One Eyed Jacks, Swansea

Please Note: This review is over a year old.

Pub SignMan left this review about Jack Murphys

Wind Street is home to just about all of Swansea's binge drinking barns and a visit on a Friday or Saturday night is something of a 'cultural' experience, to put it mildly. I recently found myself staying in a hotel just off Wind Street and, arriving back after a day of pub crawling, found that my decision making had been somewhat clouded by a long day in the field, as I gave the hotel a swerve and ended up in this large bar. The place has quite clearly been composed by knocking through two adjacent properties to form a large drinking barn style venue with a dividing wall and staircase still separating the front part of the room. The bar is in the roomier left hand side with large, light bulb covered signs suspended over a simple, straight dark wood bar and counter. The space opposite has a few high tables and stools, but on a Friday evening, plenty of space had been cleared and this was fully taken up by people queuing at the bar or dancing. The place is fairly featureless considering that this is one of the city's more historic streets, but some fine front arched windows remain, which look grand from the inside. At the rear of the room there is a stretch of no mans land, where you can move from one side of the venue to the other and a few high tables and stools can be found back here too along with slot machines and a pinball table. The right hand side has a dancefloor area to the rear and some comfy padded banquettes and other seating options further forward, but after a while the door-staff cordoned this area off, forcing punters through to the main bar. There were plenty of bars along Wind Street that I could have chosen from, but I think I picked this one as I heard some decent tunes playing as I passed. To be fair, there were some good tracks played whilst I was there but for every Smiths song, there was also something from the likes of Busted to make you wish you'd gone back to your hotel room after all.
The bar has no handpulls, as you might expect, with a fairly mainstream keg range available including Guinness. I also spotted some 'craft' bottles in the fridges and had something from Brewdog, which I had to drink straight from the bottle. The bar staff were a bit slow and not exactly friendly, but it was fairly chaotic within and I think I'd struggle to remain civil if I had to work there all night.
There's not too much to recommend here, although obviously a visit in the afternoon would find a very different beast. The place seemed popular with students and locals alike and there was a good cross-section of people within, all of whom seemed very happy and with no sign of trouble, so if you're looking for a late night out, you could probably do a lot worse than this place. Otherwise, just keep on walking...

On 14^th January 2016 - rating: 4
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