Category: Pubs

From Jim Gavin to Gin Martinis: A Recent History of The Sackville Lounge

It was relatively early on a hungover Sunday, some years ago, that I found myself in a packed Sackville Lounge, settling into the last available seat, tucked away at the end of the bar and beside the entrance to the small pub.

Awaiting his arrival back to the table from the bar, I had expected Pintman №2 to return in a bit of a huff. Or at least that’s the way I would have – not having anticipated such a busy bar for the early hour that was in it of a Sunday. So imagine my surprise when he landed back with a big happy head on him, before plonking the pints down on the table.

– I’m after getting them for free.

– Yewhat?

– Yeah, those are on the house, he said, to celebrate the five-in-a-row.

– Happy fuckin days.

Taking that first, curative sup of the sweetest of pints (free ones), I’d settled my gaze on a youngfella sat across the other side of the pub.

– C’mere, see your man over there, do you recognise him at all?

– Looks familiar, alright, but I couldn’t tell ye where from.

It might be that we’re not the most observant of fellas, or it might have been the fact that we went out on The Waxies’ Dargle* to watch Dublin win a historic 5th All-Ireland Football Final in a row, the day prior. It could even be a combination of all of the above, but we really should have realised what was going on. I mean, all the signs were there:

· A pub that was so packed at such an early hour on a Sunday

· The fact that we were given a pint on the house to celebrate the win.

· A gang of similarly dressed jubilant lads on the far side of the pub.

· The familiarity of one of them that we could properly see.

But we only copped it after Jim Gavin – the team’s manager and now a presidential candidate – rose from his seat and came into plain view. Yes, we had walked into a pub hosting the All-Ireland winning team, no more than 20 or so hours since the final whistle had blown in Croke Park. This was, of course, much to the jealousy and annoyance of our peers with an actual, full-time interest in GAA, and not just bandwagoners like ourselves.

Being one of the smallest pubs in Dublin City, the episode above came at a time when The Sackville Lounge was in a sort of renaissance, having been reopened following a few years’ closure on the back of the demise of Clery’s Department Store.

Sadly, such incidents of closure were not finished affecting The Sackville Lounge. Just as the pub was beginning to hit its stride, the pandemic struck, and ultimately, the proprietors of this particular incarnation of the pub had to pull out of the venture, throwing the premises into another spell of disuse and uncertainty.

What followed thereafter is probably best forgotten, but for posterity, here goes. The pub was acquired by someone who saw fit to open it as Biddy Mulligan’s Old Ale & Stout House – replete with cheap Carroll’s Gift Shop-esque signage and the lot. To say that there was an outcry would be to put it mildly – numerous media outlets even reported on the outcry, with this one even quoting us in the process.

As it turned out, Biddy Mulligan’s Old Ale & Stout House was not a successful venture and the pub was once again vacated. But having been acquired by the owners of the 1661 on Green Street, the pub had its previous name restored and was reopened. The 1661, which we haven’t yet written up for the blog, is undoubtedly the finest cocktail bar in the country, and their offering in The Sackville is a pared-back version of the type of thing they do at 1661. They’ve even given the pub the tagline – it can be seen on the awning in our picture above – it’s ‘Beloved Dirt’, whatever in the name of Jaysis that’s supposed to mean.

To us though, it’s all a bit of a bittersweet affair. There’s little doubt that it’s a different pub now – its new fitout certainly tells you that – with its beautiful marble bartop contrasting against the matte-black furnishings that abound. And while we can’t help but lament its past – where you might nip in from a downpour of an afternoon and find yourself debating the issues of the day with a GPO clerk, a bus-driver and a Ladbrokes cashier – we can be delight that the pub is at least in good hands and back in the city. And maybe we might just need to dig a little deeper before we find this particular dirt beloved, but we’ll certainly darken its door for a few cocktails yet.

* The Waxie’s Dargle is a traditional Dublin Street Song chronicling the efforts of two cobblers, a profession whose members were colloquially referred to as Waxies, to go on a holiday, for a drinking session in Ringsend and Irishtown. A Dargle being another colloquialism for a holiday, taken from the popularity of the more well-off for visiting Bray in County Wicklow and holidaying there, alongside the River Dargle. TLDR: We were on the lash in Irishtown and Ringsend

Postscript: While I’m very grateful to Jim as being one of the main driving forces in Dublin’s All Ireland triumph, and for us ultimately getting free pints on that day, this post should not be considered as an endorsement of Jim Gavin in his campaign to be the next President of Ireland or of the Fianna Fáil party with whom he is campaigning.

Shameless Plug: we’re in the midst of a very soft launch of an Etsy page, selling some of the prints of the photos of pubs we’ve accumulated over the years. Feel Free To Click Here And Take A Look

October 3, 2025
A Medium Rare Reception: How One Look Told Me Everything About Murrays on O’Connell Street.

I can’t say for certain, but I think I’m happy enough to say that if there were a competition for the strangest or most unique time anyone has ever come to the realisation that they didn’t like a pub, I would be in with a good shout of taking home the gold.

It was a New Year’s Eve, and it was a good while ago now. I know for certain that considerable time has passed since then because a few of us had been in a house drinking that beautifully cinnamon-tinted, antifreeze-laced American delicacy that goes by the name of Fireball, before heading out. And as everyone over the age of 29 will attest, Fireball is a young person’s game. And much as we’d like to, we can’t categorise ourselves as young people any more.

On this night we had all merrily piled into Murray’s to ring in the new year not because of any prior knowledge or affection for the place, but because some friends of ours, (including Pintmen №’s 3, 4, 9 and 11 for longtime readers of the blog) who played in a pub band, had been booked in to gig there that night.

It was while we were on Jools Holland time (within 30 minutes of NYE midnight) that the lads called from the front of house, beckoning me to join them for my party piece that I had taken to getting up and singing with them from time to time. For reasons unremembered, I had a limp at the time and took longer to join them onstage than usual. It’s possible that this contributed to the moment that led me to realise that I didn’t like the pub, which, much like the new year, wasn’t very far away.

Now, the mention of Fireball should have been enough to highlight the sort of state that the lot of us were in when we got to the pub, but for those unfamiliar, suffice it for me to say that we were sloppier than you’d like to be at the start of the night in a pub. But this isn’t a tale of public embarrassment, I didn’t go and fall off the stage or anything like that. I just want to highlight that the levels of perceptiveness that longtime readers of this blog might expect will not have been up to their usual standard at this time.

It is, however, remembered by both Pintman №2 and myself that our initial impression of the pub was maybe that it felt a little touristy and restaurant-like compared to what we’d prefer. Given the name, we were aware that this was probably the flagship pub belonging to the Murray Pub Group, who also own spots like The Camden, Jimmy Rabbitte’s, and Fibber Magees (among others) – and as we liked some of the pubs in that portfolio, and seeing as we were there for the night, we were willing to give the place the benefit of the doubt. That was until I was somewhere in the first verse of the song I had gotten up to sing with the lads.

According to the internet, the reasons that people close their eyes during sex is for increased relaxation and focus and for decreased distraction and self-consciousness. These are the same-said reasons why I tend to close my own eyes for the majority of time I spend singing in public. So it wasn’t until I was ~~coming~~ arriving into the first chorus that I opened my eyes and saw him.

He was an elderly North-American-looking man who, at no more than sixteen and a half minutes to midnight, was eating a steak dinner. A peculiar time to be doing so on any ordinary day, but even more so on a New Year’s Eve. And it was when I locked eyes with that man – piece of well-done sirloin mid-delivery toward his watering mouth – and how he looked back at me with the most disdainful gaze I’ve ever found myself at the receiving end of: up until that point, and since. It was then that I knew.

The interaction, though it only lasted mere seconds in duration, told me everything I needed to know about the pub and my brain, Fireball-dulled as it was, still managed to make that snap-fire connection that meant that I knew that Murray’s was not the pub for me.

That night would ultimately end in many different strands of infamy that are unrelated to the pub. You can be assured that none of us have touched a drop of Fireball since. And come to think of it – we’ve never been in Murrays since, either.

Since then, it’s had a refurb and was split into two, the new half being a pub named for signatory of the Proclamation: Thomas Clarke. We haven’t been in that side, either and spend more time than sane mortals should wondering whether the dividing of the pub into two warrants a revisit. Maybe it does, given the recent closure of The Living Room – a pub that Murray’s shared its iconic beer garden with alongside Fibbers.

From what can be gauged on social media, the whole dual pub operation up there at the top of O’Connell Street seems to still be a bit food and tourist-heavy. And that’s probably fair enough on the city’s main thoroughfare.

Neither the quality, price or any other characteristic of whatever we were drinking in there that night is remembered at this stage. And forgotten alongside those is our perception of the pub’s décor, in its old guise. So if you were thinking that this article would offer a modicum of useful information on the pub, as it currently exists, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. And I suppose that means we can’t rule out a slightly more sober and respectful revisit, ourselves.

Shameless Plug: we’re in the midst of a very soft launch of an Etsy page, selling some of the prints of the photos of pubs we’ve accumulated over the years. Feel Free To Click Here And Take A Look

August 28, 2025
Pubs, Power Cuts, And How The Landmark Made Me Realise I Wasn’t Young Anymore
Lately, on foot of my mentioning The Landmark Pub to a tradesman, I’ve been pondering the intangible phenomenon that marches us all slowly toward the grave – that is to say, I’ve been thinking about ageing. Specifically, I’ve been wondering about our perception of ageing and the way it can feel relatively accelerated at different parts of one’s life.

This has, of course, invited more questions that I find myself plagued with at the most inopportune moments. Questions that wonder what age it is that we feel like we’re ageing the fastest? Or what milestones are those specifically linked with the realisation of our agedness? And whether these things are specific to a generation, or even an individual.

And once you get on to questions like those, you’re invariably headed down a single path toward the biggest questions of all – the ones that consider exactly what it is that the purpose of our existence as a universe really is – the ones that stop you in your tracks and leave you, mouth agape, in the household cleaning aisle of Dunnes – with the aulones gawking up at you, presuming that you’re trying to figure out the difference between bio and non-bio.

This bout of pound shop existentialism is brought to you today by my realisation that I’ve become everything I hated as a young, fresh-faced apprentice. I’ve become one of those lads who cajoles young tradespersons into unwanted conversations.

I had only gone in to offer the fella a cup of tea, but before I knew it, the sentences had started to form in my mouth and were projected forward into his disinterested face. Sentences like these:
- It was called the DIT when I was there, but they’ve changed it to something else since then.
- They actually demolished that building, I’m not sure where the Sparks do their tech now – probably online.
- It’s a shame really, there used to be some great craic in the pub up the road from it – Karma Stone it was called. It’s something different now.
When I finally did leave the man to his work, and before I made my realisation about how old I’d become, I had cause to remember back to that pub, which, as correctly stated, is something different now – namely The Landmark.

Placed on the corner of Kevin and Wexford Street, The Landmark is a medium-sized pub. It is comprised of a single room – that is to say, it’s not subdivided into lounge/bar, but does offer plenty of nooks within that one room, which negate this writer’s temptation to describe it as open plan. The aesthetics of the pub are similar to its nearby competitor – Devitt’s, it having a nuevo-traditional-pub style of fit-out. Dark wooden tones, ceilings with embossed wallpaper and an array of trinkets and bric-a-brac scattered throughout. Unlike Devitt’s, though, we’ve found this pub to belie its name – Landmark it is not. To us, it just seems to have not quite found its niche – that is to say that it doesn’t and hasn’t stood out to us in a very, very saturated pub market along that multi-named, boozy thoroughfare stretching from Dame Street to The Grand Canal.

To say it hasn’t found its niche may be harsh, on our part. Food seemed a fairly integral part of the pub’s offering, and longtime readers will know this to be something that can detract from our enjoyment of a pub. With regard to the pint, it left the wallet €6.90 lighter in early 2025 and was plenty drinkable.

I suppose it’s perhaps too difficult to be able to unbiasedly look at a pub that’s tied up with a such a pivotal part of my youth – where I, along with scores of other young trainee electricians – our pockets all lined with the last feeble roars of The Celtic Tiger – would pour in from the DIT’s Kevin Street Campus, unaware of the financial shitstorm that would send us abroad or to the dole queue in a matter of months. Where, at 2pm on a Tuesday afternoon following a term’s last exam, a power cut occurred and someone shouted into the darkness – “Is there a Sparks in the gaff?” to the drunken excitement of a hundred drunken electricians who’d been there since 11.

So, to try and answer one of the questions I started this piece with: I think it’s when a critical mass of premises and institutions (figurative and literal) change their names, appearances and/or purposes that you start to feel you’re ageing quicker than others are. And The Landmark, nee Karma Ston,e is just another one of those for me.

Epilogue: But then you go and talk to someone in their nineties who talks about WW2 like it was a few months ago, and you feel like a 14-year-old again. Life is mad. None of us are as old as we think; get out there and have the craic.
July 24, 2025
From Baring All to Belting Elton: Meagher’s and the Great Circle of Pub Life

It was one of those wholesome, heart-warming moments. The type of thing that could have done numbers on TikTok or Instagram, or wherever things do numbers these days, if anyone had been bothered to film it. First of all, the setting was perfect – it was the Christmastime of the year; literally just a day or three to go – and the pub was all aglow with pine and twinkly lights and all the rest. Secondly, the occupancy was just right—lightly packed. No spare seats, but still enough room to manoeuvre, and ample space to stow away the proverbial Christmas shopping bags. 

And it was the shopping bags that were crucial, because it was one of these that someone retrieved him from – with tags dangling and in all his golden glory, his owner displayed him with great reverence to the rest of his companions. And going by his companions’ faces, they all shared similar reverence for the life-sized replica lion cub – Simba, from The Lion King®™© (please don’t sue me, Disney), that the man had retrieved from the branded bag that sat on the bench next to him.

And that would all be very pleasant and fine in itself, but it was what happened next that I wanted to speak to you about today. It was when another punter, at another table, saw all of this and began to belt those time-honoured words at the top of her lungs: 

NAAAAAAAAAANTS INGONYAMA BAGITHI BAAAABA!

Possible that it would have been better to have typed that out phonetically, but suffice it to say that this woman basically co-opted an entire packed Christmas pub into a full sing-along of Elton John’s Circle of Life, the Theme Song from Disney’s 1994 Classic – The Lion King.

If I hadn’t been overcome with the magic of the moment myself, I might have spent longer looking at the man who had bought the gift. The poor fella, he could only look on with a nervous trepidation that the half smile on his face did nothing to hide, as his stuffed toy was relinquished from his grasp and crowd-surfed across the packed pub. Thankfully, the toy would come back to him unscathed, but not before the pub’s sturdiest-looking stool was recast as Pride Rock and the toy triumphantly raised aloft to the cheers and hollers of the masses as they went for one last chorus of the song, mimicking the opening scene of the movie. The staff had even copped what was going on and put the actual song on the jukebox.

So all in all, as wholesome a moment as you could ask for in a pub at that time of the year. Especially so, given one of this particular pub’s recent incarnations – something another man was certainly aware of. I heard him, as I was making my way to the toilet after the whole Simba affair, and he says to his friend: That’s not the first time a growler was put on show in this pub.

And the man, beautiful linguist and all as he was, was absolutely correct – prior to being Meagher’s, and a short-lived Indian Restaurant, the pub was called The Garden of Eden and was one of Dublin’s handful of purveyors of lapdancing and associated services. Yours truly never did darken its door during these years; however, Pintman#REDACTED had the pleasure once and gave it the following six-word review: Penneys Knickers and Caesarean Section Scars.

The building re-opened as a pub in 2022, having been acquired by the owners of the River Bar, the nearby pub in O’Connell Bridge House, across the river. It underwent extensive renovation and a faux-Victorian fitout was installed: replete with decorative wallpaper and a snug to the front of the pub. A beautiful mosaic tile runs underfoot, and the walls are decorated with historical images and adverts, lots of which don’t appear to be the same, usual ones that you tend to encounter everywhere else, time and time again. This was also the first pub I’ve come across with a cabinet of supposed whiskey bottles, all affixed with historical labels of brands, some still in existence and some since confined to the ages. I’ve come across the same bottles in other pubs, since and have considered buying an inkjet printer, an extra-large box of teabags and a few Pritt sticks and seeing if I can monetise the empty bottles I’m throwing out down at the bottle bank every other month.

The drinks offering is mostly comprised of the familiar macros, and the Guinness has been pretty decent on all of our visits, most recently hitting the pocket for €7 even in early to mid-2025. There’s also a full food offering, and there’s a good-looking function room downstairs that you can gaze into and think about booking when on your way to the Jaxx.

So, while we’ll admit to being a bit distracted by some other nearby pubs, and not getting in all that often, we’re happy to have Meagher’s as a good pinting option in the Eden Quay district. And to those who are sad to no longer have the option of bare breasts or tikka masala on the premises, we can only assure them that the building’s future is never a certainty and that these options may come back around in that great Circle of Life.

June 26, 2025
Nazi Bombings, Hollywood Legends, and a Teetotaler’s Last Pint—The Wild History of Cusack’s Pub
There I was, all set to start this write-up on the perfect line. I had gone over it in my head when I’d be passing by the pub on the bus, reciting different variations of it, playing around with the phrasing and the timing over and over again:
- It might seem strange to have a pub closely associated with a teetotaller, but that’s exactly the case when it comes to Cusack’s.
- Cusack’s might seem like your everyday, run-of-the-mill Dublin boozer, but what if I told you that it was closely associated with one of Dublin’s most famous teetotallers?
These permutations went on like that in my head for a spell. Before long, I pined for the moment when I would finally sit down at my keyboard, commit a final version and put the whole thing to bed. But then, in the midst of it all, I found myself wandering across the city and it wasn’t as I passed the Padraig Pearse that I twigged it – it was in the subsequent passing of a pub named for another executed signatory of the proclamation – the James Connolly, that the realisation passed over me. Pubs being associated with famous sober figures wasn’t quite the anomaly that I had first taken it to be.

Thankfully, I wasn’t due to pass The Bernard Shaw Pub that day, which might have been a bridge too far – but I did cross a nearer bridge which links me back to the original figure I wanted to refer to – Matt Talbot. The Venerable Matt Talbot, who has been referenced on this blog previously, is a religious figure from turn-of-century Dublin who renounced his terrible drunken ways and dedicated his life to God. Matt’s dedication took the form of undertaking the hardest forms of labour, coupled with levels of self-inflicted discomfort that would land a modern man inside a psychiatric ward. But them was the days before Fifty Shades of Grey, and one can only surmise that this is simply how masochists made their way in the world back then, so we’ll leave it at that, for fear of kink-shaming poor Matt.

But why are we talking about Matt Talbot, and why has it taken several paragraphs to finally get around to mentioning Cusack’s – the pub in the article’s title? Matt is linked with the pub due to the fact that it’s said he took his very last drink in Cusack’s of The North Strand, before giving up his auld sins, and to be honest, he couldn’t have chosen a better place for the proverbial one last time for old time’s sake.

There are many things that I like about Cusack’s, but one that I enjoy the most is that the pub’s very décor imparts something about Dublin’s history in an indirect way. The pub, with its antique diver helmets, shipboard ceiling, sailor’s knots and seafarer’s lamps is one which evidently has a nautical theme – and while it’s not exactly inland, it’s far enough from the coast that I did find myself wondering about the choice of theme when first I visited. And if you’re willing to wonder about that, you’re likely to wonder about the sea wall outside the pub – the one nowhere near the sea. And all of this will ultimately lead you to understand that the coastline of Dublin was once to be found in or around the environs of the pub, making its nautical theme entirely valid.

Aside from nautical ephemera, you’ll also find plenty of images and news clippings related to the bombing of the North Strand by the Nazis in 1941 on the display in the pub, which was not struck in the bombing of the area. And if you’ll allow me to categorize that horrific event as a tenuous connection to Berlin for the purpose of this article, the pub also holds another such connection – in the form of the story that Hollywood A-Couple of the day Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor are said to have visited the pub when Burton was filming an adaptation of John Le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold where Dublin was used to shoot scenes set in Cold War Berlin. Lore has it that Taylor was given special dispensation to use the Gents, there being no option of a Ladies’ Room at the time, and that her chauffeur, alongside some locals, stood guard outside while she was relieving herself.

Power-couples aside – the pub, at its heart, is a locals’ sort of pub – it’s actually so locals-oriented that I’m nearly sure I’ve had something of a Liam Neeson moment there, where a regular’s dog recognised me from a previous occasion when I was in for a few scoops. I actually have a picture of this dog (below), and just noticed he’s in the main picture of the pub (above), just to the right of the door.

It should, however, be noted that its proximity to Croke Park means that you can forget about cosy local vibes where match and concert days are concerned.

The pub has offered a full food menu (though I’m not sure if it still does), but this hasn’t been found to interfere with its standing as a decent drinker’s pub, in the way that other pubs’ food offerings can. Regarding the drink, there’s no surprises to be had – it’s your standard offering of familiar brands, and there’s no fault in their Guinness, from this drinker’s perspective. When last visited, in early 2025, the pint was priced at €6.20.

So come ye repentant sinners looking to sin one last time. Come seafarers. Come It-Couples, match-goers, concert-goers and drinkers all. Give Cusack’s a look – unlike Matt Talbot, you won’t regret it.
May 29, 2025
The South Strand

If you happened to suffer from auto-brewery syndrome: a rare gastro-intestinal condition where your digestive system ferments ingested food to alcohol and causes you to slur your speech, stumble, find it difficult to carry out normal motor functions and become dizzy as you try to go about your day-to-day life, you’d be spending the same amount of money, but having ten times the craic as you would be if you were in this modern day British Army officer’s mess.

Have some respect for yourself and go around the corner to The Ferryman instead.

June 27, 2024
Joyce, Plunkett and Why We Should Name a Metro Station After The Brian Boru Pub

Come as a surprise, Leixlip, Clonsilla. Dropping down lock by lock to Dublin. With turf from the midland bogs. Salute. He lifted his brown straw hat, saluting Paddy Dignam.

They drove on past Brian Boroimhe house. Near it now.
James Joyce, Ulysses, 1920

A hearse and mourning coaches stood empty outside the Brian Boru House waiting, while the mourners, their kinsman already buried, consoled themselves with alcohol.
James Plunkett, Strumpet City, 1969

It might be apt, that when you bundle together the two most notable quotes referring to The Brian Boru Pub from Irish Literature, that you realise they both refer to funerals. Some might, but we would never suggest that Joyce and Plunkett, both, had channelled their inner Nostradamus when they each set out to write their respective legendary Dublin novels – and even though we’d bet this week’s wages on it being a case of the latter tipping their hat to the former, there remains the shadow of some eerie prophecy about the whole thing.

For those not in the know, Hedigan’s Pub, better known as The Brian Boru or the Brian Boru House, is not long for this world. The long, long-awaited and often-doubted Dublin Metro Project has apparently gotten its act together at last and is gearing up to break ground. As part of the planned works, comes the demolition of the Brian Boru House and its replacement as one of the main stations along the route.

And, geographically it’s easy enough to see why that makes sense. The pub, as it stands is very much a landmark in the area – sitting directly beside the Royal Canal and being festooned with a colourful mural of former High King of Ireland, Brian Boru – who is said to have assembled some of his army on the site before The Battle of Clontarf, giving the pub its name – the pub is one you couldn’t but help use as a nodal point in any directions you might find yourself giving to anybody who required them and who would have to pass by on the way to, or from somewhere.

With the Gravediggers to the north and The Hut to the south, we’ll admit to a level of distraction over the years, leaving us to not give this pub the attention it duly deserves. It’s more of a labyrinthine building than its façade would suggest and seems to, at different parts of its interior, include all the elements of what one would anticipate in a traditional pub – wooden, tiled and carpeted flooring, a carvery bar tucked somewhere down the back, brass fixtures, ornate mirrors spelling the names of whiskey brands in gold leaf, and so on.

And while we’d love to spin you all a yarn about some interesting interaction we had there, during some visit or another, like we normally would try to in these posts, we’re not here to do this today. We wanted to put this post together simply as a marker: a marker that maybe we’ve suspended our long-held doubts that Metro North would ever break ground. And just as a marker to remember this ordinary, yet historic pub that has been on this site for over a century.

And if the above isn’t very clear about what this post is, let us be more direct about what it isn’t. It’s not a call to arms for the cessation of any planned works

We’d have happily called for the cessation of some works down the years that have relieved this city of some of its pubs (here’s looking at you The Long Stone), but this is different. This is something that should benefit the greater good – no one needs to sell the idea of improving public transport to us here in this blog – a blog that follows the efforts of two driver-license-less pintmen to traverse the city and visit its public houses.

But there’s no reason that we can’t, in what will become our newly built heritage, tip our hat to our old built heritage. From our perspective, we would deem Dublin, and indeed Ireland to be behind the curve when it comes to recognising the fundamental part that public houses constitute in our shared culture and heritage. Well-known voices within the architectural community have already called for our pubs to be afforded UNESCO status, and such ideas are not mere virtue signalling, either – Berlin recently had their city’s techno scene added to a UNESCO cultural heritage list.

Some have called for the new Metro Station to bear a name that refers to the pub which currently sits on the site, and we think that this would be entirely fitting – so much so that we’ve set up a petition. If you happen to agree with us, please add your name by clicking the link below:

https://my.uplift.ie/petitions/name-the-phibsborough-metro-stop-after-the-brian-boru-pub

April 3, 2024
From Stevedores to Life on Mars: U2, Bowie and The Dockers Pub.

On a September’s Friday evening, hardy drinkers have gathered into a quayside pub to mark the end of their working week. The pub, named in accordance with their customer’s and their customer’s forebearer’s profession, is in full swing as the last of the daylight is waning – cigarette smoke hangs in the air and aids in condensing the sound of song, laughter, and general merriment – all of which plays in symphony alongside the hiss of beer taps and the clanging of a busy cash register.

Just as the evening is threatening to finally become night, the pub’s creaking front door swings ajar – and in what seems like an instant, a silence has spread itself through the entire pub – the way the arrival of a bridesmaid to a waiting crowd at a wedding ceremony might. Through the haze of the smoke and from the last of the evening’s natural illumination, steps a man into the pub. Emblazoned in a tailor-made reflective blue suit, the dull workwear-garbed patrons of the pub regard the man with an initial bout of bewilderment which eventually gives way, as most things do in Dublin, to indiscriminate slagging.

I wasn’t there when this happened. I’m not even sure if I was alive when it happened, but this is a take on what it might have been like when David Bowie set foot in The Docker’s pub a few decades back. Recounted in Bono’s recent memoir: Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story – the U2 lead singer alludes to how Bowie might have assumed the bar to be docker-themed, rather than docker-frequented, when he arrived there to meet the U2 lads for a few pints, a few decades back.

It’s often said of Bowie that he was a futurist, and was ahead of his time, – there’s even a clip of him more-or-less predicting the forthcoming impact of the world wide web in 1999. So, we could argue that he was simply flexing his futurist abilities back when he met Bono and the boys for a few scoops, all those years ago. And I say this, because, if David Bowie were alive in the year of our lord: two-thousand and twenty-four, and well enough to frequent the renovated and reincarnated Dockers pub, as it is now – he’d have been absolutely correct in his estimation of it being docker-themed.

That particular theme is demonstrated in the assortment of dock and docker imagery that adorns the walls of the pub and by the portrait that is printed on the wall and into the denim uniforms worn by the staff which depicts an older man – replete with flat cap and beard – presumably an old docker himself.

Housing all of this is that well-worn faux-industrial style of pub fit-out we’ve all come to know and loathe – bare brick, exposed ducting and pipework all being par for the course. The ground floor is divided into two main atria: one of which houses a medium-sized bar and also provides the entrance to a smoking garden in the rear.

When Pintman №2 and I arrived shortly before the after-work rush of an evening last year, we found ourselves being somewhat re-traumatized with memories of Covid-era drinking, when no sooner than we had stepped up to the bar, were we greeted by a member of the floor staff who had rushed to us and insisted upon seating us and serving us at the table, despite our preferences otherwise. Lovely and all, as this server was, her insistence on serving us in such a manner was made all the more perplexing when the 5 pm rush arrived and made table service entirely impossible.

That 5 pm rush was an interesting sight to behold, from an anthropological point of view. It left us to wonder if, back when the docks were in their zenith, you’d be able to identify a drinker in a pub as being a docker on account of their dress or by objects they might have carried. This, we wondered, having observed this crowd of so-called Silicon Dockers that rushed in and noting a majority of them being laden with backpacks. And further so, when it was noticed that a majority of this majority simply left these backpacks on. Whether this was due to their reluctance to have their company-issued laptops therein, lost or stolen – or simply some sort of new fashion trend – we didn’t know – but it did amuse us to remark on their likeness to overgrown, pintdrinking schoolchildren. Not that we would condone the act of schoolchildren drinking pints, of course. But if this were a parallel world, where it was acceptable and beneficial for schoolchildren to drink pints – we’d wager, given our own experience, that they would be happy enough with the standard of Guinness here. But it would cost them €6.50 (Autumn 2023) of their pocket money every time they had one.

Some who’d have little difficulty in shelling out €6.50 for a pint of something made up the river, are the pub’s incredibly famous former patrons. As suggested earlier, the pub has an affinity with the band U2 – who are said to have often drank there when recording in the nearby studios in Windmill Lane and Hannover Quay. The band even accepted a Billboard award by video transmission at a bar in the pub in 1992 and gave Phil Collins a bit of a hard time.

But nowadays you’ll find no mention of the band within the pub. From all that we’ve seen and heard, the current proprietors don’t seem to be trying to trade on what we’d assume to be a relatively lucrative association. Granted, we are mere business-averse consumers who wouldn’t be able for a Junior Cert profit and loss account, but this seems like a missed opportunity.

After all, what could be more of a perfect U2 pub than one that’s polished, expensive, commandeered by multinationals and not nearly as good as it was in the 1980s?

March 7, 2024
The Fear after The Lagoona: Navigating Wrong Turns, Lost Shoes, and Late DARTs in Dublin.

In stoic defiance, they stand before me with their arms folded and their serious faces downcast. One of them repeats what the other has already said – but this time in a different phrasing:

Look, it’s not happening tonight pal. You’ve had too much to drink. Just leave the premises, please.

I think it’s fair to assume that a majority of the drinking population of this country have found themselves in this position before – being wrongly, or in my case – rightly, refused permission to enter a premises on account of what the gatekeepers have perceived to be intoxication. But what if I told you that this place that I was being refused from on this particular occasion wasn’t actually a pub or a nightclub? What if I told you it was, in fact, Connolly Train Station?

You might be wondering, as most tend to do when I tell them this tale, how it actually came to this – what could I have possibly done to be disbarred from one of the city’s major transport hubs? Well, to figure that out, we first have to backtrack a few hours.

It was, as these things often are, at the Christmastime of the year and your humble author was finishing up his day’s work and getting ready to set out for his debut appearance at an Office Christmas Party in the company he had started working in a few months prior. Being of a shy persuasion, it was a given that some Dutch courage was on the pre-party agenda and on foot of that I arrived at a very busy, IFSC-adjacent pub and found what felt like the last available pint-perch in the city that night.

A few lip-looseners later, I was IFSC-bound and crossing the threshold of Lagoona. Wasting no time, I made for the bar and found myself behind a polished chrome standalone tap whose badge identified it as an experimental nitro pale ale. Hung upon this tap was a small sign denoting that this particular brew was the beer of the month, and as a result, was being sold at a discount –a bargain I could not ignore at the time.

Lagoona Bar, itself, is not somewhere that’s ever endeared itself to me. A perfunctory space set amidst the offices of the financial service companies who neighbour it, it has the sort of vibe exuded by certain spaces in Dublin Airport where beer and spirits are sold for pre-plane, open consumption. Exclusively bedecked with high seating and shiny surfaces, it’s not somewhere to cosy up into – it is precisely the sort of place that its granite, ground-floor of an apartment complex, frontage would lead you to believe it is. After-work pints and Christmas parties for companies who’ve left the booking a bit late are par for the course here.

But, putting aside my indifference to its aesthetic, it was a perfectly fine and functional space for that Christmas party when I was at it – well what I can remember of the night – which admittedly is little, compared to some of my fellow attendees. It was after about five or so of these discounted nitro IPAs, I came to realise that their ABV was far higher than I had anticipated. From there on the evening, like the IPA itself, gets a bit hazy.

The next major memory of the evening finds me in Connolly Station admonishing a member of the security staff there for not “carrying out his public service obligations” by refusing to allow me to travel on one of the late DARTs which had been specifically timetabled to ferry home drunken Christmas partiers. The man, who was genuinely concerned for my safety (fair play to him) eventually relented with a stern warning for me to not fall onto the tracks. I gave him my word that I would not, slurred and all as it was.

I proceeded to board that late DART and by some minor miracle managed to notice I was on the wrong line. Disembarking early, as a result of this, I began some sort of Odyssey where I took a wrong turn and ended up in an unfamiliar part of a housing estate in Donaghmede and walked in circles for what felt like about three hours. The next morning revealed a Facebook friend request from a colleague – accompanied by a private message from them enquiring as to my welfare after I took ‘that bad fall off the bar stool’. Once I’d established this to actually be true and not a practical joke, I suppressed the associated mortification knowing that it needn’t be dealt with until late into Sunday. I then rose to wash and dress only to realise that I had lost one of my shoes at some stage in the evening.

My apologies to anyone who came here to read about The Lagoona Bar and has made it this far through the tale of the greatest dose of The Fear I’ve ever had in my life. I’m sorry to not be able to report on the standard or the price of the pint, too. For more familiar readers of this blog, it will surely be no surprise that we’re not corralling groups to bound on up to the IFSC and check The Lagoona out. It’s a pub that is what it is – an after-work drinks spot, a work-leaving party spot, a cheeky lunchtime pint spot, a remind you of the reason you’re not employed in that company anymore spot and we’re absolutely fine with all of that.

Update: Have been meaning to write this one up for a matter of years, but found out that the pub had permanently closed a mere couple of days after it was finally written. This is also why our image of the pub shows it while shut. So farewell Lagoona, as we currently know it.

February 15, 2024
The Foggy Dew, And Why Oliver Cromwell is Responsible for Dublin’s Best Sunday Gig

Packed into the pub corner, the sweaty milieu are assembled with little regard for personal space. In various mixes of pork pie hats, belts, braces, polo, checkered and gingham shirts – they shake the foundations with their Doc Marten stomps. They move in deference to the refrain of the brass and in rhythm to the short sharp strokes of the tinny telecaster. Momentarily, when the timing is right, they swill at sloppy pints whose dark body and white creamy heads fit their two-tone devotion. They have work in the morning. We all have work in the morning. It’s a Sunday evening in The Foggy Dew.

Though it ain’t what it used to be, according to ageing ska heads I overheard in a nearby pub one day, and though you’ll hear other genres on the makeshift stage, therein, The Foggy Dew is one of Dublin’s best-known venues for the regular consumption of the live performances of Ska. Ska, a music genre and subculture I’ll admit to knowing relatively little about, has its roots in the Caribbean nation of Jamaica, and for the life of me, in my more naïve youth, I could never quite get my brain to comprehend the actuality of this exotic foreign music having established its home in a pub that takes its name, verbatim, from a traditional song about 1916 The Easter Rising that was written by a priest.

It was after I had made sense of that quandary above, that I came to wonder just how on earth I might succinctly explain such a realisation to you, the reader. But I wouldn’t have to in the end because Sinéad O’Connor managed to do that for me. When watching Kathryn Ferguson’s excellent documentary – Nothing Compares, in the wake of Sinéad’s sad passing over the summer – I was struck by a clip where she’s walking through what she describes as her favourite place in the universe – St. Mark’s Place in New York City. And as she walks along the pathway, she says the following to camera:

“All the Rastas live there and all the Irish people live here, which is why I like it. Cause Rastas and Irish people should live together since they’re both the same”.

It’s true that we Irish are terrible bores when it comes to harping on about the impact Irish emigration has had in places like America, England and Australia – but you don’t tend to hear much about the impact of Irish immigration into Jamaica. Though he’d hardly have envisaged it at the time – that prick of pricks – Oliver Cromwell, would ultimately come to alter the makeup of the Jamaican populous in no small way when he transported thousands of indentured Irish servants to the Caribbean in the wake of his attempted conquest in the 1600s. Today it’s said that 25% of the entire population of Jamaica claim Irish heritage and it is supposed that there was cross-pollination between the accents of the transported, the effect of which is still heard in the modern Jamaican accent, today.

With all of this Irish influence, and given that we are a musical people, it can only be fair to assume that all of this transportation had to have had an effect on the musical landscape of Jamaica. A musical landscape which would come to shape modern Ska, And, taking a large dollop of artistic license, that is why, in a very convoluted way, The Foggy Dew is a perfectly acceptable Ska Venue and that Oliver Cromwell’s only good deed was his contribution to traditional Jamaican music.

The Foggy Dew, though a pub associated with music, doesn’t at first glance exhibit the hallmarks that other such hostelries might. Inhabiting a primarily L-shaped space, which does contain a gangway on its longer side, out toward Crow Street – The Foggy Dew appears as a traditional bar with a few rocker flourishes. Set on two levels divided by a short set of steps – the lower of which is on the shorter end of the L, on the Fownes Street side, the pub is heavy on medium-toned wood, tiled and mirrored surfaces. As normal a pub as can be seen in Dublin, really. That is until you begin to notice the gold and platinum records, the framed guitars and portraits of long-haired guitar gods which let even the most casual of observers know that this seemingly traditional pub has another side.

With regard to the pint, I’ve always found it of good quality here. By no means showstopper stuff – but plenty drinkable. Price is maybe another thing – the pub being situated in the environs of Temple Bar. A mid-year (pre the August 2023 Diageo price increase) visit clocked a price of €6.40 a jar, which is painful enough on the pocket. Though obviously not as much as some nearby tourist-geared hotspots. But if you’re in there on Sunday evening soaking in the atmosphere and the music, you’ll find it hard to be too worried about that.

Even though I’m sure the men I mentioned earlier in this piece weren’t being untrue when they said that The Foggy Dew ain’t what it used to be – I think we do need to recognise that it’s certainly a lot more like it used to be than other nearby pubs. The fact that it hasn’t gone over to that diddly-eye-ified, tourist-trap dark side that so many in Temple Bar have succumbed to (Eamon Dorans RIP) is absolutely to be celebrated and embraced. It’s still a great pub, and long may it continue to be.

September 26, 2023