A new English cocktail bar offers something truly old-fashioned on its menu: the chance to talk to real people instead of staring at your mobile phone.
The Gin Tub in Brighton has won rave reviews in its first week of business by installing a mobile signal blocker and placing throwback rotary phones at its tables.
They can be used to dial patrons at neighbouring tables or the bar for another round.
The Gin Tub is reckoned to be the only British pub blocking mobile phones by using a Faraday shield built into its ceiling, an exception in Britain's 2006 Wireless Telegraphy Act that otherwise outlaws the use of signal blockers.
"Mobile phones have killed pubs," proprietor Steve Tyler says.
"When you go out socially, you don't need social media."
