In praise of Wetherspoons

Don’t throw out the baby along with the baby in charge.

There’s many reasons why Wetherspoons is bad. If it’s how poorly they pay their staff, how they can outcompete smaller establishments through price wars, the fact that their owner tries to push a specific angle of propaganda that tars all of its customers with the same political brush, or simply the fact that they are a huge company in a time when the last thing any sane person could do is praise the existent of huge growth-based companies.

Yet I’m reminded of a similar point made by Mark Fisher (aka K-Punk) in ‘a post capitalist desire’ which posthumously, has grown into one of his most important essays. In a nutshell Fisher’s argument that the the left focuses too much on ‘anti-capitalism’, rather than producing new forms of desire that transcend capitalist relations, then closes in on a common assumption that people who are anti-capitalist shouldn’t go to Starbucks. Fisher looks at our contemporary urban landscape, it’s lack of genuine public space, and turns this ideas on its head, suggesting that the desire that Starbucks caters for isn’t a desire for good coffee (he says it tastes crap), but our desire for communism. He means that Starbucks, like Costa and Nero, provide a space that is neither home nor work, where one can be in a space that is quasi-public, or an urban commons in a hyper capitalist landscape.

To some extent I think this is the fundamental reason we shouldn’t be so critical of the popularity of Wetherspoons. Not only has it recreated a commonplace familiarity that is neither home nor work, which has kind of replaced the gap left after the demise of working mens clubs, Wetherspoons is also the kind of quasi common place where you can bump into anyone, or no-one if you want to be by yourself. Unlike many pubs that in a contemporary craze for ‘realness’ create a space that feels implicitly specific to tastes and types, you’re most likely to come across a much broader demographic in a Wetherspoons, whilst not feeling obliged, out of the specificities, to engage with them. Wetherspoons is a great place to be anonymous in an age of competitive individualism, where sometimes you’d rather just be in a public space but not have to be anyone to anyone.

On a trivial note, I’m a big fan of carpets too.

Carpets are great. Many contemporary spaces, that focus on either being ‘edgy’, ‘slique’ or ‘alternative’ seem to adore hard floors. Not only does it make it incredibly hard to hear people sat across the table from you, when pots and pans are clanking in the kitchen, but from September to May they are occupied by people who are too polite or proud to admit that they are freezing from their thighs downwards.

I worked for years at a front of house point in a busy gallery with a stone floor. Not only do I think its ambience has damaged my ears far more than playing loud music on earphones has. But I learned to love carpeted spaces for how much easier it was to tell somebody something once, and not have to repeat it, two or three times. One of the plus points of Wetherspoons is that it’s convenience for meeting people for conversation is doubled up by the fact that you’re more likely to be able to hear them. And not be freezing at the same time.

But fundamentally, I guess what it boils down to is are Wetherspoons bad because they are big and kind of generic? Or is it because what Wetherspoons provides has been captured by an aggressively competitive company in a time where we are sick of such arrangements, that treats its staff poorly, and is run in the interests of one person’s ego, and not a collective one? I believe it’s the latter, I believe Wetherspoons like the internet 2.0 is a good example of the ‘capture’, or privatisation of the desire for the commons.

I’d much rather see the continuation of these organisations, albeit organised totally differently, than town centres full of small connoisseur pubs. I admit this comes from somebody who feels the need for spaces, not just for drinking, but to be in, think in, read in, even create in, that aren’t work or home, but I believe it’s a right essential to 21st century living – for what that’s worth now.