Geoff Chait - Past Owner and Publican of the Pig and Whistle - Random Memories: I think back to those wonderful times, years ago, when the Pig was an institution of considerable fame. It was a great business with incredible memories and challenges and unfortunately it ultimately became a victim of its own success. In the early 80’s I drove past the Pig and Whistle which had become derelict and forlorn. I thought it would be a great opportunity to acquire the site for redevelopment. I bought it without actually walking inside. Imagine my surprise when I eventually went into the Pig and saw a structure that was very sound but very dirty and neglected. There must have been about 2 inches of grime on the floors and in the pots in the kitchen. As I had grown up in a hotel (my grandfather and father were hoteliers) I thought I’d clean it up and give it a try. I closed the Pig and brought in a team of cleaners. At about one am on morning a bunch of students (smashed of course) came out of the Hard Rock Café and asked me what I was doing. I invited them in, we sat down and had a couple of beers and they left at 10h00 that morning. By that evening the word had spread around the UCT campus and the Pig was back in business! Within the first month the turnover increased by 600%! It got so busy that I eventually extended the main pub at the back and remodelled the ladies bar and ran a competition amongst the students to rename it. The ladies bar became Flashman’s, named after the character Harry Flashman. The winning student received a case of Castle. The Pig became the venue for every student leaving school to have his or her first drink. The end of matric exams was followed by hundreds of students flocking into the Pig after the exams. We coined the expression “Cape Town grew up at the Pig” and this name stuck for a long time. Many lecturers and students used to sit in the beer garden and hold their tutorials over a few glasses of beer. In fact we instituted a ‘Bachelor of Pig’ degree for the most “balanced” student who could both imbibe and succeed at varsity. I recall the winning student virtually every year was a guy called Budgie Buitendag. Another memory was the near end of military training when all the guys from the army, navy and air force used to inundate the Pig during their “min dae” which was 40 days before they completed their service. The goings on were sometimes beyond imaginable. Once a huge guy from the army walked into the pub with a toilet bowl which he had ripped out. When I asked him what he was doing he said that there was nowhere to sit! The following day a bunch of very contrite army guys walked in and repaid me in full for the damages. I recall having a band called éVoid playing at the Pig. I managed to obtain their services for one night only. The queue ran from the Pig past the Baxter Theatre. It was impossible for everybody to get in so I managed to get the band to agree to a further night and we stood selling tickets in the queue to satisfy those who couldn’t get in. On both nights 1000 students per night paid to watch the band! Sunday nights at the Pig was also a major event. We used to have a band playing regularly on a Sunday night called Late Final. They are still in existence today and will be playing at the reunion. Those who remember the Pig will remember dancing on the tables on a Sunday evening! There was a strange liquor law in existence which stated that you couldn’t serve liquor without serving food on a Sunday. Sundays became so popular that customers started coming in at three o’clock in the afternoon for the function that only started at six. At one stage I was asked to install a breathalyser machine in the Pig. This worked by putting in a 50c coin and blowing into a straw and the result would then show on the screen. Needless to say, this became a very profitable business as the students used it to see who could get the highest score, not the lowest score on the breathalyser. The Pig and Whistle also had a reasonable rugby team that used to play in the Sunday league. They would return to the pub after the game and be given a case of Castle and a free meal. This was very popular and mainly consisted of graduated students who just could not let go. One of our staff members came up with the idea of selling Pig and Whistle t-shirts. We went to a designer and the phrase “The Pig’s the Place” was coined. Unbelievably, these pink Pig and Whistle t-shirts became so popular that we literally sold thousands. When inter-varsity took place at Newlands we had a Pig and Whistle mascot who used to parade before the game on the field. After the game there was just one continuous snake of students pouring out of Newlands and pouring into the Pig. I recall the breweries being very supportive at this time. They provided us with refrigerated trucks as the pub could not cope with the amount of beer that was being consumed. I also recall coming to an agreement with the breweries to provide us with tins only of “long tom” beer and plastic mugs. This was done to prevent broken glass as we literally had thousands of students in the pub during these festive occasions. On one occasion the breweries provided us with a special beer called Inter-Varsity Lager. It had both the UCT and Stellenbosch logos on the can. These became extremely popular and I’m sure that some students from those days might still have it in which case it should be fairly valuable. I recall one Sunday morning after inter-varsity seeing a pile of cans 4m high piled up in the middle of Rondebosch. By far the most successful marketing event that took place at the Pig was “happy five hour”. The Newlands Hotel down the road started a “happy two hour”. This took a lot of business away from the Pig and I tried to fathom out how to overcome this problem. Their happy two hour used to be from five to seven. We then came up with the idea of having a happy five hour from three to eight. It became so successful that people still stop me today to remind me of happy five hour. Of course one of my biggest headaches and expenses was the “borrowing” of Pig mementos. I would love to know how many bar stools, beer mugs, signs etc. were “borrowed” from the Pig. Maybe these are also still in existence and could now be returned for sale to benefit a charity. No questions asked! There are numerous other interesting anecdotes that could fill pages but these are just some of the great times that I remember during my period as owner of the Pig. pigandwhistlereunion.co.za/random_memories.php
Posted on: Thu, 18 Dec 2014 20:33:12 +0000
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