Bombings leave pub patrons wondering about relatives

Thursday, July 7, 2005 | 11:18 a.m.

Today's edition of the London Daily Mail had not arrived at the Crown & Anchor Pub on East Tropicana Road by late this morning.

"It's usually delivered here by 4 a.m.," said Australian-born bartender Marcus Regan, a former London resident whose cousin is a London Stock Exchange worker who takes the subway to work each day.

"They must be printing late this morning to get the latest news in."

The pub that serves English-style breakfasts was empty early this morning, except for two bartenders, a kitchen manager and a one patron, Lee Guy, a British-born American citizen.

Guy sipped his beer as he intently watched television reports of the chaos from the terrorist attack on the city where his uncle works as a bus driver.

"There is absolutely nothing you can do about this," said Guy, who served in the U.S. Air Force. "If they are going to get you, they will find a way."

Bartender Regan, who lived in London in the late 1990s, remembers a city that was as secure as any.

"Because terrorists would put bombs in trash cans, there were no garbage cans allowed on the streets, just bags," he said. "In London there is a camera on practically every corner.

"If there was ever such a thing as a safe city, you would think it would be London."

Regan said that following initial reports of the attacks, a number of patrons watched television news reports for a couple of hours, then left the bar to go home, to try to contact relatives and friends overseas to make sure they were safe.

"The terrorists planned this attack perfectly," Regan said. "The subways are the way the vast majority of people travel in and out of the city. I have no idea how they are going to get people home tonight."

Guy, who was raised in the Suffolk coastal town of Felixstowe and lives around the corner from the pub just east of Maryland Parkway, said he and his girlfriend were concerned about relatives in England this morning.

"My girlfriend has a friend who takes the Tube in (to London) every day," he said. "We have not heard a word about her friend or my uncle."

Guy said he figured Wednesday's announcement of London being awarded the 2012 Olympic Games played a role in the attack.

"It is just my opinion, but I feel that the country that got the Olympics would have been hit today," he said. "It could as easily have been Paris (the pre-announcement favorite to get the Games)."

Regan and Lee said that with large numbers of Middle Easterners living in England, the attack likely could have come from a terrorist group within the country as opposed to outside Arab sources.

"It makes me worry a bit about Las Vegas," Regan said. "There is such a concentration of people here that, God forbid, they blow up one of our hotels with 5,000 rooms, an attack would be devastating.

"And you can't fight an enemy you can't see," he said.

According to the U.S. Census American Community Survey for the year 2003, nearly 62,000 Las Vegas residents are of English or Scottish ancestry. That same survey says 28.4 million Americans listed themselves as being of English ancestry and 5.8 million said they are of Scottish descent.

Dru Sax, kitchen manager for the Crown & Anchor, said that while he is an American who has never been to England, he has developed a great fondness for the British, having worked at the pub for nearly five years.

"I was shocked," he said. "There they were celebrating getting the Olympics one day and mourning the next. It's just so sad."