New Year’s at 4 P.M. : Anaheim Pub’s Celebration Pops the Corks on British Time

Sixty minutes before rush-hour on New Year’s Eve, a roar rocked a small British pub on the city’s south end.

And inside, where a portrait of Queen Elizabeth shares wall space with one of Gene Autry, friends from Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and London hoisted pints of Guinness Stout and welcomed in the new year on Greenwich Mean Time.

For transplanted Brits in Orange County, Tuesday’s romp at the Rose & Crown British Pub ‘twas a proper New Year’s celebration, indeed.

“It’s nice to come to a place where people know what you’re talking about,” said 33-year-old Mick Everett, formerly of Manchester. “Everyone gets a bit into the beer. The only thing different is the hour.”

Tuesday, the appointed hour came at 4 p.m. as patrons bedecked in party hats packed the pub as they have since the mid-1980s. Mass Serluca, pub manager, said the gatherings have become a tradition for some who travel from Los Angeles County to partake of the merriment.

“On the whole, the people tend to find us,” Serluca said, “and this time of year the British love their pubs.”

Planted near the entrance, Mick Stowe, 50, who moved to Anaheim from Stratford, England, about 11 years ago, said the pub has become a local hub of activity for the British community.

“This is a time to meet friends and have a good time,” Stowe said, the Queen’s portrait framed just over his right shoulder. “My family is still back home in England--we all miss home.”

A regular at the dark and rustic tavern, Stowe said he has been coming to the annual New Year’s celebration since 1984 and there “probably isn’t a person I don’t know here. We’re just starting the party early.”

Some arrived earlier in the afternoon, about lunchtime, to sample some of the pub’s traditional food offerings: steak and kidney pie, bangers and mash, Irish lamb stew and, for $15.95, the Charles and Diana (a 10-ounce New York steak served with shrimp scampi).

About the only thing missing from the menu, said Kate Paul, who works as a cook in London, was the pickles.

“The only thing different from the celebration here is that in London the beer is warmer and the weather is colder,” said the 25-year-old Paul, a party hat balanced awkwardly on her head. “Otherwise, I think it’s pretty much the same all over the world.”

For most of the patrons, however, it is the camaraderie that keeps them coming back to ring in the new year in Anaheim.

“We’re all from a different areas in England that sometimes don’t get along, but once you get far away those differences tend to disappear,” Everett said. “This is my home now. If I go back (to Manchester) I am a stranger. I have more friends here. I will see people here today that I haven’t seen since last New Year’s Eve.”

For Everett and buddies like Ray Pilling of Liverpool, the pub has become a year-round center for information on their favorite English soccer teams and general news from home.

“I call home regularly,” said Everett, faithful follower of the Manchester United soccer club. “I want to know how it went with the (soccer match). Here, I have to watch the Mexican TV channel to get that.”

For those so far from home, the New Year’s Eve celebration, Pilling said, brings local Brits together like no other holiday observance.

“It’s the people,” Pilling said, sipping a draft. “It gives you some time with friends and these big pint glasses.”