So, finally, here it is, a proper post on the Rusty Bicycle! The landlords were kind enough to have a chat with me this afternoon, so I got to find out more about what’s going on, and as far as I can tell, it’s good things. See below…in the meantime, I think I’m off for a quick pint down the road, and I suggest you do similar…

On the corner of Hurst Street and Magdalen Road, deep in the heart of East Oxford and nestled between the Cowley and Iffley roads, used to live the pub where cheer and warmth went to die: the Eagle Tavern. Now it’s the home of the Rusty Bicycle, a wood-floored gem run by a pair of young, friendly landlords. My interest in the pub is partly selfish (it’s a matter of yards from my own house), but mostly, if I’m honest, cultural.

Hilaire Belloc, a transplanted Frenchman with an appreciation for all things English, wrote this in 1948: “Change your hearts or you will lose your inns, and you will deserve to have lost them. But when you have lost your inns, drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England.”

Perhaps it takes a foreigner to see the truest importance of pubs; and if that’s the case, I’m certainly qualified. In my California youth, the pub was the pinnacle of exoticism, required a stretch of the imagination just to envisage. It’s one of England’s most famous institutions, built on simple foundations (beer, human company) that have outlasted every recent age, outlived every war and every movement for centuries. And today it runs the risk of becoming sterile. I am not an expert on pubs, but even I can tell that there’s a sadness in the hollow bellies of mass-marketed establishments like O’Neill’s, Wetherspoons, The Slug and Lettuce, places so often replicated, and in so many different locales, that they have ceased to be anything but a holding pen for the tipsy and the more-than-tipsy. The contrast to the Rusty Bicycle, which is still only in its infancy but, as far as I can tell, in good hands, is striking.

Alex Arkell and Chris Manners are fresh out of university. They talked about running their own pub idly, but had other plans until a passing comment from Arkell’s father, the chairman of Swindon-based Arkell’s Brewery, set them on a short path that ended at the Rusty Bicycle.

The turnaround was almost shockingly quick—they’re still breathless talking about it. Manners was heading to Berlin, he says, his travel companion had already bought a ticket, and then, suddenly, he was a pub landlord. The Eagle, true to its reputation, wasn’t in good shape when he and Arkell arrived, but four skips and a lorry full of rubbish later, they had purged the building of mold, carpet, rotting meat, and a weary atmosphere.

The renovation, funded by Arkell’s, resulted in a complete transformation of the pub, which now features warm wood floors, a fireplace, bold wallpaper, and an assortment of furniture handpicked by the young landlords. The result is a pub with personality, enhanced by the photographs and drawings, all done by friends of the landlords.

Still, say Arkell and Manners, the Rusty Bicycle is a work in progress. When I meet with them on a chilly Tuesday afternoon, they are busy hanging a dartboard. They are also looking further ahead, awaiting installation of the internet so that they can offer customers free wifi, as well as a phone line so that they can accept cards (they currently have a cash-only policy). They look forward to opening during the daytime and being able to serve food, as well, and hope to eventually feature live music, open mic evenings, poetry, and quiz nights. They’re still finishing things off, they say, and don’t want to rush anything, but, as Manners points out, “it’s all about not getting stale.”

And so far success, it seems, is on their side: they have sold more alcohol in two weeks of business than the Eagle sold in an entire year. But it’s when they start talking about their clientele, however, that Arkell and Manners begin to reveal what makes them so different—and so refreshing—in a city, a nation, of pubs.

“We don’t want to alienate the local people,” says Manners, and in East Oxford, this can mean catering to a hugely diverse range of people, from students to young couples to established locals who have lived here for years. The landlords say their main goal is to make everyone feel welcome, and that they especially want to draw in people who are looking for a nice pub to settle into for the evening. This, I think, surely this is the point of the pub? And am thrilled to hear them affirm it.

Publicity for the Rusty Bicycle has been almost exclusively word-of-mouth—which in itself has tied the pub even more tightly to the community, who have, upon recommending it, at least some small sense of ownership of it.

This sense of interactivity is crucial, and Arkell and Manners are making the best of it. They tell me that just the other day, they had a customer come in with a photograph of a rusty bicycle, and that they’re going to frame it and put it up; another customer, they say, wants to partner with them to sell his sculptures, made of old bike parts. They may be young, and lacking in traditional experience, but if they do want to be not just a pub but a local pub, they are doing all the right things.

“A good local pub,” writes Paul Kingsnorth in his book Real England: The Battle Against the Bland, “serving good local beer, is the ultimate antidote to placeless globalisation. At its best, it can be the perfect representation of a rooted, human scale institution serving good-quality local produce, which results in good-quality local enjoyment.” The world is huge and times, they tell us, are dark; things that are good, and human-scaled, may be just about all we can take these days. And, anyway, as Kingsnorth writes, “It’s hard to know what more to ask for.”

The Rusty Bicycle 28 Magdalen Road Oxford Oxfordshire OX4 1RB
Opening Hours are Monday-Thursday 6 pm-11 pm, Friday and Saturday 6 pm-1 am, Sunday 6 pm-10:30 pm, but check back shortly as the pub plans on opening during the daytime soon!

And Some More Rusty Bicycle:

Where it is…
An article in the Oxford Mail
Arkell’s

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Another visit to the Rusty Bicycle tonight–a quick stop after a lovely evening. I keep promising to write more on this place and I will, but for now, a summary:

• We like. Very much. Warm, cosy, and exactly the pub you want on the end of your street.
• Some very trendy people; apparently some sort of message went out to the big-glasses American-apparel wearing Cowley road crowd.
• Therefore: good people-watching.
• But not sure how we feel about the cowboy-boot-wearing, Guiness-drinking Tibetan with no sense of social convention. I’m not usually very supportive of stifling and oft-arbitrary customs, but there are some that you just need, and this dude, he broke all the rules.
• The bike rack out front is getting lots of use. How very cool.

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Looks like they share our opinion…can’t wait to see what it’s like inside. They’re open as of tomorrow apparently, and as I also get paid tomorrow, I think we might be able to afford the luxury of a pint or two…

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The pub down the road, the Eagle Tavern,has been a curiosity for some time. It’s at the end of our street, a matter of yards from our house, but I can count the number of times I’ve been inside on one hand.

There has never been anything overtly wrong with it; just another pub in a sea of pubs. The Vicar who lives next door (I don’t think he actually is a Vicar, that’s just what he’s called), in the house called Seaview cottage (we couldn’t be any further from the sea), who dresses impeccably, talks impeccably (like an overwrought English gentleman), and is certifiably loony, has been drinking there more or less every night since I moved in. Once a bridal party had their after-wedding drinks there, and a brawl broke out. The police moved in and carted off every single bloody-fisted male in a matter of minutes.

Inside, the Eagle was sad, as if all of the pub-ness had been drawn out with a siphon. No merrymaking here; just hard drinking, lone men drowning in bibulous despair. It had thick patterned carpet and stale air, and you got the feeling you could get lost inside, though it wasn’t very large. Once we played pool and once we watched the football but even the drecepit facade seemed to warn us off having fun.

I mention this because the pub has changed ownership. A new sign has gone up; no longer the Eagle Tavern but the Rusty Bicycle. Though we think maybe it would have been cleverer just to hang an actual rusty bicycle outside, we’re heartened by this move, and by the fact that, peering inside, it’s evident that they’ve ripped up the carpet and revealed the wood floor. It won’t be open for a while yet, but I am harbouring secret hopes that we may end up with a cosy little pub literally on our doorstep.

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“If this is love…there is something highly ridiculous about it.”
Virginia Woolf, Orlando

After the crowded late-Summer bustle of Brighton, Oxford seemed full only of ghosts if it was full of anything: the streets wide and empty, the people, when they came, very quiet. Gone were the calls of the Hare Krishna as they marched, the yelps of excited babes and the storms of hip young traffic. All old; all calm.

As I sat waiting for the clouds to part overhead (they showed some inclination to do so just over Blackwell’s), it seemed to me that all of Oxford was bathed in the most precious of blue-grey light, which made the walls shimmer and the air, though quite cool, as in a dream.

At last I began to feel cold, sitting there on the steps, and glancing idly to my left saw that tiny pub, The White Horse, and thought, just as idly, that I could go and sit in the warmth and have a half-pint of cider and be quite content for a time, especially with a book; and so struck was I with the idea that I leapt up almost at once and began to make towards the place, whose windows glowed appealingly yellow. I was tired of sitting on the hard stone, of watching everyone on their way, of being unmoving; tired of waiting for a friend or acquaintance to pass, and quickly, happily, found myself inside where all smelled of wood and ale. It was warm, too, and this warmth meant a great deal to me, for all the air of summer seemed to have been bled from the day, leaving only a soft Autumnal chill and a grey haze over the city. I asked for a half of cider.

“Just a half?” said the barman, but without any humour. I might easily have been cajoled into a pint by a cheerier ‘tender, but so dry seemed this one that I simply said:
“Yes, just a half,” and took it and sipped, and sat down upon a high bench near the window.

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