a few steps down, or the ramp beside them · under the street · lit by the street
A pub under the street
A Quiet Pint
A pint, something from the stove, and a table that fits you. Made like McAnally’s, in Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files.
A pub a few steps down from the street, with a ramp beside the steps as wide as they are. The only light in here is the street’s. It comes in at the top of the walls, through thirteen small windows set at the level of the pavement, and most of it reaches the tables by way of thirteen old mirrors, each hung at its own height and tipped its own way. So it lands in patches, none the same shape and none in a row, a little dimmer and a little green, which is what old mirror glass gives back. Nothing in here is lit warm: the stove is shut, and nobody lights a lamp.
Thirteen of everything, and no two alike: thirteen tables of thirteen heights, thirteen stools along a bar that meanders, thirteen carved columns standing where they stand, and thirteen ceiling fans. There is no television, no games machine and no jukebox, only a player piano. Nobody has to order anything to sit down.
In the pub
From a seat at the south end, at the height of somebody sitting down, which is where most people in a pub are. Drawn from the plan below, so the two cannot disagree.
A table that fits you
The tables are all different sizes and heights, scattered round the floor. That is an access feature as much as a look: when no two tables are the same height, one of them is likelier to be yours. The plan by the door has every one. Tick what you want and the list keeps the tables that have all of it; with scripts off, the whole list is here to read.
Every table at dining height that stands on posts rather than legs has room under it for a wheelchair or your knees: between 28 and 34 inches high, with at least 27 inches underneath (902.3, 306.3). And every table can be reached from the door by a way at least 36 inches wide (403.5.1), round every column and every chair, which the room’s own tool walks on a grid every time it builds this page, and refuses the page if one cannot.
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Table 1
Round, 30 inches across and 42 inches high, on one post, with two tall stools. By the column carved with The Bremen Town Musicians. Out of sight of the door. A patch of light from a mirror lies on it.
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Table 2
Long, 72 by 30 inches and 29 inches high, on two posts, with a settle along the wall, and chairs on the other side, for six. Room under it for a wheelchair or your knees: 27.5 inches underneath. Against the north wall, under a window. Away from the bar. No light lands on it.
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Table 3
Round, 24 inches across and 31 inches high, on one post, with two chairs. Room under it for a wheelchair or your knees: 29.5 inches underneath. By the column carved with The Princess and the Pea. Out of sight of the door. Away from the bar. A patch of light from a mirror lies on it.
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Table 4
Square, 36 inches square and 33 inches high, on one post, with four chairs. Room under it for a wheelchair or your knees: 31.5 inches underneath. By the column carved with The Bremen Town Musicians. A patch of light from a mirror lies on it.
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Table 5
Round, 48 inches across and 30 inches high, on one post, with six chairs. Room under it for a wheelchair or your knees: 28.5 inches underneath. Out of sight of the door. Away from the bar. A patch of light from a mirror lies on it.
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Table 6
Square, 30 inches square and 16 inches high, on four legs, with two armchairs in the room's old sea-green leather. Against the east wall. By the stove, where it is warm. Away from the bar. No light lands on it.
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Table 7
Square, 28 inches square and 24 inches high, on four legs, with a settle along the wall, and chairs on the other side, for three. Against the east wall. By the stove, where it is warm. Away from the bar. No light lands on it.
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Table 8
Round, 36 inches across and 38 inches high, on one post, with three tall stools. By the column carved with The Fisherman and His Wife. A patch of light from a mirror lies on it.
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Table 9
Long, 60 by 30 inches and 34 inches high, on two posts, with four chairs. Room under it for a wheelchair or your knees: 32.5 inches underneath. By the column carved with The Fisherman and His Wife. Out of sight of the door. A patch of light from a mirror lies on it.
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Table 10
Square, 24 inches square and 18 inches high, on four legs, with two armchairs in the room's old sea-green leather. By the column carved with The Elves and the Shoemaker. No light lands on it.
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Table 11
Round, 42 inches across and 32 inches high, on one post, with five chairs. Room under it for a wheelchair or your knees: 30.5 inches underneath. Away from the bar. A patch of light from a mirror lies on it.
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Table 12
Long, 36 by 24 inches and 20 inches high, on four legs, with a sofa along the wall, in the room's old sea-green leather, for three. Against the south wall. By the column carved with The Three Billy Goats Gruff. Away from the bar. No light lands on it.
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Table 13
Round, 28 inches across and 28 inches high, on four legs, with three chairs. At dining height, but its four legs leave no room for a wheelchair under it. Away from the bar. A patch of light from a mirror lies on it.
The columns
The columns are wooden, each a different thickness, standing where they stand, and each is carved with a nursery tale. They break the room up, and they never block it: the plan above walks every way between them.
- The Twelve Dancing Princesses: a row of shoes, every pair worn through.
- The Enormous Turnip: a turnip as big as a barrel, and a line of everybody pulling at it, down to a mouse.
- The Golden Goose: a goose, and a line of people stuck to it and to each other.
- Jack and the Beanstalk: a beanstalk, climbing the whole of the column to the ceiling.
- Stone Soup: a pot over a fire, with hands round it, each holding something to put in.
- The Bremen Town Musicians: a donkey, a dog, a cat and a rooster, standing on each other's backs. Tables 1 and 4 are by it.
- The Princess and the Pea: a stack of mattresses all the way up the column, and one pea under the bottom of them. Table 3 is by it.
- Goldilocks and the Three Bears: three chairs, three bowls and three beds, no two of them the same size.
- The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse: two mice at a table, one of them putting on a coat to go home where it is quiet.
- Rapunzel: a tower, which is the column itself, with a window at the top and hair let down from it.
- The Fisherman and His Wife: a fish in a rough sea, and a hut on the shore. Tables 8 and 9 are by it.
- The Three Billy Goats Gruff: three goats crossing a bridge, and something under it. Table 12 is by it.
- The Elves and the Shoemaker: a workbench at night, and small shoes finished on it by morning. Table 10 is by it.
At the bar
Nothing on the board has a price, and nobody has to order anything to sit down. Every card says what is in it, which of the nine major food allergens the FDA names it has, and gluten, and whether it has caffeine. Order anything and it comes to the table you are at; look down to see it.
The bar dips to 34 inches for 59 inches of its length, with no stool in front of it, so anybody sitting down can be served there (904.4.1).
Pints
Every pint comes two ways, and the alcohol-free one is first, in the same glass, at the same size: you cannot tell from across the room which one anybody has, and nobody here asks. Each says how strong it is before you order it.
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The house ale
Alcohol-free: 0.05% or less
Brewed in full and the alcohol taken out afterwards, so a faint trace can stay.
4.2% alcohol by volume
As it comes out of the cellar.
In it: water, malted barley, hops and yeast
Contains gluten. None of the nine. No caffeine.
Brewed here and served at cellar temperature, cool and not cold, the way Mac serves his in Proven Guilty and Small Favor. Nothing is used to clear it, so it is vegan, and a little hazy.
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The house dark
Alcohol-free: 0.05% or less
Brewed in full and the alcohol taken out afterwards, so a faint trace can stay.
5% alcohol by volume
As it comes out of the cellar.
In it: water, malted barley, roasted barley, hops and yeast
Contains gluten. None of the nine. No caffeine.
Brewed here, nearly black, with a tan head, and served at cellar temperature like the ale. Nothing is used to clear it.
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Cider
Alcohol-free: 0.05% or less
Fermented in full and the alcohol taken out afterwards, so a faint trace can stay.
4.5% alcohol by volume
As it comes out of the cellar.
In it: pressed apples and yeast
None of the nine, and no gluten. No caffeine.
Cold, or at cellar temperature if you would rather.
Not brewed
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Lemonade, with lemonade ice
In it: lemon juice, water and cane sugar
None of the nine, and no gluten. No caffeine.
The ice cubes are frozen lemonade, so it stays cold and never goes watery. The idea is Mac's, in Proven Guilty.
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A pot of tea
In it: black tea and water, with oat milk on the side
None of the nine, and no gluten. Has caffeine.
Strong, in a pot for one, in the pub's sea-green glaze.
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A jug of water
In it: water
None of the nine, and no gluten. No caffeine.
A jug and a glass, cold, and nobody has to order anything else to have one.
From the stove
Cooked on the iron top of a wood-burning stove with its door shut. The vegan sandwich comes first and is the same size.
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The mushroom sandwich
In it: a portobello mushroom grilled on the stove, on a crusty wheat bread roll, with onions softened on the stove and mustard
Contains wheat and gluten.
The same roll, on the same plate, as the steak sandwich. The mushroom was grown on a farm, like every mushroom on this street.
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The steak sandwich
In it: beef steak grilled on the stove and sliced, on a crusty wheat bread roll, with onions softened on the stove and mustard
Contains wheat and gluten.
Say how you like it done.
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Chips
In it: potatoes cut thick and fried in sunflower oil, with salt
None of the nine, and no gluten.
Fried in a pan of their own on the stove, and nothing else goes in that pan.
After McAnally’s
This pub is made like McAnally’s, the pub in Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files where the books’ wizards go to drink. In the books a wizard in the room makes machines go wrong, so the pub keeps nothing that can:
There aren’t any video games at McAnally’s. There are no televisions or expensive computer trivia games. There isn’t even a jukebox. Mac keeps a player piano instead. It’s less likely to go haywire around us.
That is a pub built round the people who drink in it, rather than one that asks them to stop being who they are at the door, and the rest of the room follows from it. The asymmetry is for them too:
It’s a study in deliberate asymmetry.
All that imbalance is intended to scatter the random outbursts of magical energy that cause problems for practitioners.
Nothing here is magic, and nobody in here breaks the lights. But a room arranged so that what people bring in with them has somewhere to go, rather than building up, is a room a great many of us would know, and so is walking into one:
The first time I entered McAnally’s, I felt like a wolf returning to an old, favorite den.
Where this pub parts from Mac’s
Three things in the books are barriers in a room otherwise built for the people in it, so this pub does them differently, and says so.
When you walk in, you take several steps down into a room with a deadly combination of a low clearance and ceiling fans.
Here there is a ramp beside the steps, as wide as they are, 60 inches, and longer, because 60 inches is a long way down at one in 12: two runs, a landing to turn on, handrails on both sides, and a landing at the door (405, 505). The steps are 9 of them, each 6.7 inches high on an 11-inch tread (504.2).
The ceiling is still low, and the fans turn in the bays between the beams, above the beams’ line, so the lowest thing over the floor is a beam, 82 inches up (307.4). Nothing in here hangs where anybody walks, however tall.
And you can damn well walk your own self over to the bar to pick up your order when it’s ready, according to Mac.
Here you can fetch it, or say so and it is brought to you, and nobody asks why. The choice is on the bar, above the board.
Neutral ground
There’s a sign Mac’s got hanging up at the door that reads ACCORDED NEUTRAL GROUND.
Nothing here is signed by anybody’s nations, and no accords hold it. The sign over this door says neutral ground, and means it the way our own Third Places page does, where it is the first thing on a list:
- neutral ground
- leveling place
- conversation space
- open & accessible
- regulars
- low profile
- playful mood
- home away from home
Radical third places would not only be accessible in terms of location and opening hours, but also in terms of creating basic accommodations for the spectrum of abilities of its participants.
The term third place is Ray Oldenburg’s, from his book The Great Good Place, of 1989, and bars are among the first examples Wikipedia gives of one. What our page adds is the radical part, and the radical part is what this room is for.
House rules
- Neutral ground. Nobody in here has to be anybody’s host or anybody’s guest, and nobody starts anything.
- You never have to order anything to sit down, and nothing on the board has a price.
- Every pint says how strong it is before you order it, and the alcohol-free one comes first, in the same glass, at the same size. Nobody buys a round for anybody, and nobody asks what is in your glass.
- Fetch your order from the bar, or say so and it is brought to you. Nobody asks why.
- Sit where you like, and as long as you like.
- Nothing behind the bar has a screen. The piano is a player piano and there are no rolls for it yet, so it is quiet.
- Nothing in the pub moves, at any setting, the fans included.
- Nobody is counted: not the pints, not the rounds, and not you.
What the pub keeps
- Nothing about you. The table you sit at and what is on it live in this page and are gone when you leave it. The pub’s own scripts store nothing in your browser and send nothing anywhere.
- Every card says what is in it before you order it, and every pint how strong it is.
Whose it is
The brief is Ryan Boren’s, of 2026-10-05, and so is the name. The pub it is made like is Jim Butcher’s: McAnally’s, Mac and everything else in The Dresden Files are his, and nothing here is affiliated with him or his publishers. Ryan’s brief pointed at the Dresden Files fan wiki’s page for McAnally’s, and nothing here is drawn from it: the room is built from the books’ own passages, which Ryan quoted from his copies, and every quotation names its book. The tales on the columns are old and nobody’s; what is carved on each, and every word on the board, are ours. The measurements are the 2010 ADA Standards’, read on the Access Board’s page. The drawings are Claude’s, written as code. Set in Amarante and Brygada 1918. Where each thing was read is in the liner notes.
Job marker — a beer mat, dropped on the floor
You have found a job marker. The Adventurer’s Guild is a shopfront on the street, and it posts jobs that send you round these rooms. Take the code below to its board and that job is done. Nothing here is scored, nothing expires, and one is a perfectly good number of jobs to do.
The job: What passes the street’s light round the pub?
Before the code: Nobody lights a lamp in this pub. What does most of the street’s light come off before it reaches a table?
Hint 1
It is in the first paragraph under the name.
Hint 2
Not a lamp: nobody lights one.
Last hint
Something on the walls, hung at its own height.
Give me the answer
The answer is The mirrors. The mirrors: old ones, each hung at its own height and tipped its own way, so the light lands in patches, none alike, a little dimmer and a little green.
Taking the answer is a real way through this, not a lesser one. Nothing is watching and nothing is written down.
Quest code: SILVERING
That is the one.
The mirrors: old ones, each hung at its own height and tipped its own way, so the light lands in patches, none alike, a little dimmer and a little green.
Quest code: SILVERING
HOW LOUD DO YOU WANT IT?
Starts wherever your device says. Nothing moves, flashes, or plays until you say so — and in this pub, nothing moves even then.