Devil's Advocate: Aikman's?

YES: Soren Rasmussen

This article is not sponsored by Aikman’s Bar & Bistro.

It seems the work of the Aikman’s defender never ends. Every day, I find my honourable home laid siege to by those whose narrow imaginings of the student pub fail to comprehend it, who see nothing more than a jaundiced quagmire of the drunk and disorderly. Every day, I hear this invective butchery by you torch-wielding mob, your misguided diatribes. But so be it. Dutifully, I’ll roll up my sleeves and defend my land ‘til the end.

Let the record show that you and I experience the same Aikman’s. I must declare this upfront, for in my duties as defence counsel, I am consistently accused of blindness. But rest assured, I see the grime. I smell the curdling. I was there when you came to play cards and found your Queen of Spades beheaded by the molasses-flypaper surface of the wooden tables. I warned you: Never bring a new deck of cards into Aikman’s. Never bring anything new, for that matter. Would you wear diamonds to the circus?

You may think I contradict myself. But for a town whose cosmopolitan aesthetic hinges on being a brushstroke away from Caillebotte — whose figures ritualistically emerge from Sallies with champagne in hand like it’s the Faubourg Saint Germain — we need a pub that actively rejects elegance, where a white tie and tailcoat does look a tad overdressed.

And what better third space does this town offer its students? Where else should we stake our loyalties? With TDR Capital LLP, otherwise known as the Rule? Or Forth Bridge Capital LLP, aka the Dunvegan? Should we wave the flag of Cheung Kong Property Holdings Ltd, proprietor of the Central, Whey Pat, Molly’s, and Greyfriars? In this Timberlakian age of tentacled conglomerate parasites and Mixr strobe lights, should we not prioritise our few independent institutions? And if, like me, you honour the Keys as the hallowed ground of locals but don’t always fancy a £7 pint at Criterion or Brew Co, where else can you go?

But I have been too conciliatory. Regardless of options, I enjoy Aikman’s. I prefer Aikman’s. It is democratic in the messiest sense of the word. As bartender Palmer Lykes puts it, “This place is allowed to create itself. This place creates its own culture. Any other bar in town, there’s already an entailed reason for it to exist. This place has no reason for being. It only exists to sustain whoever chooses to come here and exist within it.” By the people and for the people. Just take one look at the bathroom stalls with their equal parts poetry and profanity. It is less a pub than a public forum serving beer. And while the topic of conversation might get savoury, at least it’s human. There’s no match on, no television, and certainly no service. Just you, your friends, cheap(er) beer, an idiosyncratic cast of regulars, and maybe the geriatric tatters of a Trivial Pursuit. You learn to live together. You create this place together.

That equation is enough for me. If it’s not for you, that’s fine. I’ll see you at midnight when your pub is shut, and it’s Aikman’s or 601. I’ll be at the corner booth in the cellar. Grab a beer and pull up one of the empty crates for a stool. Then you can tell me all about the smell.

NO: Sam Spendlove

Like pixie dust, I get the feeling that Aikman’s doesn’t work unless you believe in it. And I don’t. I don’t a lot. It was the couch that first killed my willing spirit; the moment I sat down, it smelled my fear and tried to eat me. Thank god my friend was there to pull me out. I spent the rest of the evening perched like a gay canary on the couch armrest, leaning forward with all the grace of Slenderman as I tried to join conversations. It’s oh-so-hard to triumph over indignity — harder still when you’re suffering next to three French-intellectual-wannabes who clearly take you for someone giving Sartre an itch in his grave. As if he never crossed his legs over an armrest. 

Okay, so I don’t like Aikman’s. The minute I enter that mango-coloured bar, I want to leave; the weird drink case, the tweed, the narrowness of the space, and the perpetual clank of wooden chairs being moved here or there — everything combines and I see red. Well, I see yellow (funny story: the colour of the walls in Aikman’s is actually my favourite colour. Anyway, I had it first). One time, I ordered something from the drinks case and, when the bartender lifted it out to give it to me, I saw that it had been hiding a dead fly. Then, I did the thing where you drag your finger across a table to check for dust; I did it for effect because I’m awful, but I did get results — a whole grey smudge of one. All that dirt and grime, and there’s no room in the damn place to run from it! If you do manage to get away, you might end up entombed in the Cellar, where a Tory will undoubtedly try to convince you that they have a novel approach to austerity which will work this time (“Hear me out, hear me out…”). Gag me. 

Supposedly, what people go looking for in Aikman’s is character. You know, artsy-fartsy-boogie-woogie-fancy-nancy character. In fact, all anyone can tell me about Aikman’s is that it has character. The more people say it, the farther I seem to get from a coherent definition of this ‘character.’ Is it the people? Because I once had an Aikman’s crowd look at me like I had wandered in from Bama Rush just because I asked to be let through. I once asked for a chair, whereupon a pair of students holding cigarettes and paperbacks of translated French literature said succinctly: “No!” Listen, all Aikmanites: I don’t want to talk to you, either. If, in seeking character, I have to accept being quietly called trashy and dumb by a Tory who’s four pints in — I’ll pass! I’ll find some character elsewhere. 

No one wants to say it? Fine, I’ll say it: Aikman’s is just a Greene King Pub for anyone who’s ever owned a second-hand copy of Middlemarch, a CD player, or who wears/wore wired headphones. YEP! And I can say that because I’ve done ALL THREE!  All character is mainstream in its own way — and with that curse, I leave you. Though many of my dear friends and loved ones can regularly be found in Aikman’s, I simply must throw the baby out with the bathwater. Come find me somewhere later, guys — somewhere that can accommodate uptight plebeians. 

Illustration by Louisa Nguyen