The traditional pub as we know it is gone forever
THE figures are as harsh as a double shot of tequila on an empty stomach. Pubs have closed at the rate of more than two a week for the past 12 years, bringing the number of licensed premises in the country down from 8,617 in 2005 to 7,140 last year. Against that, off-licences increased in the same period, from 2,966 to 3,331 in 2017, underlining the growing trend of drinking at home.
No-one is exactly clear on the approximate day the traditional Irish pub began to disappear, with some even dating it as far back as the time they dismantled the bar in the old Jury’s on Dame Street brick by brick and sold it to a chain in Switzerland.
Others make the case that the demise began when the piped-music system filtered ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ to the stunned regulars in McDaid’s.
Or perhaps the slide started that evening the cosy gloom of a city centre hostelry was shattered by the appearance of a nubile creature in six-inch stilettos demanding: “Five pints of Old Scrumpy for the girls and a brandy stinger for the stripper.”
Either way, the old fashioned, menonly, silent havens of the Holy Hour are gone forever. Swept away on a tide of taste and modernisation, these once-sacred temples where men in long aprons intoned “The usual, Mr O?” have passed into history – relics of auld daecency whose decayed remains are nowadays found only in the memories of octogenarians.
“Many of these pubs are small businesses, mainly in rural Ireland, providing significant employment in local communities,” says Padraig Cribben, CEO of the Vintners’ Federation of Ireland. “The sharp decline is worrying and is further evidence of the need to monitor the industry and ensure the necessary supports are in place to reverse this trend.”
Opinions on the expiry of the bar and tavern, to slightly mis-quote Dirty Harry, are like a particular bodily orifice – everybody has one. And, in a nation where even the most obscure minutiae of daily existence are dissected with gusto, nothing brings out strong argumentative sentiment like attempting to source the cause.
It’s a personal thing, like the choice of a life partner or the football club you support – and impossible to list those unique preferences that make
one man’s pint another man’s purgatory.
One thing is certain, the vision so perfectly detailed by Flann O’Brien has passed forever: “No genuine Irishman could relax in comfort and feel at home in a pub unless he was sitting in deep gloom on a hard seat with a very sad expression on his face, listening to the drone of bluebottle squadrons carrying out a raid on the yellow cheese sandwich.”
Many believe the only chance of survival is food, and catering to a wider arc than simply the pint-ofplain brigade. A smaller, but equally vociferous, cadre believe the twin perils of modernisation expressed as Sky Sports and the hissing of the Gaggia espresso maker started the slippery slope in the first place. It’s a wrangle without end – somewhat like defining what makes the perfect pint. But, despite their ruthless thinning of the last decade, pubs still remain an indispensable part of our culture.
Ever since the first Sunday afternoon when we were led by an adult hand into that wonderland of crisps and fizzy pop and told to sit quietly while adults discussed Miley’s tryst in the hayshed, they have remained places of repose and contemplation where the mood and health of the nation can be better measured with a cocked ear than could ever be gleaned from the sterile statistics of a financial balance sheet.
Indeed while the record numbers of visitors visiting our fair isle might spend their days ambling about historical landmarks and mist-shrouded vistas, they’re well aware the only place to meet the real locals is after
sundown in any licensed premises.
Time and again, surveys show that tourists from Tblisi to Annapurna list visiting an Irish pub as the high point of their holiday, witnessing our heritage and culture pouring forth in a seductive haze of dark creamy porter, garrulous bonhomie and a partaking of craic that has nothing to do with illegal white crystals smoked through a water-pipe.
Time was not so long ago when the pub trade would have been considered one of the most secure occupations in the country. Whether it was the small village hostelry or a big city emporium, those licensed purveyors of beers and spirits were envied as the safest, most profitable, of any commercial undertaking. As Bet Lynch said on ‘Coronation Street’: “My name over the door of the Rover’s Return? Now I know I’ve arrived.”
For what it’s worth, my own possible solution to arresting the Irish pub’s decline is to enshrine it as part of the third-level curriculum. Yep, stick it right in there between engineering and psychology, full degree and Master’s.
As someone who spent many a student summer filling pints and mixing cocktails in the hostelries of Dublin and New York, I can attest to the undeniable attributes of bartending in the school of life.
“Every night’s a performance, and the bar is your stage,” I was advised by a Big Apple legend called Buddy McGirney on my first night behind the stick at PJ Clarke’s on Third Avenue. “Always leave your personal crap in the changing room and make every shift an Oscar night for your customers.”
While Buddy has long gone to that great after-hours tavern in the sky, his wisdom still informs many of the life decisions that have helped keep me sane and afloat in this turbulent ocean called life.
Tourists from Tblisi to Annapurna list an Irish pub as the highpoint of their holiday, witnessing our heritage and culture pouring forth in a seductive haze of dark creamy porter, garrulous bonhomie and craic that has nothing to do with illegal white crystals smoked through a water-pipe