So, nobody goes to the pub any more. Publicans cannot make a living and pubs are closing and instead they are opening off-licences. People are dinrking at home and are now unsupervised by the publicans and as a consequence they are killing themselves with the drugs, injecting cannabis into their arms and all that kind of malarkey.
So, say the publicans.
To a certain extent there is a grain of truth in this. People are staying at home, rather than going to the pub, people are having parties in their houses or ‘pre-loading’ with cheap off-licence alcohol first before going to the pub where they will sit and drink a smaller amount.
This was inevitable. Publicans from 1995-2005 did nothing to endear themselves to the public. They upped the prices every month, it seemed. For a while, Ireland has relatively low levels of inflation, with the one thing that was observably going up being the pint of beer.
I remarked on it at the time of the currency changeover. The price of a pint of guinness went up to almost four Euro in my local pub, where previously, given the exchange rate, it was costing the equivalent of 3.40. It is now below the price that it was at five years ago. Otherwise nobody would go there.
I frequently go for a pint in a large pub in Maynooth, which I shall not name. Five years ago, this pub was packed every night of the week. The service was lousy and if you complained about anything at all, you risked being thrown out or at the very least you were probably abused by the manager or bar staff member. This is not the case now. There is nice food being served in order to get people in the door. There is table service. There is a heated outdoor area for the smokers.
And they are making less money.
The publicans changed our culture and now they are begging us to change it back. They are lobbying for changes to the law to allow people to drive with two pints on them, etc.
I am sorry to see the demise of the pub, which I thought was a great idea and one of the superior attractions of Ireland. It also made for stronger social groupings and helped people develop a network of friends - you can only go to somebody’s house for a party if you are invited, whereas you could simply drop into a conversation in a pub and usually you are welcome.
So, I guess I am longing for the days of relatively inexpensive beer in pubs with good fun and an easy way of getting home. I am also hoping for pink elephants to fly over my house tonight.
Comments welcome.
12 users commented in " The Irish Pub "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackI blame the true culprits for the pub decline. http://www.lva.ie/
OOhhh alcohol and going for pints. I’d better get back to work before my tears clog the keyboard.
I like the line “People are dinrking at home…..”.Very funny.
Indeed rts, I wouldn’t mind making that kind of typo if I was dinrking beforehand, but I was sompletely cober.
I just hope this whole alcohol thing doesn’t turn into what we have here in Canada. Drinking age 19, everything to do with alcohol is shielded from the public, off-sales are licensed by the gov’t and actual liquor stores are run by the gov’t. When I was still living in Germany I loved their approach to alcohol. Integrated it as a social device. A pint with dinner. Couple pints with football (I’m talking real football, not men in tights touching each other).
Anyhow, to conclude - it’s sad to see pubs declining. If pubs started putting up big screens or projectors as they do here, they could host things like “Football nights” or.. “come watch the UFC at our place and pints on sale!”
Here in the U.S., drinking at home is really encouraged.Going to bars for a beer or two usually leads to a lot more and too people driving while drunk.
I would climb over the corpse of a dear friend f I thought there was a pub showing UFC and serving beer at the same time. Drunk is the ONLY way to watch men forget about fighting styles and grapple and gouge and punch. The ONLY way.
The flip side of this “good service” is that some pubs that I like in Dublin city are now letting “undesirables” in. (i.e. guys who drink one pint, knock over a table full of drink, start a fight etc)
The slippery slope there, the good paying customers will leave soon enough, leaving the customers you didn’t want in the first place.
All in all though I have very little sympathy for pub owners in general, as you correctly stated they were only too happy to fleece the public for the last 5 years, let them feel the pain now.
rts: Yeah, the benefit of staying at home is the reduced risk of drunken driving. The downside is that we increasingly become less sociable and isolated, the art of storytelling and conversation is reduced, etc.
Johannes, the pubs are beginning to do these things. Making them more family-friendly at lunchtime, serving food, etc. However, for sure, even for big football matches the crowds are much smaller than they once were.
FMC, I would never have thought you were a UFC fan. I don’t get UFC. Really, I don’t understand it. But then again I grew up in a place where the local pastime was to be bating seven kinds of Sh*te out of lads with a hurley, so everything else seems a bit tame.
Des - yeah its hard to feel sorry for them, isn’t it? Still, if they close down then it will be like the Aer Lingus to Heathrow route…we won’t use it while its there and then we’ll cry after it when it’s gone.
UFC in a pub would only ever end in a riot as drunken arseholes think they can grapple or launch a flying arm-bar (friend of mine tried it once and shattered his pelvis and the other fella’s arm). I’d still go tho… I love UFC.
Saying that tho Belfast is a very small city and I socialize with a large group of friends, so either going to the pub or to someones house, usually I end up with the same crowd anyway.
I found myself in a bar in Nova Scotia last summer when there was UFC on the TV and the bar was full of American soldiers. Was one of the most frightening experiences of my life. One of the soldiers was ‘Irish’ and he was regaling me with his tales of beating up black people (he didn’t call them that) and gay people (he didn’t call them that). I was with an English guy and I thought that at any moment it was all going to kick off.
So, UFC in a pub is baaaad as far as I am concerned. Or put it another way, I am not setting foot inside a pub that is showing UFC…I know one of my cousins will be there looking for trouble.
I have to say I don’t think the LVA have any pull anymore in politics. Builders can provide more bribes these days. There is a terrible decay of community happening in rural Ireland today and whether you like them or not, the multiple hits against the pubs and closures over recent years have been central to it.
V, I agree. However, the publicans probably hastened their own demise. I would like to see a lively pub culture in Ireland, with people behaving themselves, sober people driving the intoxicated home, etc. Maybe some day we can get there.