The Arcade

Never has a bar been more welcoming and inclusive than Arcade. Its constitution is almost encyclopaedic: antiquated, yet reverberating with a knowledge of the new. The stone flags are every-man's-land, the yielding armchairs thrones for prince and pauper alike. Arcade is for everyone; affable acceptance permeates the air.

This welcoming disposition is most notably encapsulated in the pub's perfect combination of old-time wisdom and youthful animated zeal. Games are played regularly here and none more enthusiastically than chess. On the night that The Journal visited, two disharmonic characters were engaged in bellicose piece-shuffling, a trendy scrub-clean Celtic beauty of a barmaid played against a time-encrusted regular whose corrugated face had been furrowed by the advancing years. Ordinarily, locution between such individuals would be thought unusual at best; but in this context of chess pieces and draught Guinness there exists not such divisionary prejudices.

Chess is a game not limited by stereotypes. It is not exclusive or bigoted, but inhabits a pseudo-world in which the trivialities of age, gender and race matter not. It is the process, the organic, beautifully tactical ebb and flow, the patience, the elegant logic of chess which matters. As with the game, so too with the pub. At the Arcade the only thing of aesthetic importance is the beauty of time well spent, not the categorisation of persons according to appearance, nor the agonising over what constitutes legitimate inclusion. The Arcade is a haven for the thoughtful, a metaphysical cubbyhole wherein anyone may rest and ponder the curious magic of being, or be simply submerged in the warmth of old furniture and good ale.

This demeanour of universal acceptance exudes comfort, and it seeps into every element of the pub: the smiles, the seats, the sentiments of the bartenders. It is a handsome retreat, both gentle and rugged like an old country house. There is an amniotic calmness about the place, a womb-like warmth which coaxes the mind into placidity and stops time. Last-orders comes as a chilling, biting reminder of the world outwith Arcade. For who wishes to inhabit reality all of the time?