Becky’s Dive Bar was in The Borough before it was gentrified. Used to be some decent pubs there back in the day but I was never in Becky’s. There was a market pub where you could get a pint and a breakfast just like in Smithfield and The Wheatsheaf was a great pub which has now been revamped and ruined for a well heeled crowd.
https://boakandbailey.com/2012/07/beckys-dive-bar-southwark/
I have drunk in The Hop Exchange where Becky’s used to be. It’s nothing special though.
Pubs in my youthful recollection were bright lights, sticky carpets, grunting men with big bellies, smoke hanging around everywhere, absurd noises coming from jukeboxes and fruit machines. They were places where you had to prove yourself, drinking six pints of gassy lager before climbing a ladder wearing no safety gear. Females felt uncomfortable. I met my first serious girlfriend, back in 1977, because she was alone and being taunted/bullied by a gang of boneheads. Now they're often given over to expensive, pretentious food and beer has become fetishized, often by the middle classes. The pandemic was fun of course: in through one door, follow the directions on the floor, please wash your hands for more than twenty seconds, out through the other door. An 'app' to gain admission and card payment for a glass of beer and two helpings of 'hand-cooked' chips. Bollocks to all of it.