Getting a drink in The Crooked House pub could feel intoxicating, even if you’d ordered a lemonade. As a result, the walls slouched sideways at a 16-degree angle, dizzying customers and delighting children. Buttresses and steel bars made the structure safe, but it remained charmingly askew, leading to its jokey designation as “Britain’s Wonkiest Pub.” (“Wonky” means “not straight or level” in the U.K.). In an optical illusion caused by the pub’s slant, patrons could roll marbles and coins on some of the interior’s surfaces and watch them seem to tumble uphill, as though gravity had magically reversed itself. When the building was sold to a private developer last month, patrons waited apprehensively to see what would become of the beloved local watering hole.

---

Persons: you’d, charmingly askew, apprehensively Locations: England’s West Midlands