcastle NSW)?
Her famous saying when in a good mood was "you're all Pommy Bastards and I love every one of you"
I was too young to frequent these places but had to go there and try and get the crew back on board so we could sail !!!!
 
#314 · (Edited)
Texas Bar

The Texas bar in Lisbon. I seem to recall it had a ship's lifeboat suspended from the ceiling, in which you could sit and drink. That was c/1970, I daresay it failed the Lifting Regs load test since then.
More recently (2008 or so) the sign was still there, but it had been converted inro a trendy disco.... I didn't go in, I just assumed it was trendy because the Cais do Sodre has been yuppified. Well apart from a few possibly dodgy places.... the Copenhagen Bar, and a downstairs place in a side street??
 

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#316 ·
The Texas bar in Lisbon. I seem to recall it had a ship's lifeboat suspended from the ceiling, in which you could sit and drink.…...
Entirely correct re lifeboat being suspended from roof....BUT, as I recall, access to boat wasn't permitted. I was once asked to leave said establishment after climbing into the boat and giving a rendition of Delilah!

(But then maybe I was just out of tune)
 
#319 ·
What was the bar just outside Redheads, c/1990?
And what was the disco / night club out by the beach where Thursday night was popular!?

The Legion was great on Sunday lunchtime, bingo and something else...
The bar outside Readhead's might have been Tyne Dock

The bar on the beach was "The Shoreline" an interesting (!!!) place, seem to remember Thursday nights was "Ruperts" under the amusement arcade in Ocean Road - only ever went in The Shoreline on a Wednesday (Because every where else shut at 11!!)
 
#324 ·
I hope that the Captain Cook in Sydney might still be in business!

I salute it as the first place of far too many in which I ever worshipped at the shrine of bacchus, in 1959. Thankfully I can still say, with Churchill, that I have taken more out of alcohol than it has ever taken out of me.
 
#329 ·
ACB Bar was a laugh. Pretty sure it was owned by Moji Meri the old bird who a coca cola boat that came out to the ships at anchor flogging souvenir stuff. There was always a load of girls on board but I didn't hear of any monkey business with them. Kiomi San would of course have been a different story. Hope for your sake that she wasn't one that I met one time.

John T
 
#331 ·
Originally put this link on the other site - in the quiz section and nobody recognized it (EEK) probably to much of the (Pint) at the time.

Used to be the Harbour Lights (now the Licky Tomato Bar) just of the Motomachi in Kobe.

This is a Google 360 deg view. Motomachi at the top of the alley. If you rotate 90 deg to your left, you can go through the door in to the bar (Virtual drinks are on me (Jester))
I often wonder what happened to Lisa (who I loved dearly) and Emico the 2 girls that worked there along with the Mama-San. Last time I was there in 1983 both girls had left and the place was a karaoke bar.

Looks like a P&O pennant and possibly a photo of a UASC K class behind the bar still after all these years.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@34.6882139,135.1875176,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipOVh5wCJyeCgssTzcme44V4gDegxWIqEHV_FHOQ!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipOVh5wCJyeCgssTzcme44V4gDegxWIqEHV_FHOQ%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya75.95145-ro-0-fo100!7i5376!8i2688
 
#334 ·
That was the place where the 3/E received some, shall we say, oral gratification under the table. The Chief Engineer who was universally detested had invited himself along and the following day was making much of how the same hostess, on our way out had exchanged saliva with him. Now the big question was, everyone else on board knew, so did we tell him??
 
#336 ·
Many memorable bars still remembered fondly and the charecters in them but nobody as far as I can tell has mentioned the pigs on the liners the cheap beers etc,the Cunard ships out of Liverpool served Wrexham Lager if I recall correctly for eleven cents American or shilling a pint early to mid fifties it was said that the bar men made more money than the old man,on the Sylvania the trip she was laid up the barman I met years later he was running a pub The Newton Brewery Inn in Middlewich if I remember the empress ships sold a brew called Hop Leaf nowhere near as good as Wrexham lager.any more memories brethren on the pigs and the charecters in them let's hear from you.
 
#338 ·
Hi Tom,
I only sailed on two ships that had a Pig and Whistle. One was the Empress of Britain, and the other was the Andes.
The Pig on the Britain was right fwd, at the end of the working alleyway as I recall and was a very big space always crowded and noisy and had lots of gambling going on. The beer was dirt cheap but pretty weak stuff, and as I was on the 8 to 12 the whole time I was on that ship, I rarely got a chance to go in there.
On the Andes, the Pig was aft and on the main deck. It was used very often for showing films, and for camp shows put on by the drag artists from the catering staff. A raucous place, and scene of many a lover's tiff between the outrageous queens, with which the Andes was well supplied.
Apart from those two ships, most of my onboard drinking was in the sailor's rec room, which on Blueys was nicely fitted out, with comfortable chairs and couches, with a radiogram , dartboard, bookshelves, well stocked with westerns.
The main problem was, beer was always rationed, sometimes only two cans per day, sometimes four. So we would save it for the weekend and have a good session on a Saturday night.(Thumb)
 
#337 ·
The Legaspi, just outside the dock gate in Manila, was a first port of call for many Ben Liners on the way up the road ( quite a few of them married Filipina girls from there over the years).
Plenty of GoGo bars whose names I can no longer remember.....One place I do remember was the Hobbit House, Manila, where all the staff were dwarfs....mind blowing after a few sherbets.
Loved Manila - great place... Benrinnes (small feeder container ship) had a weekly service Kwai Chung,Hong Kong to Manila before the new container gantries had been built in Manila for larger box boats.
 
#348 ·
Plenty of GoGo bars whose names I can no longer remember....

Yes indeed. I was based there for a few years on a cableship. Certaintly a lively nightlife - until ex-police chief Alfredo Lim was elected Mayor on an anti-vice ticket. Nicknamed "Dirty Harry" he closed most of the dodgy bars in Ermita. Rightly so I guess. We watched on TV in horror as he and his henchmen walked down MH del Pilar, boarding up the bars.
The bars just moved out to Makati which I think was not under Lim's jurisdiction.
A movie was made about him!
 
#346 ·
Royal Albert Dock London

As a young cadet in the fifties, I remember one night being invited ashore by two AB's.....our first port of call was the "Round House" just outside the gate....what an eye opener for a young country lad...also visited the "Bridge House"...think that was East Ham
 
#347 ·
Tropicana and sunarama Colombo Sri Lanka,
Hotel Colon Puerto Cabello, great old juke box in there, tried learning spanish with waitress there over many weeks,
Forget name of bar outside gates at gulfport, remember being wheeled into there in shopping trolley, caused a bit of buzz with police, but thats another story
Then there was that hotel in Fremantle when no pubs werecooen on a sunday, but they had a group playing rugby tyoe songs, may even have been kevin bloody Wilson. Thats the only place in the world that the air made me stagger and i finisged up in safety net having missed footings on gangway.
Boogie street, singapore, was it the gut in Malta, great place for bar crawl in those days. Keo brewery, great tour round finished up with copious amounts of beer on veranda.
Cant understand where the money went!
Found being an R/O was a tough life, go ashore with 8 to 12 watch for a look around, get back on board and find 12 to 4 watch say come ashore, then again with the 4 to 8. Renember the time one captain @#$$#@$#% me out fir soending too much time in bed, the mate heard him and said to me i had better stay up.
Sorry folks lost track of thread, but every bar was a special place, and its sad to think how many i have forgotten.
Anyone else recall bar in Dover ran by an ancient lady, dildoes all around room on shelves sent to her from all sides of the globe, she would say if you wanted a drink help yourself and put money in till, if barrel ran out you had to put next one on.
Going back to traning days in bristol who recalls the coronation tap near suspension bridge, courage beer but scrumpy cider served from barrels behind bar rough and smooth. Barman would have made big daddy look like he was on a diet. Then there were the lockins on the christmas steps near theatre, and don't forget the , umm, gambling joint upstairs rooms somewhere of white chaple road.
Thats ot . Rant over, beginning to think i was close to beong an alchie
 
#349 ·
Scruffy little place near the docks in Kingston with empty shelves at the back of the bar. There were two rat holes and there must have been a barrier behind because, after checking for the barmaid, the rats used to make a run for it along a shelf.
Additional entertainment was provided by warning aforementioned barmaid whereupon she'd pick up a broom and attempt to splat the rat.
It was like something from a Tom & Jerry cartoon!


p.s. Lest anyone be unduly concerned about my non-PC punchline, Amazon and The Guardian are on the case:
Guardian said:
Early Tom and Jerry cartoons that feature the stereotype black maid, now carry a health warning on Amazon. The animations, it warns, represent “some ethnic and racial prejudices that were once commonplace in American society … that were wrong then and are wrong now”.
We can all sleep soundly.
 
#351 ·
Dont know why but the Moulin Rouge in Beira sprung into my mind. Was a dive close to the port and the first visit on a run ashore and catered to the needs of the seafaring community. Seem to remember the bar stools being made from elephant feet/lower leg -cannot say for sure if this was the case since my main focus was probably on the beer.

Looked it up on Google and still there albeit seems to be a upper class restraunt now. Would be curious to know if it makes more money as a restraunt or as a dock road dive?
 
#352 ·
Lee’s love nest Galveston Texas 1970.
I’ve posted this years ago on best port.
The waitresses would dance topless on quiet nights and sometimes they would go on the small stage and make various sized bottles partially disappear.
We went there every night for a week, on the Friday night it was packed and one of them produced a sombrero and said if the crowd filled it with dollar bills they would give us a show we would never forget. The sombrero was promptly filled but one of the two waitresses wouldn’t go through with it so we all got our dollar back.
I don’t know what they would have done to entertain us but it would have been worth a dollar to find out.
 
#353 ·
Hi I spent about 18 months on the coast 68 69 an I remember the Dock tavern
Goole and the Bodega And the Port Bar Cork and the Bear in Swansea there where a couple of Pubs outside the Bute street Dock Gates Cardiff as a 21 year old they were hard places to be in but absolutely fantastic to have been in and I wish I could do it again
Granty
 
#354 ·
Moulin Rouge and Chanticleer in Recife. Montgomery's​ in Sydney, Charley Hotham in Melbourne, Cleo's in Freemantle and probably hundreds of other first bars as well as many of those mentioned. Talk about see the World through the bottom of an empty glass. Over thirty years dry now but wouldn't have missed a minute.
 
#355 ·
Most memorable bar visited "up the road"?

Moulin Rouge, Chanticleer in Recife. Montgomery's in Sydney, Charley Hotham's in Melbourne, Cleo's in Freemantle, the Nash in Brisbane and probably hundreds of first bars including many already mentioned. Talk about "see the World through the bottom of an empty glass". Thirty years dry now but I wouldn't have missed a minute.
 
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