The Crown

So once again I set out to do the extremely important review of chairs in the pubs of Selly Oak...and once again I failed. I did, however, get to spend the night in a pub drinking and listening to the last ever (probably) gig of Diamond Water Spade.

The Crown has a reptuation of being 'a real pit' and 'a bit of a dive'. I didn't find it too bad, though that could have been due to the taking-over by all the people there to listen to the bands. It's about 3 minutes walk from New Street station, 2 minutes from Nostalgia & Comics, and a few seconds from The Electric.

But we don't care about that! On to the chairs!

The Crown has a varied selection of seating - i.e. there are no two chairs the same in the place. Following the Rules, no preference was given to where I sat and the table and subsequent chair was as chosen by someone else (who was unaware of the review taking place).

This is the first chair I sat on during the evening. First impressions were that it was a bit rickety, although it seemed reasonably comfortable. After a while the seat of the chair was still pretty ok, however the back was quite hard and started to get a bit annoying.

Later on, we moved to another location in the pub and found myself sitting here. Whilst not technically a chair, it does have many chair-like qualities - such as the ability to sit on it. The seat was a bit hard really - much harder than it seems by looking at it. I would also recommend that an arm was added to the bench as it seemed to be in need of something to lean on.

Things start to go downhill for my reviewing ability at this point since I'd had a reasonable amount to drink and no tea. From what I can remember, the bench was reasonably comfortable and I had no problem sitting on it for most of the evening. It must have also been very well built due to the abandoning of sitting on it in the convential manner and instead sitting on the back bit and using the 'seat' part for feet.

This is my best attempt at a photo. Yes, it does look more like a tower of sweet wrappers in an ashtray with Emma's hand partially covering the lens, use your imagination (that thing TV has attempted to kill off).

Overall, The Crown probably isn't going to be winning any awards for it's seating. The many, many different chairs available in the pub make it likely that the odds of getting a nice chair are a bit hit and miss - which could be advantageous if you're into that kind of thing. Personally, however, when going into a pub I would much prefer to be certain that the seating was going to be of adequate quality to last the entire evening.

- Damian, June 05

birmingham uk europe world