A Short Synopsis Of The Second Day Of A Trip Taken In September Of The Year 2000

In the morning we took the Piccadilly Line to Piccadilly Circus, getting on the tube at the Manor House stop, which was only a few blocks walk from our lodgings in Finsbury Park, near Arsenal.

Piccadilly Circus is the London equivalent of Times Square, but with even worse restaurants. We ate at The Angus Steakhouse - the indifferent waiters and tasteless food seemed to be designed to give tourists the stereotypical English dining experience, and they pulled it off without a hitch.

There were lots of great stores and theaters, all of which are housed in classical revival style buildings that the British do so well. Piccadilly really is a great place to walk around, shop, and people watch, which we did for most of the day.

On the tube back to the small room we were staying in we met an Australian couple. The initial meeting went something like this;

Australian guy on the far side of the subway car (calling over to me): "Hey, what are you? A Jackaroo?!"

Me: "Me? No, I'm just a tourist from the states."

Australian: "Oh, well, I thought with the hat and all, you might be a Jackaroo! I knew you couldn't be an Englishman - you're not staring at your shoes!"

Me (with a bit of a laugh): Hah, yeah, no, I'm an American wearing a brown felt fedora. You Australian?'

Australian: "Yea. Where you heading?"

At that point we walked over to where he was standing so we didn't have to continue shouting across the car. He was with his girlfriend, Chelsea (his name was Troy). 

They both worked at the Manor House pub which was right outside the Manor House tube stop. Troy was a bartender and Chelsea was a waitress. They coaxed us into paying a visit to the pub "to experience the sights and smells of dancing Turks and Poles."

The place was a dive, and it was indeed full of recent immigrants from Turkey and Poland. Troy explained that the women would go out on the dance floor by themselves and soon be surrounded by Turkish and Polish men dancing around them trying to win their attention, with the eventual result being that the men would start shoving and then fighting each other on the dance floor.

The fights would be broken up, things would calm down, then the whole ritual would start again.

Chelsea made the comment that the women, also Turkish and Polish immigrants, were all a size 14 or bigger, which wasn't too bad, but they were all wearing size 10 clothing, which was. 

We stayed until 1:00am. Very entertaining in a National Geographic documentary sort of way.