SLOE
Written by James Ward
Here is a badly drawn plan of the entrance to the Sloe bar at Waterloo station:
The Sloe bar is the one which is upstairs and has a balcony overlooking the main concourse. It used to be called something else, but I can’t remember what it was. It’s called Sloe now, I know that.
I occasionally pop in here on the way home from work, for a quick drink while I wait for my train. In fact, I tend to alternate between here, Bonapartes and the Wellesley. By visiting a different one of these pubs each time, with no specific pattern, I aim to delay the point where I become recognisable to the staff and they anticipate what drink I want based on what they perceive to be the drink I buy most often and then find myself locked into their preconceptions. This is my life.
Anyway, back to the diagram. That sort of curved bit with the lines on it and an arrow, that represents the staircase. This is how people access the bar, unless they use a ladder and climb up onto the balcony, although in all the time I have been going there, I have never seen this happen. People enter via the stairs. As the pub is situated in a railway station, it’s not really a place people plan to go. It’s not a destination in and of itself. Because of this, the clientele are mainly people either in small groups or on their own. On entering the pub, people naturally head straight for the bar to order. Sometimes part of the group breaks off to secure a table while one or two members of the group order drinks for everyone.
Essentially, what happens when people enter the bar is this:
Sometimes people go straight to the toilets rather than to the bar, no doubt trying to save themselves the 30p admission charge to use the public toilets at the other end of the station:
Please note, that is 30p per visit. The 30p admission fee does not buy you a one-day pass.
So, some people come up the stairs and go straight to the toilets:
However, the people at Sloe are canny folk. And to discourage this, and to encourage people to buy a drink before they access the toilets (a cruel trick to play on those in desperation), they have installed a lock on the door which can only be opened by entering a code into the keypad. The code is currently 2589 (for the gents at least) although this code is changed periodically and I cannot be held responsible for any accidents caused by people entering this code only to be denied access. As a result, people who reach the toilet door, then realise they have to go to the bar to get the code and so this manoeuvre is quite common:
If we lay these two common patterns of entry over each other, we can see what generally happens when someone enters the bar:
The two arrows meet at the same point, producing a “hot spot” at the far left of the bar. This is the most crowded section of the whole pub. This is the point where traffic is busiest. I’ve circled the area I’m referring to in yellow:
Now, given the increased amount of traffic which passes through the yellow circle, you might think that it would be somewhere to avoid if you were planning on spending an extended period of time in the pub. People would be constantly squeezing past you on their way to or from the bar. It’s inconvenient for them and annoying for you. It would make more sense to move to another part of the pub where it’s less crowded. However, it seems this is not the case. In fact, you will often find a group of people standing here, chatting:
Not only are they standing in the hot spot, the specific point where there are more people than anywhere else in the pub trying to get served:
But as they stand in a group, facing inwards, they are often unaware that they are blocking entrance to the hot spot itself:
You may wonder why anyone would stand in such an awful position, needlessly inconveniencing everyone else entering the bar. The people who usually stand here tend to be predominantly male, in groups of four or five. Dressed in suits, usually in their thirties (often one of the group is a few years older, the boss taking his team out for drinks after work), they probably have fairly well paid jobs doing christ knows what. It’s easy to look at these people and assume they stand there because they simply don’t care about the people they inconvenience. It’s a good place for them to stand, near the bar, close to the toilets, they don’t care about anyone else. Even the fact that people squeeze past them could be considered a benefit; the constant stream of interruptions breaking up the potentially awkward post-work small talk and creating a non-stop source of action.
I think it’s more likely a kind of communication problem. Within their small group, they are insulated from the repeated message each person squeezing past is trying to say to them: “This is a bad place to stand, stand somewhere else”. They are only drawing information from their immediate situation, they aren’t looking at a badly drawn plan of the bar with some arrows and crosses on it. They probably don’t even realise that the rest of the pub is half empty. The only message they receive is “It’s a bit crowded tonight. Lively, buzzy. I like it”.
It’s similar to the problem of encouraging passengers to move down in a crowded train carriage. The people who need to move down are the people for whom the message “move down” is communicated to most ineffectually. The people in the centre of the carriage, squashed against each other, have this message constantly blasting at them. But the power of that message gets weaker as the crowding effect gets weaker. On the edge, you don’t feel squashed, so you don’t need to move down, so you don’t move down. People don’t move down the carriage, not because they are rude or uncaring, but because they are people.
This goes back to my spoons theory, I guess. We can huff and puff all we like and complain about how rude people are, but it might just be that they are completely unaware that they are causing anyone any inconvenience. This doesn’t in any way help to solve crowding problems in trains or pubs, or prevent spoons from going missing, but I’m reluctant to get angry at things people are unaware of doing, because I may well be just as guilty of committing these crimes myself. I’d have no way of knowing – that’s the whole point. So rather than getting yourself pointlessly worked up when these things happen, isn’t it better to just accept that sometimes people stand in the wrong place?
JAMES WARD: I LIKE BORING THINGS 
Hi James.
I ‘use’ the Fen pub at Fenchurch Street Station, which has eliminated this problem by not having any toilets in the retail unit.
Instead you have to process out of the pub (leaving your glass inside naturally) and then down some stairs or an escalator to the FREE OF CHARGE, but disgusting, toilet.
Perhaps all pubs in stations should use this model of business (although it is the definition of a “One Pint Pub”. I’ve never seen anyone settle in for a session there).
I shall have to investigate to compare the benefits of each system.
Yes. You should. Let me know when you will be there, and I’ll make sure to be at the Sloe Bar. We can then observe and report back to each other.
Why would you go to the station bar for a pint when for approximately the same money you could go to a supermarket for a bottle of wine and get properly smashed?
I suspect the basis for all this over-wrought diagramming is a lack of proper alcohol. Nobody who was truly drunk would give a shit about this stuff.
Well, for one thing, I don’t really drink wine. Also, it would be inconvenient as I’d already be in the station and would have to go down an escalator, leave the station, cross the road, go into Sainsbury, pick out a bottle of wine, queue up, pay for the wine, leave the shop, cross the road again, enter the station and go back up the escalator. As the trains are every fifteen minutes, this process wouldn’t leave much time to drink the wine before boarding my train.
I suspect you have magnified the supposed inconvenience of wine-buying with bogus steps that do not actually constitute manoeuvres, such as “leave the station”, “go into sainsbury” and “enter the station”. The effort of passing through a boundary is minimal.
If you don’t like wine or visiting supermarkets you could easily order a crate of vodka online and then carry a bottle about with you in your bag. In this way you could fill the fifteen minute wait sitting alone on the platform watching the world go by, never having to worry about people in suits, thoroughfares or access codes.
Those minimal boundaries create funnels which during rush hour can become even more congested than the hot spot in the Sloe bar.
The Reef Bar is what it used to be called. I think it may have been called something in between being called the Reef Bar and Sloe, but I can’t remember what.
Anyway, Rachel Green is right. In Marco Polo Food & Wine in Twickenham they do 2 bottles of merlot for £4.29, and I don’t even need a code to use my toilet.
Your suggestion is even more absurd. According to your system, I’d have to get the train from Waterloo to Twickenham, go Marco Polo Food & Wine, buy the two bottles of wine, then get the train from Twickenham to Clapham Junction and then change there. That’s a ridiculous idea, not least because I’d have to buy an extension for my zone 1-4 travelcard.
You wouldn’t actually – although Marco Polo Food & Wine has a TW1 (ie Twickenham) postcode, the nearest station is St Margarets, which is in zone 4. Anyway all you’d need to do is make one journey, say on a Saturday afternoon (I’d avoid Sundays because there are frequent engineering works, with rail replacement bus services replacing trains between Clapham Junction and Richmond), stock up at Marco Polo and you’ll have a week’s worth of wine.
Be careful though – the man there appears to have a bit of a crush on me.
If people DID sort themselves evenly, you’d be out of a “job”. Except you could find something to write about, even then.
People are endlessly predictable and still fascinating. When I went around asking people for their pocket lint (for my book the Pocket Lint Chronicles), they almost invariably said, “WHAT?!?” I probably heard it 500 times. But after that their observations, comments and anecdotes were hilarious, instructive & unique — they enliven no end the 450-page book. You’d be surprised (or maybe not) how many people couldn’t shut up about it, as if they’d never had anybody really listen to them, ever..maybe on anything. Sad.
Yes, I’m sure even if people no longer stood in the wrong place, I’d still manage to continue this blog.
Thank goodness, as it is a very entertaining blog.
If the only access is via the stairs, why is there a disabled WC? In fact I thought this was actually illegal. (The only having access by stairs bit, not having a disabled WC.)
Oh, now you mention it, there is a lift tucked away by the stairs, although I’ve never seen anyone use it.
JW, I think that you have surpassed yourself with this one. I’ll tell you what I think you should also investigate: the phenomenon of the ‘escalators hoverers’. These are people who either hover by the escalator or reach its top, stop right there where the moving step is whirring onto itself and back down underneath the machine and take in the entire floor of the department store, sometimes with an appreciative half-smile. Meanwhile, fifteen people are dodging them left and right as the machine continues to spew them up to floor destination.
I have observed that this is more likely to take place in middle-middle-class department stores (John Lewis and Peter Jones) than anywhere else. In Harrods for example, escalators are now equipped with those posts at either end which prevent people from riding them with prams. I have found this to be of greater value in totally annihilating the presence of the hoverers while being less important in dealing with the prams:
1- in Harrods, in fact, prams are rarely seen, even, and perhaps curiously, in the ‘children on four’ area. I have concluded that prams, no matter their cost, must be considered style-crampers;
2- equally, it is quite possible that the escalator posts *do* present a deterrent which, combined with the distance from each Harrods door to its nearest elevator, may well mean that prams are regarded as not-worth-the-hassle-when-I-go-to- Harrods. I have tested this theory myself and have observed that one cannot reach an elevator from any door in anything less than 2 minutes and 28 seconds. Even then:
a- I was pram-less;
b- I had to break into a small run at the Room of Luxury in order to reach the elevators on Hans Crescent, Ladurée side;
c- I could not have beaten the time if I had entered via Ladurée itself or the Candy Shop, as both of these have steps and prams-on-steps are discouraged in Harrods, regardless of the steps’ mobility or immobility.
The problem of course are neither the distance to the elevators nor the escalator posts, but rather the masses of tourists who make navigating the ground floor of the place difficult even when one knows both where she is going and is pram-less. But today I concluded that steps certainly constitute the greatest deterrent of all as I defaulted to Nero from my usual Starbee jaunt. I did this for two reasons:
1- I noted that Nero has an upstairs and, blissfully, no elevator. This means that I can now have a coffee in a coffee shop and not a nursery, as prams don’t come up the stairs;
2- I had indeed encountered the phenomenon you describe above, whereby my choice of drink was anticipated by the barista, no matter the actual request. Despite having slowly crafted an almost-impossible to remember drink (a quad skinny sugar free extra hot grande caramel macchiato to stay), I had found myself drinking it even when I had in fact requested (and paid for) a tall cappuccino.
Anyway, gripping site you have.
You should come to Lincoln ans investigate the queing problem at certain traffic lights. It is thus : The lights take a long time to permit pedestrians to cross, by which time a large crowd has amassed. Some want to go straight, others to the right and some to the left, thereby leaving a horrid mass in the middle of the road with people barging this way and that and muttering to themselves like deranged idiots. Also, everytime I allow the OH to accompany me, he stands there muttering about people arranging themselves into appropiate columns and then saying loudly “you wouldn’t get this hair brained scramble, I don’t know what I am doing here, please remind me next time I say I am coming shopping with you”, as if he would go shopping with anyone else! Plus there isn’t a decent nearby pub that I can sidle off to and have a quick G&T, and no I am not going to buy wine as I would have to remember to bring a glass as well… too much.
As above, gripping site, have bookmarked it, am visiting London soon, shall investigate!
You know – you could give of yourself a little more. You have the code; you could selflessly stand by the toilet door (but not blocking it, don’t add to the congestion) and repeatedly tell all the blokes with distended bladders, “The code is 2589.”
Perhaps you could also tip them a conspiratorial wink (and thank God I didn’t do a typo then) as you tell them? I’m sure that you would get a lot of pleasure from the gratitude on their faces. In fact, why not stand near the top of the stairs so that you could divulge this information to them as they enter the bar? Or even outside the entrance of the pub itself?
“The code is 2589,” You could say to men as they go to enter the place. And then tap your nose and wink at them. Do you see how you could alleviate the situation? Men would then go straight to the toilet rather than to the toilet, to the bar to ask for the code and then back to the toilet again.
Of course, you would have to sacrifice your own drink during your fifteen minute window. But you will have the knowledge that inside, upstairs – you have made a difference.
Go on – be that man.
Hi James (Ward). What pen and book did you use for your bar template?
I used a Uni-ball Signo Gelstick 0.7 (in blue) on a Silvine Memo Book.
James (Ward) – be glad you can observe this hotspot phenomenon in a relatively stable (boring) climate. The Terrace Sports Bar in Manchester Piccadilly station is so rough that it actually requires policemen on the door during ‘football time’. Not just bouncers but actual policemen.
The Balcony Bar, elsewhere in the station, is much quieter, probably due to the lack of plasma TVs. Once when my friend’s train was delayed in sat in there for 4 hours and bought just one drink.
@Andy Suggitt — and James should be grateful his drawing and note-taking aren’t seen as suspicious behavior. Had he noticed any surveilance camera slowly moving to read his Silvine Memo book over his shoulder?
Apparently the toilet now has its own Twitter account: http://twitter.com/SloeBarToilet
Brilliant post, I will be back to read more. Thank you and to the person writing about escalators too. I don’t feel quite so mad when I realise other people care about these things too. I love the drawings of the circulation patterns particularly.