The Park Tavern - Finsbury Park

"No Children Allowed" greeted me as I went to push open the door to enter The Park Tavern - immediately I knew I was going to like something about this place.

First thing I thought when I looked inside is how bloody small it is, though the elements of what we look for in a boozer where all there thank god.

My eyes were greeted by what seemed like a Da Vinci oil painting of beetroot red faced men leaning against a bar. They gazed up at an old television in the corner that was tuned in to the horse racing, with one much older bald man out of the foreground, who picked his nose and flicked them onto a carpet of ancient weave while he sipped at his Fosters.

After I'd realised that I wasn't looking at a priceless piece of art and that I was actually just looking at a load of beer swilling lager louts, I heard a mysteriously husky London voice coming out of a man who looked like Rod Stewart. He'd got the hair right (which asking the barber for business at the front, party at the back), he'd bought the Nice N' Easy home highlights kit, he'd decorated his wrists and fingers with jangly silver jewellery. The guy even had a pair of purple velvet Cuban heels. He'd clearly done his homework.

Anyway that's the plebs who flock here, let's talk about the pub as a pub.

Yes it is a boozer and yes it has the elements of what a boozer should have:

Cheap beer, a fruity that doesn't ever pay out and a good dart board, plus for good measure everyone who is inside is completely battered and yet reluctant to admit this in their body language. Just think of people unable to stand up without leaning on something and blinking very, very slowly. You get the idea.

When I was at the bar I was conscious of the fact that they had an utterly terrible selection of wets, it was either Guiness or Fosters. The other side of the bar however has exotic luxuries such as John Smiths and Doom Bar from the tropical coasts of Cornwall. I guess they put the shit selection out front for the pansy tourists who go about with their SLR cameras swiveling about from their chest like an erect penis.

At the back is where all the action is (oi oi)! No seriously, there's a room round the back where all the noise and chat (and the lasses) are. The lasses have shit jumpers and wear massive hoop earrings which may scream of a lifestyle of Jeremy Kyle and KFC but you're more likely to lean forward when you've had a few and ask in you're most masculine voice where they're off to next rather than a guy with a head like a red billiard ball picking his nose now, aren't you?

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