Ground/First Floor Bar (Portobello Road)

Bill the Butcher (Gangs of New York)

Good day. My name is William Cutter. Bene.

On my challenge we are met on this chosen ground to settle for good and all who holds sway over the 5 points. Ladbroke Grove, Maida Vale, Notting Hill Gate, Kensal Rise and Westbourne Park. Is it the natives or the foreign hordes of yuppies defiling it?!

The answer to that my fleshy friends is plain to see. Civilisation is crumbling. Notting Hill Gate is a city built on hallowed ground. Antique markets, fruit stalls, street urchins and foetid rubbish come Saturday night, Sunday morning. Bodies floating in the Great Western canal. Fish-hooked by a sprat. They need the priest’s blessing for when they cross the river. This was a great man.

When I walk into the First Floor Bar it reminds me of how my world has turned to filth under my boots. Each of the five points is a finger. When I close my hand it becomes a fist. I like a good dust-up.

Ten years ago this bar reminded me of a time when men were men. Most of all it reminded me of America. The sights and sounds. New Orleans perhaps. Every personage had a story to tell and someone to listen. The long tables were made of solid oak and you could play cards and cut slabs of meat on them.

Nowadays the conversation sounds hollow in the First Floor Bar. Vacuous and la-di-dah. The patrons don’t know anything about Notting Hill Gate or the Portobello Road. Its roots and its history are as colourful as that of New York’s. But these patrons didn’t grow up here. They didn’t go to school in Holland Park or Hallfield. They went to school in Harrow. It is my intention to trim the beaks off of every empty face that I see in here. I think I will make me a nice soup from the heads. Ears and noses will be the trophies of the day. I’ll festoon these chambers with the guts of these lily-livered folk. Give the place back some colour. Don’t get me started on liver.

Some years ago they swapped the bar over from the wall on the right to the wall on the left. Genius. And what was wrong with keeping the original name “The Ground Floor Bar”? Is the Ground Floor not good enough for these people? Now we’ve elevated ourselves to the First Floor.

I approach the bar and notice a chap pulling Guinness the wrong way. I can’t abide the Irish but this man has come in on a different boat. I gesture to him.

“Who’s man are you?!”

“I’m the man who re-designs perfectly good old boozers just for the sake of it,” he says.
“I take a place with character and turn it into something worthless. You may have noticed it round here. Then I raise the tariffs to price out the riff-raff. I’ve also started serving halves of Hoegarden for almost £3… to attract a crowd of pretentious nonos,” he adds with a snort.

“Whatever takes your fancy, my young friend,” I say. “But by the way, did you know that pork is the closest thing to man’s flesh when it comes to the taste?”

I figure to butcher this man like he’s butchered this bar. The man sees the knowing look on my face and begins to doubt himself. The smell of voided bowels and soiled pants fills the air. Soiled pants from his own fundament.

I turn to the people at the bar. Some of them are eating cashew nuts from a dish.

“I think we need to tenderize this meat a little bit,” I say as I grab the landlord and head-butt him a few times to warm him up.

I seem to have an audience now. An audience of people who wish to be spared by the Butcher.

“What’ll it be?!!” I scream with one eye open (and I’ve only got one eye).

“RIB OR SHANK!!!!?” I boom.

Fear preserves the order of things. I reflect on the spectacle of fearsome acts as I hack deliberately into this fellow’s chest with my meat cleaver. No less than he deserves. I don’t give a tuppenny f**k about this meat-headed sh*t sack. This is a kill.

You get to learn a lot, butchering meat. We‘re all made of the same things – flesh, blood, tissue. But I don’t recognize my fellow man in the watering holes of this town anymore. This bar has no soul – that’s plain to see. But it also has no brain, no spine, no heart and no guts.

Help yourself to some decent meat on the way out.

Bill the Butcher's rating for The Ground Floor Bar - 2 / 10

Savage Cheyne

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  “,….. Why didn’t they live to be 100?Huh? Well, they woz running round all day, hunting mammoths, eating berries,..rumping their little hearts out. No boozing or smoking. They must have been fit as fiddles. Yer Neanderthalls……….I’ll tell you why, it’s … Continue reading →