Fruit Machine Chat

Yates and Spoons have 2 and 1 respectively but they are slow to update. Yates doesn't even have Itbox Soccer yet, neither have Boggle. There's a Spoons on Whitehall which has one as well. I've never been able to find any other Itboxes in the area (other than heading to Baker St or wherever). Any ideas?

leonardo1 wrote:Yates and Spoons have 2 and 1 respectively but they are slow to update. Yates doesn't even have Itbox Soccer yet, neither have Boggle. There's a Spoons on Whitehall which has one as well. I've never been able to find any other Itboxes in the area (other than heading to Baker St or wherever). Any ideas?

Probably one at the Wetherspoons on Wardour Street in Soho - that's not far away. There's definitely one or two other pubs in South Soho with ItBoxes - one round the back of Piccadilly Circus if memory serves. There's also one in Waxy's Little Sister just to the north of Leicester Square.

That area is becoming a real desert. I had an hour or so to kill yesterday evening and found three pubs which have completely removed quiz machines altogether after years of having them - The Sussex, The Salisbury, The Porcupine - and another one, The Polar Bear, was closed (not sure how permanently) after already having removed its machine last year. Yet another one, the former Hogs Head which I think is now called something else, has removed its ItBox and replaced it with a dismal Paragon. Add this to the long queues to get into Wetherspoons and Yates (and the bizarre ID check on the door at Yates which I mentioned in a different post) and it seems we can safely leave that whole area to the tourists, the pizza joints and the portrait painters...

Nil Satis wrote:the former Hogs Head which I think is now called something else

Apparently it's now called "The Crooked Surgeon":

http://www.beerintheevening.com/pubs/s/ ... ter_Square

I've just moved to London and I was expecting the streets to be paved with quizzers. I must have been spoilt in Carlisle & Glasgow.

there are quite a few other quiz machines in pubs nearby. the comedy has two shitboxes, hand & racquet has a gamesnet, ditto trocadero bowling bar etc.
can't understand the aversion to paragons though. imo they are better on every level than itboxes.

leonardo1 wrote:I've just moved to London and I was expecting the streets to be paved with quizzers. I must have been spoilt in Carlisle & Glasgow.

I agree. Because of its sheer size, London has many many machines, but I think it's probably worse than most towns in (a) the low percentage of pubs and bars that actually have machines (I'd speculate purely off the top of my head that maybe 10-15% of London establishments have a machine whereas it seems more like 30-40% elsewhere); and (b) the distance one often has to travel from pub to pub (whereas in smaller towns / cities most of the pubs / bars are quite close to one another and can easily be hit in one session). There's also the point that by and large London machines are played well and are, broadly speaking, less likely to be gagging than their counterparts elsewhere in the country.

O'Neills off Leicester Square has a Gamesnet. Also one in the Essex Serpent in Covent Garden

There's also an INDE in the Bear & Rugged Staff just off Leics Square

QuizMaster wrote:O'Neills off Leicester Square has a Gamesnet.

not sure about that. unless we are at crossed purposes. the o'neills off leicester square and at the end of chinatown has everything but: a shitbox and a paragon downstairs and an ind:e upstairs. the beer is awful.

I suspect we are at crossed purposes. I'm on about the O'Neills opposite Waxy's Little Sisiter - are you?

yep, the one on wardour street with the particularly simian bouncer, it's the training pub for the brand and the 3rd floor opens up to chavs at the weekend.

I stand corrected. Mind, the last time I looked in there there was a Gamesnet, but it was out of order, a state I seem to have been finding a lot of them in lately..........

up wrote:there are quite a few other quiz machines in pubs nearby.

There are at least 5 independent pubs with itboxes within a 5 min. walk from Leicester Sq

the comedy has two shitboxes, hand & racquet has a gamesnet, ditto trocadero bowling bar etc.
can't understand the aversion to paragons though. imo they are better on every level than itboxes.

anyone been in the Comedy recently? They've got rid of both the itboxes and put in a gamesent and a paragon (or some such). Wonder why they would do that

spoons seem to be packing itboxes into their places now. Whitehall now has 2, Baker St. has 3 (although 2 are stuck behind a table). Sauchiehall St has 3 and the Counting House has 4 (or maybe it always did, I dunno I've only been in there when pished).

just for the record counting house 4 is a fairly recent development.

There used to be one in the basement at Hamleys. Haven't been for a while, so I'm not sure if it's still there.