The Decline of the Dublin Pub

The Long Hall: photo by Flickr user inaki_naiz. Used under a Creative Commons License.

An important article in the New York Times on the decline of the traditional Irish pub. This is a serious matter and one that merits pondering. If there’s any upside to present economic difficulty it lies in the hope – faint but real – that it may do in property developers and hucksters before it gets the rest of us. That is, that it may reduce the number of once-great pubs vandalised by ill-considered refits designed to attract a wealthier class of punter. The sort that drinks wine. And cocktails.

Temple Bar in Dublin was once a quaint little maze of record shops and independent clothes stores, speckled with interesting and honest boozers. Then Ireland became rich and Temple Bar became a “Quarter” and “Dublin’s Left Bank” don’t you know and everything was swanked up and trendified to appeal to tourists and present a dashing, sophisticated, modern Ireland to visitors.