The Coconut Tree, Clifton, Bristol

A large single-room pub with a somewhat down at heel appearance. Clearly the major attraction here is the magic bar, as it’s name suggests. This is a small bar in the corner of the room where a magician does a number of card tricks. There’s limited seating in front of the bar and so it’s a little difficult to see what’s going on if there’s a few punters in front of you. As such, I didn’t take too much notice of proceedings, but the tricks that were being done seemed to be appreciated. The action was also relayed to a plasma screen, but that didn’t have enough detail to really see what was happening, and, rather oddly, was only in black and white. There are lots of sofa’s around the place, some large windows at the front to watch the world go by, and a grand piano in one corner. As well as the more usual open mic night, they also have an open magic night. There were a number of pictures on one wall showing various illusionists and performers – Houdini, Barnum, etc. All in all it could really do with a bit of tidying up, but it scores a few points for being unusual. Unfortunately there was no beer on tap at all. The solitary cider was Strongbow, which was very disappointing.