Friday Postcards - Butlin's Bars

With the holiday season here (you can tell from all the rain), I thought some happy holiday postcards would be appropriate. And what could be better than jolly old Butlin's?

So we start off at the top with the Beachcomber Bar at Minehead. Obviously an attempt to follow the 1950s Tiki craze, it looks pretty fabulous! As well as the Pacific-style Tiki columns and bamboo furniture, they've mixed in a bit of Cornish fishing paraphenalia, including plastic fish suspended in the nets on the ceiling. Brilliant! (Click on the images to get a better view.)

Random stuff suspended from the ceiling was a mandatory feature of these Butlin's bars, it seems. The interior decorator at The Pig and Whistle seems to have gone beserk and chucked everything s/he could find up there...

And in The Blinking Owl Bar, the decor is... Tyrolean?  I'm not sure. I'm more than a little distracted by the ceiling decorations. this time, they've suspended two girls up there, in flowery seats!

 Looking at it closely, I think those strange seats are suspended from a rail, that disappears behind curtains. So, if I'm right, those girls were winched back and forth, high above the heads of the boozing patrons! How marvellously bizarre!

The next card is another Blinking Owl Bar, this time in Clacton. It's got the same lampshades and wooden beams as Minehead, but the ceiling looks a little low for girls on rails.

And last, but not least, we have The Crazy Horse Saloon in Clacton. Yee-ha! Clearly an authentic slice of the Wild West on the Essex coast. Note the two singing cowboys at the bar with guitars (entertainment all-in). It all looks like fun, although I'm a bit worried about the gun just lying on the rail in the foreground!

Obviously, I would have loved to visit all these super-kitsch venues! If only I had a time machine...

Mind you, I don't think I would have enjoyed everything back then. This is what's written on the back of that last postcard, (dated 1969)

Dear Jean, Doug and children
We are having a lovely time, with the sun out everyday, the wind has dropped today (tues) and its quite Hot. I went in for the Miss Pinta comp. and had to talk and say what was wrong with our husbands, I said mine nagged, the man said that was no good, and made me dance with a Redcoat in front of everyone. Still it was a laugh. I didn't win. Hope the cat is alright. See you Sunday.
Love Margaret, Tom and the Boys.