British Bar Chain Bans Swearing & Patrons Are Totally Ticked Off

Image courtesy of Stuart Chalmers

If you can’t tell your friend about that one time you were so sh*tcanned you f***d up your f*****g phone when you dropped it in dog sh*t while having a few drinks at the bar, is it really an authentic bar experience? Some pub patrons in England — where bar owners are trying to appeal to families — don’t think so. In fact, they’re pretty f*****g pissed off about new bans on swearing in bars.

The Wall Street Journal has quite a, uh, colorful piece on new “no swearing” policies that some bars have adopted recently, with the goal of attracting a more wholesome audience interested in the high-end dining atmosphere of newly popular gastropubs and bistros.

For example, Samuel Smith Old Brewery, which owns more than 200 pubs across the country, ushered in a new “zero-tolerance” policy on swearing, in which potty-mouthed patrons aren’t served drinks, and can even be kicked out.

“You just can’t ban swearing in a place where they serve alcohol,” one bar patron at The Cock Tavern, owned by Samuel Smith, told the WSJ. “That’s bullsh*t.”

Some pub operators — known as landlords — note that there are no clear rules about what constitutes as swearing — is “bollocks” bad enough to be banned, for example? Or “bloody”? — so the whole thing is a bit confusing.

Others feel that profanity and the pub experience should not be divorced from each other.

“The British pub is an institution where people go to enjoy themselves, an informal place where class and salary are forgotten,” a member of the Campaign for Real Ale 187,000 beer drinkers around the world told the WSJ. “We don’t need rules to restrict that.”

Pubgoers are prepared to fight back, including a longtime Samuel Smith’s patron who has vowed to swear up a storm at the bars to protest “this sh*tmonkey of a decision” that constitutes “arse-backwards twittery.”

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