The Kings Arms (Youngs)
corner of Holywell Street and Parks Road, Oxford

Colin Batchelor wrote:
Generally packed out.[1]  Ignoring the numbers, it has a no-smoking area
where you can get coffee and buns in daylight hours, and recessed neuks
where you can eat your food in peace.  Alarmingly, the toilets are down a
steep flight of stairs beside the kitchens.  Fifteen degrees, if you
remember.

There's usually something like four or five beers on cask.  The Winter 
Warmer, when it's on, is excellent.

Food averages out at about a fiver a main course.  Speaking of kitchens, 
they seem to have one tape in their cassette player, which plays the hits 
from 1993/94.  You can't hear this from inside the pub, only from the 
Wadham rooms abutting the kitchens.  Affords excellent views of the New 
Bodleian, Broad Street, the Clarendon Building, History Faculty and one of 
the Wadham quads.
(1998-10-09)

Pontus Lurcock updates:
Might be generally less packed now that Next Door has opened to take
some of the pressure off. I'm not sure, since lately I've only been in
to take advantage of their excellent "four bottles for a fiver"
takeaway offer. Young's seem to do a lovely range of bottled bitters
these days -- it's a shame none of them ever appear on tap.

We were once accosted in the back room by a man who told us the best
way to clean a Panama hat; I found out much later that he was a
chaplain from Cambridge. In the front room, things like that don't
tend to happen so much.
(ix.2003)

According to The Oxford Times, it is no longer possible to drink at
the outside tables on pain of a £500 fine, since the city centre has
been designated an alcohol-free zone. Inspector Stuart Craik, head of
"Oxford's city centre unit", helpfully clarifies: "It is not an
offence to be drinking -- it is an offence to carry on when warned".
There's a warning on a board outside the pub, but maybe he's referring
to a verbal warning.
(31.x.2003)


[1] When I rekeyed this (because I hadn't worked out how to get
FVWM to cut and paste with the middle mouse button), I typed "paced out", 
and confused myself hugely on reading it just now.