The Pubs in Ireland

      We visited many many pubs in various sized cities, towns, villages, and thatched-roof tiny outposts.

They ALL (with NO exceptions) had at least one or more pubs. The pub is, of course, a drinking hole (and sometimes eating hole) serving somewhat the same purposes as bars here and elsewhere.

BUT after only a few visits, it is apparent that the quality of the experiences are vastly different. Since my purpose is to describe the psycho-social character of IRISH pubs, I will describe only those peculiar to the Irish pub.First, the sizeof a typical pub is small. It doesnt take more than a dozen or so to fill these places.Some have a second room, equally as small.This makes them feel cozy, warm, and snug. Some have, inside the pub, an enclosed table with a door to enter and leave These are called SNUGS.Next,there is the age of many, if not most, Irish pubs...we are talking OLD. the oldest (The Brazen Head in Dublin) began in 1198. others are from the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. The Irish people seem to value the traditions inherent in these old places, the father/son/grandson/greatgrandson ownership line, the traditions in each place, from the nature of the patrons, e.g., writers, politicians, musicians, young, middle age, old, etc, to which beers are served on  tap (next post).to what food is served, to what music is played there. This adherence to such unspoken "rules" of attendance means that soon after you enter any pub, the vibe is clear: students, retired guys, Polish people, Italians,International ( a little of everything). My kids met a Swedish and Norwegian musician at such a pub.I would have probably felt a little on the fringe there.

The next factor is the most striking of all the pub vibes. They are all places for social discourse. It is rare to find a busy pub without the requisit volume of conversation. And Irish LOVE conversation (did i say i felt right at home?) In most pubs, it doesnt take but a minute or two before you are engaged in conversation with an Irish person, who will make you laugh (they are genuinely naturally funny, not kidding) and they will buy your drinks and regale you with the stories of their life, with all the warts, regrets, self recriminations, sex, money, the whole shebang. at least some of the older ones will...

You may be expected to open up also...if you do,they will love you unabashedly, hug you alot, and use your name when speaking to you. if you dont,they will smile and let you know you arent really playing fair, buy you another drink,and move on....

The only other reason people go to pubs besides talking, is to listen to or play music.Music means, in this case, trad music (traditional), guitar, violin, banjo, bodhran, spoons,etc. any one can sit in, you just bring your instrument and join the group. somgs range from victorian ballads, to Mollie Malone, and even Goodnight Irene. The imbibing  patrons singalong,call out requests, but NEVER ....talk during the music...NEVER. the patrons will HUSH you, the musicians will HUSH you, the bartender will HUSH you. Got it? So you go to pubs to talk,to listen, or.......to watch the World Cup.

Oh,and what tiime does all the fun begin? In Annascaul, a small village on the Dingle peninsula, the South Pole bar was jammed to the rafters at.......10:30 am....
Whatever the purpose of a pub, whether music, or chatting, Irish people characterize the "fun" factor as "craic". Good craic is a compliment to a pub, a reason to go there. Vibrant, maybe noisy, a happy vibe.
Bad craic is equally an insult, meaning "stay away". A bar with only a few people, quiet, low energy, is consifered BAD CRAIC.........they should try Schuberg's at 10 pm on a weekday night.........

Ballyvaughn: A Small-Town Crawl

After Leenane, we spent several days in a house outside Galway with no internet or cel service (hence the absence of updates).  We made several day trips, including a fantastic day on Inis Mor in the Aran Islands, as well as a night in Galway where I became an involuntary participant in a rather impressive street performer's stunt (see below).  We then moved on to the small town of Ballyvaughn for an overnight stay on our way to the Dingle peninsula. 

After checking into the lovely Ballyvaughn Lodge, we began our exploration of the town.  The first stop for my dad and I was the pub in the Logue Lodge, one of the local b&bs.  We found the place gradually filling up in preparation for the semifinals of the Gaelic football league, in which Dublin Coun was taking on Kerry County.  Fans of both clubs populated the place, and we quickly looked up the rules to get up to speed.  Gaelic football is an interesting mix of soccer, rugby, and American football.  It was very fun to watch, and the Smithwick's was going down smoothly as the game got into full swing.  The crowd was initially subdued, but got more vocal as the game got more intense.  The staff was friendly and answered our questions about the game patiently.  When Dublin won on a go-ahead score with only a minute or two left, half the crowd exploded in cheers--very fun atmosphere to watch sports in.  While Logue was nothing to get too excited about, we left with a favorable impression.  

After meeting up for dinner, the full fam headed over O'Lochlainn, a small whiskey bar on the edge of town.  This place was fantastic.  A quiet bar intended for chatting, the place boasted a huge whiskey selection (pic below) and a barkeep that chatted us up about our travels, local attractions, local history, and music.  We sampled several whiskeys including some Jameson, some Red Breast, and some Green Spot, and Emma continued her adoption of Jameson and ginger ale as her drink of choice.  We had a good chat with the barkeep and amongst ourselves, telling stories and jokes for an hour or so.  A cozy place, O'Lochlainn probably only seats about 30, with a bar and a few tables in the front and a small snug for 5-6 in the back.  I'd definitely go back with a few hours to kill if the opportunity arose.  

We were ready to head home after O'Lochlainn, but a few of us had hoped to catch some music while in Ballyvaughn.  Passing the bar at the Hylands Burren Inn on our way back, we heard applause and cheering.  While my mom and Ellie were too tired for another stop, Emma, my dad and I dropped in to see what was going on.  What we found was a tiny front room where a group of four musicians were entertaining a packed crowd of about 20.  We found a couple seats, got some drinks, and settled in for the show.  An informal group, the musicians bantered with the crowd (many of who, were locals) between songs.  One of the musicians at one point pulled out a contraption consisting of two wooden marionette-type dolls and a long, thin board.  While the rest of the band played instrumental, he bounced the board up and down against the dolls' feet to create complex percussive patterns.  One of the coolest musical performances we saw.  At one point, the "leader" of the band even attempted to get my dad to come up and sing, singling him out of the crowd and saying that he "looked like a man with a song."  Unfortunately, the old man was too far out of his element that night to lead a performance, but did join in happily in singing crowd favorites like "Molly Malone" and "Goodnight Irene."  After another hour drinking and singing, we called it a night and headed back to the inn, very glad we'd made the stop at Hylands. 

Westport and Leenane

Bidding farewell to Dublin and renting a car, we hit the road and headed to the countryside.  After accustoming ourselves to the near-death experience that is driving on rural roads in Ireland, we made our way to our first stop, Westport.  Westport is a quaint little town, with lots of shops, restaurants and, of course, pubs.  After doing a little exploring and taking a (somewhat taxing) bike ride on the local bike trail, we stopped into Matt Molloy's, which we were told was the cant-miss watering hole in Westport. 

Around since 1896, Molloy's has a great vibe, decked out with authentic trinkets from its early years like old pictures, product packages, and the like.  It is small, cozy, and feels like the epitomal small-town pub.  It is also supposed to be one of the best spots for traditional Irish folk music in the world.  Unfortunately, we were too early in the day to catch any of it.  But we did get a chance to talk to the owner's son, who was tending the bar.  He gave us some history on the place, as well as the recent shift in serving convention for Guinness.  Typically served at or just below room temperature, in recent years puns have begun serving it colder in response to customer requests.  Molloy's, however, keeps a second tap of room-temperature Guinness on hand, and will gladly pour you a "roomie" upon request (or mix a little of each tap together to bring the temp up a little).  After a couple beers with Molloy's, though, the road was calling our names and we headed on. 

After a stopover in Dromore West in Sligo Co., where we met some distant relatives and got some great family history, we hit the road to Leenane.  My mother had just done a run of "The Beauty Queen of Leenane," and wanted to see the play's setting in person.  Leenane turned out to be a pretty, if small, village on Killary Harbor in Connemara.  

Apart from a few inns and restaurants, its primary attraction is Gaynor's pub, which was the setting for the movie The Field.  The pub itself is warm and inviting, with dark wood and a roaring fire in the fireplace (a welcome feature on a chilly fall night), and the walls are decorated with articles about the film shot there.  But the charm ended there, in my opinion.  Gaynor's was the first place we stopped on our crawl where we didn't really feel welcome, as the bartender seemed to resent a group of non-locals taking up a table in the near-empty bar.  She did not ick up on our attempt to strike up a chat and, apart from one patron that stopped us to chat for a minute, I generally got the vibe that we weren't wanted there.  (Or at least, no one was interested I talking to us--which is about the same thing in Ireland.)  After finishing a round, we headed out, disappointed but optimistic about our next stops. 

Dublin, Pt. 3: Punk Rockers in Ireland and the Shansky Family Pub Crawl

Night 3 in Dublin brought a split between kids and parents.  That day was spent on a bus tour tour around the city and a trip to the Old Jameson Distillery (where the old man was chosen as a whiskey judge and, uncoached, chose Jameson as the winner over Jack Daniels and Johnny Walker).  That evening, after another stop at O'Neill's pub, the senior citizens went to the theater while my sisters and I headed over to the Academy to see Alkaline Trio and a local band, Blood or Whiskey.  After downing a few Guinnesses at the show, Emma got chatted up by a couple of Swedish dudes who we happened to be standing by.  As the show wrapped up, Tommy and Odd (the Swedes in question) invited us for a post-show pitcher at Woolshed, a sportsbar nearby.  While it was, all in all, just a sportsbar, they did have some huge televisions and tiered tables that would make watching a game there fun, and they also offered pitchers of beer--not something we came across frequently.  We made loose plans to meet Tommy and Odd to watch the Ireland-Sweden World Cup qualifier when we came back through Dublin toward the end of our trip, then said our farewells and headed home.

The next night, our final in Dublin, the ladies did a little shopping while my dad and I set off to find the Rory Gallagher corner in Temple Bar and the accompanying bronzed guitar.

After accomplishing that mission (see above), we set off in search of a pint before meeting the ladies for dinner.  We wandered into Farrington's, a nice little place in Temple Bar, where my dad had a Guinness and I had a Smithwick's.  We started chatting up the bartender about a local spirt called potine (pronounced "potcheen").  It's essentially Irish moonshine, and illegal.  However, some enterprising souls had made a slightly watered-down version (to a legal alcohol level) and bottled it, and the bartender offered us a shot.  It was pretty solid stuff--sort of a stronger and (slightly) sweeter version of gin.  The bartender gave us some good chat about the city and his move from Sligo, and the place was generally pretty warm and cheerful.  They had some good beer selections apart from the standard Guinness, Smithwick's and Bulmers, and everyone was pretty friendly.  But the highlight of the place was definitely the potine.  After those and our beers, the old man and I had a good buzz going as we headed off to dinner.

Following a delicious dinner at Jaipur, an Indian restaurant, we began our family pub crawl in earnest at The Temple Bar in, of all places, Temple Bar.  After walking into what we initially thought was a tiny pub (filled to the doors with people), we discovered that the place was actually huge, with several different rooms, including a sort of patio.  We happened upon a table that another group was vacating and took a seat.  The very friendly waiter arrived shortly to take our drink order and inform us that the music was starting soon.  After a few minutes, a trio filed into the corner of the front room (which we could see through the doorway) and began to play.  A guitar, flute and accordion was all there was, but they played some fun, modern Irish folk music--some instrumentals, some with vocals--and the entire place was clapping and cheering in no time.  We had a blast, but decided to fmove on after one drink in the interest of hitting a few more locales.

Our next stop was Oliver St. John Gogarty Pub, just down the street from the Temple Bar.  Again, this place was jammed to the doors and the crowd was raucous.  It was an interesting mix of people--young, old, tourists, locals, and all different nationalities.  There was a guitarist singing Irish folk songs at the front of the bar--very unpretentious, and more interested in getting people singing and dancing than performing masterpieces of the genre.  The songs were funny and catchy, and he ended his set with a medley of international favorites like "Brown Eyed Girl" and "Hallelujah."  To be fair, this was more of a good-time pub than a place for serious folk music, but it was a blast and there were several funny moments--like when a 70-something man grabbed a 20-something girl and started twirling her around the dance floor, or when the group of Spanish girls at the front of the bar started losing their shit when the singer did "La Bamba."  Again limiting ourselves to one drink, we watched the end of his set and moved on to The Palace Bar, our final stop.

We didn't plan on the Palace being our final stop when we walked in, but Brendan had other plans.  Brendan was the 50-something guy sitting in the back room of this quiet, "talking pub" at the end of the street.  He saw us looking for a table and waved us over to join him and his friends.  Having had several great experiences chatting up the locals thus far, we were hopeful we'd met another friendly Irishman in the mood to socialize.  Little did we know.....

Shortly after joining Brendan, we realized he had a head start on us by several beers.  He asked us a few questions about where we were from before assailing us with the facts of his life--he had a house in Spain, a house in Wexford, a beautiful wife, two (very young) kids that he couldn't stand, he was a tour guide and driver for a living (which led to some doubt on our part about the two houses), etc.  and unfortunately, we couldn't shut him up.  About 10 minutes in, I noticed that he a completely ignoring the group he was with--two girls and a guy, all in their twenties.  At one point Brendan got worked up about some story he was telling, and I caught the eye of the guy he was sitting with.  The guy gave me a look that said, "we don't know who this guy is, either."  A few minutes later, they went out for a smoke and never came back, leaving us with Brendan.  Unfortunately, his presence kept us from taking in much about the pub, though it was generally cozy and social, with chairs arranged around the back all of the place facing in, so everyone was facing each other sort of.  It was apparently a literary pub, with pictures of authors who'd frequented it covering the walls.  And the baretender poured a good Guinness, which our main concern.  Eventually, we pried ourselves free of Brendan and headed home to prepare for the next day's drive to the countryside.

dooblin

This is my initial shansky pub blog offering. We are leaving Dooblin tomorrow to visit Rose Anne's relatives in Sligo, so I will summarize the pub experiences from my angle....
First up was O'neill's Victorian Pub, where we stayed for 4 nights, next to Trinity College (think Book of Kells, Harry Potter-like library...
The pub turned out to be a wonderful respite from the raucous action in Temple Bar, etc...
We went there several times, once for dinner, where we had wonderful fish and chips, usually sitting in a snug....

Next up was Brazen Head, where we had lunch and stayed for 4 hours for the sunday afternoon trad music session. taken very seriously by the local musicians. The buzzed up patrons were alternating between singing along and hitting on my wife, and my daughters.....great fun, if i remember correctly.
Monday we went o the Jameson distillery, which is technically not a pub, but who gives a shit...i was a taster and drank several shots of various whiskeys, getting a diploma and a great bizz, while my family had to watch jealously.
Next up was Doyle's, where  Rose  Anne and I went after the Abbey Theatre . Couple of pints and some snuggling......

Today we hit a few more, starting with Farringtons, where , in addition to the customary pint of stout, I had a  shot of Poitin ("pocheen"), an original irish high proof booze  made from barley, sugar beet,and something else i cannot remember...i DO remember it was great and i felt invincible after i drank it.
After a visit to the Rory Gallagher Corner in Temple Bar,and an Indian dinner, we crawled to a few more, starting with the Temple Bar for some more trad and a coup,e more pints. Ye olde Dublin Pub was next, but i dont think we drank there...besides they were playing U2 stuff?and they BLOW big time)
Next up was Oliver St John Gogarty where i switched to Jameson and Rose Anne had RedBreast. Others had pints of something or other, i did not care by then. There must have been several hundred in the bar from at least 7 or 8 countries, listening and dancing to a guitar player/singer who sang everything from van morrison to Chubby Checker. The highlight was the incredible universality of music, when the entire pub sang the verses and the wonderful chorus of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah"....
Last tonight was the Palace Bar, a hangout for fampus old Irish writers. No music, but som more Jameson, a Harp,and ending with Irish coffee...
Next stop: Sligo....more later....

Off and Running--O'Neill's and more

The Shansky family pub crawl began (as a group, at least) at O'Hare, where Emma and I met up with the rest of the clan at the Big Bowl in the international terminal.  My father--who had been researching airport cuisine options for weeks in advance--was so excited about the existence of the Big Bowl, you'd have thought the vacation was ending there.  After several enthusiastic courses--even the waitstaff was confused by his response--we headed off to board and begin our seven-hour flight.

The flight itself was largely uneventful.  One of the few noteworthy events was when my sister Emma was awoken from a nap by frustrated cursing from the row behind us, where my parents were sitting.  My father was searching for something and was pissed at his inability to find it.  My mom was aiding in the search but was equally unsuccessful.  Finally, my sister asked what they were looking for, to which my father angrily replied that he couldn't find his glasses.  It was then that Emma pointed out that the glasses were in fact resting on his nose.  To quote the old man, "That actually happened."

After landing and dropping off our things, we went to meet our very nice--if a little over enthusiastic--Dublin greeter, Gerry.   Gerry was very friendly and helpful, but clearly at a loss for much else to do for the day and seemed to want to join our party permanently.  We finally pried ourselves free and, after a brief break to freshen up, hit our first pub, O'Neill's, which was downstairs from our guest rooms.

O'Neill's was what I think of as a prototypical Irish pub--lots of different little rooms, snugs, a dark wood bar, and a friendly staff (who doubles as the staff for the guest rooms).  We took a spot in a little snug in the back, where we enjoyed some drinks (a delicious Hooker pale ale and some Cork Gin and tonics) and a little conversation before heading to dinner.  While our stay was short, we vowed to go back to chat with the locals a little more and, of course, drink more.

We then headed out to a lovely dinner at a place called The Farm.  After dinner, we wandered around the Trinity neighborhood to find a spot for a post-dinner drink.  After finding our way into a very bustling bar area--think Wrigleyville after a Cubs game--and having my mother narrowly avoid getting puked on, we decided maybe that wasn't the neighborhood for a family drink and headed home.

The next day, after a morning trip out to the Newgrange site (think Ireland's Stonehenge) we came back to the city and headed to The Brazen Head, Dublin's oldest pub.

The Brazen Head lived up to its recommendation.  A great little spot with several different rooms and outdoor spaces, we first took a seat in the dining room for lunch.  We sampled several different beers--Kilkenney Ale, Smithwick's and, of course, some Guinness--and had some lunch.  To be fair, the food was not particularly great, but it got the job done.  Some beef stew and fried Brie provided a good base for the booze to come.  But the real fun started after lunch, when we headed int the bar where the music was in full force.

A group of older guys was sitting in the corner playing traditional Irish music.  Half the room was singing along, and most seemed to know the songs.  Almost everyone was completely wasted, despite the fact that it was only around 4pm.  (Particularly the guy in the pic above with the reindeer hat, who decided the best seat in e house was on the floor in front of the band.)  We made lots of friends, including a group of Scots in town for a bachelor party and more than a few older Irish gents who were smitten with my mom (one of whom indicated that he'd like to "wear her as a hat," but somehow managed to do so in a charming and inoffensive way).  We werre the recipients of several free rounds of drinks.  We were even singing along by the end of our time there, and half the room was sad when we left.   I'd definitely recommend a trip to the Brazen Head if you have e opportunity.

Here goes....

In a little over 48 hours, the nuclear family and I will be embarking on a two-week trip around the Emerald Isle.  Instead of doing the same old travel blog that people have done a million times before, I thought it'd be fun to do one focusing on one of Ireland's specialties, the pubs, which I'm sure has only been done a few thousand times before.  For those interested, this will be your source for the Shansky family's take on the various watering holes that we stumble into over the course of our journey.  And maybe there will be some other shit thrown in there for good measure.  Who knows.

God help us.