Tag: northinner

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
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
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
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
Overheard at the King’s Inn: Creamy Pints and a Glimpse into the World of Petty Crime.

Upon the cobblestone streets built over basement dwellings which once made up the quarters of the lowest of the pauper class, Dubliners can still hear the clipping and the clopping of expensive leather as it makes its way up Henrietta Street.

In the past, it might have been an MP, fresh from his engagements in Grattan’s Parliament or a captain of industry arriving at his city townhouse. Nowadays it’s often a lawyer or a barrister, or one to be, at least. And usually, they’d be making their way towards the building which gives the pub we intend to write about here its name – that building (or set of buildings, even) is known as The Honourable Society of The Kings Inns – to give it its full title.

A prestigious institute that sits in a James Gandon (he of custom house fame) designed building; this place is the foremost centre for learning the law in all of Ireland. And aside from giving the pub at the end of the street its name, it also affords it a few customers from time to time, as we’d found out one Christmas time. But let us come back to that.

The King’s Inn Pub is sat at the corner of Henrietta and Bolton Street – it was reopened under new ownership in 2018 after a spell of closure and has been well decorated on the outside and the inside. The inside of the pub, itself, is one entire space – there’s no separation of lounge and bar – but with that said, there are two distinctive sections, a main section with wooden flooring and then a raised section toward the back – resplendent with regal carpeting and, at the very back, sits the saviour of any cold or bitter day – an open fire.

Overall, the pub’s design spec does have a medieval, castle sort of vibe to it. This is helped in no small part by dark beams crossing the ceiling above. The ceiling, itself is painted in a contrasting brilliant white and much of this is overlayed with Book of Kells-style Celtic insignias. The odd suit of armour and church pew thrown in for good measure, complete the look.

One of the things that we enjoy most about the pub is the variety of drink on offer. You’ll get your usual mix of what would be expected in most traditional pubs, but you’ll also get some decent craft offerings too -Trouble Brewing’s Ambush, a personal favourite, being a constant offering! The Guinness is upper tier; always excellent and as of our last visit in Feb 2023, was a mere €5.20 a go!

Regarding the customer base here, and getting back to our Christmastime experience, mentioned at the outset of this piece – we’ve tended to encounter a wide variance of people here. There usually is, what appears to be, a core set of locals, presumably from the surrounding areas. There can, on occasion, be GAA sportswear-clad younger lads with accents from beyond the pale – possibly students from Bolton Street DIT (It’s not called DIT anymore, but I refuse to learn the new name just like me da who still calls FAS – which isn’t actually called FAS anymore, either – by the name it was in his day – AnCo).

But most interestingly for us, was not necessarily persons from the pub’s nearby namesake, but some of their prospective customers – who had arranged their Christmas drinks around a meeting one of them had attended with his legal representative beforehand. As usual, I was the first to arrive to the pub and settled in with a paper or a book over a pint while I awaited the arrival of some friends. A handful of men were sat in the section nearest to me and I had seen them and assumed them to maybe be a couple of work friends – perhaps drivers or tradesmen or factory workers out for a few Christmas jars – in the way people who are not employed in the sort of place that would have a formal Christmas party for all of its employees do. And I was kind of right.

I came to find it very difficult to concentrate on whatever it was that I was reading when I began to overhear one of these men explaining that he “has one rule on a job – get in and get out and I don’t care about anyone else. I do what I have to do.”

It wasn’t long before I realised that this was an office party for a troupe of petty criminals. Some of the things they said were in equal parts, hilarious and fascinating. I’ve included a selection of them below:

• The cheapest shops are the hardest to rob from; you’d be out of Brown Thomas much handier than you’d be out of Penney’s.
• My nieces and nephews are the biggest shoplifters in this town. I taught them everything they know.
• Y’know Jane Doe? You know their ma? She’s 85! She used to be the best shoplifter in Dublin. The second she steps onto Talbot Street; she gets radioed all through town by the security.
• Smyth’s is getting ripped asunder now before Christmas.
• I have a friend in the Department of Social Protection, so I get free travel. I haven’t paid for a bus in ten years.

Beyond these nuggets, I was struck by how mannerly the lads were to their fellow customers and to those that were serving them – especially compared to a far rowdier group of law students, nearby. It was definitely interesting to have these two groups all together under one roof and that roof not being one belonging to a courthouse. It really affirmed our belief that the pub is the great egalitarian space in Irish culture where all different streams of society freely mix.

Anyway, The Kings Inn is a fantastic place: Traditional feeling, with all the right modern tarnishes – in the landscape of pubs in Dublin, we’d consider it a must!

July 19, 2023
Noctor’s: Sheriff Street Lower

Coming toward the latter end of 2021, we’d had it fully planned and spec’ed out for a good while. It had been a slack year for the cause with all concerned in the DublinByPub ranks – assorted big life changes and a worldwide pandemic had given time its relished advantage to get between us. So when the opportunity to get the band back together and collectively hit a few city-centre pubs presented itself to us, we knew we had to make it count. It had to be one of our most wanted. It had to be Noctor’s.

There was to be a half-day, a preferred route, and a plan b, we may have even discussed wardrobe at one stage. But in the end, pints, just like they always do, would make light work of all these well-honed plans, leaving a half-drunk troupe of us bundling up Sheriff Street under the cloak of darkness, a few weeks out from Christmas.

Now let us, at the very outset, state that we have no interest in perpetuating the rough and ready classification that we’ve often heard attributed to Sheriff St. But with that said, we’re not looking to paint this part of Dublin 1 as some sleepy, oak-lined friendly avenue, either. We are but mere impressionable suburbanites. Suburbanites who exist and communicate, more than many, in that pub-talk realm of lore and hyperbole – and it’s in these spheres, exclusively, where we hear mention of, and talk of Noctor’s. And when this particular public house is up for discussion, the sentiment is never positive. It’s always tales and warnings of how “you’d take your life in your hands going up there” and that “you’d do well to keep away from that mad kip”, and so on, and so forth.

So with these warnings and tales of woe, alongside other nuggets like the supposed fact that Jim Sheridan brought rapper, 50 Cent here one time, making our existing curiosity curiouser, it’s not long before we’re stepping through the adjoining financial district and making haste toward Sherriff Street. We may be, outwardly, acting like we’ve not heeded any of those cautions, but a spike of adrenaline, internally, is telling an altogether different tale.

When we shortly find ourselves turned onto the fabled street, the initial reaction is one of disappointment. An absence of a glowing façade, or assortment of smokers, all compounded by a closed set of shutters, leads us to initially believe that the pub is closed and that our journey has been a pointless one. Pintman №2, not being one to waste valuable drinking time, immediately sets course to return the way we came – only to look back and realise, just like in some terrible slasher-flick, that he’s completely alone on the dark street. Heading back towards the pub, he realises, just as we had, that, despite the unopened shutters, the pub is actually open. Immediately, he enters to find us standing at the bar on the receiving end of what can only be described as an interrogation at the hands of the barman and a few of the locals sitting around him. Questioning is carried out in the form of:

Where are yous from?

What are yis doing here?

Who told yous about here?

Insisting that we’re only here for a few pints, as the rest of us mumble incoherently in not-so-stoic agreement, Pintman №3’s retort is met with steely silence before the barman declares, in response, that he hasn’t decided if he’s going to serve us yet. At this point, things go sad-funeral quiet as the staff and the locals continue in their inspection of us. And just as we consider letting go of our last collective nerve and bailing, the bar erupts in laughter.

Yizzer alright lads!

What do yis want?

Sit down there and I’ll bring them over.

By the time we’re about to sit down, we’ve acquired the attention of a fair few of the locals, most of whom engage us in conversation. Pintman №3, in a manner befitting an affable 1950s Fianna Failer, makes no qualms about joining a sizeable table of habitués and chats away with them about one of the locals playing over the speakers – a Mr Luke Kelly. The rest of us, in turn, find a spot and chat across the divide with a woman who happens to be drinking a can of Tenants – an unusual sight in a Dublin Pub, we agree later.

As promised, pints are dispatched down to us in short enough time and we’re more than impressed with them. We note them as being of an incredibly high standard and the price to have been set at €4.50 a pour (Late 2021). A bargain, we agree, especially in the context of the comparatively inferior pints we had been drinking for 5.70 on Capel Street an hour prior.

Décor-wise, this is a pub where function certainly trumps form. That’s not to say that we haven’t drank in worse looking pubs (we have) but, suffice it to say that other licensed premises within the city might be more likely to end up in that Dublin 2023 calendar your Ma is going to get you for Christmas. The pub is, however, laid out well for its intended purpose – a dark wood, small to medium size bar stands on your right as you enter the pub. Banks of low seating take up the space on your left. And there’s a sizeable bank of floor space between the two. Curved arches at the far end of the seating space denote the leisure section of the pub wherein stands a pool table and a dartboard. The colour scheme, overall, is bright – walls are painted in a beige/cream sort of tone and the flooring is a varnished, yet somewhat weathered light wood. Some dark wood in the seats and the tables and shelves add a little contrast.

Earlier in this post, we said that we wouldn’t paint Sheriff Street as a sleepy, oak-lined friendly avenue, as if such a thing was what a street should aspire to. But, in all reality, why would anyone want to aspire to such boredom. Not that you need us to tell you this, but Sheriff Street is an infinitely more interesting place than some leafy, embassy-saturated thoroughfare in Ballsbridge. And, let alone the scores of well-known and beloved Irish people in music and the arts of both today and yesterday that have come from here, this is also thanks, in no small part, to somewhere like Noctor’s. Its clientele is friendly like very few other city pubs’ are and it’s yet another pub that has taught us to take little heed of supposed notoriety.

December 14, 2022
Gill’s: Russell Street

Recently, in thinking about what I was going to write about Gill’s pub on Russell Street, I had been conjuring up verses and choruses from The Rare Auld Times. Though Pete Saint John’s anthemic lament for old Dublin makes no mention of car rental offices, builders providers and decent Italian restaurants, you could argue that the sentiment of the song is one that very much applies to Russell Street in Dublin’s North inner city. Famously home to the Behan family before they made the leap out to Crumlin, or Siberia as Brendan would quip, Russel Street – by all accounts – was typical of the sort of street that the rare old times bemoans the demise of – tenement-lined, industry adjacent, bustling and rebellious.

There are, however, still some tenuous remnants of the past to be found on this street. Croke Park, though a different beast these days, remains, as does the canal. A Celtic Tiger era block of apartments bears the name ‘Behan Square’. Arguably, though, the strongest remaining tie to Russell Street of days gone by is the public house which sits on the easternmost side of its junction with the North Circular Road – James Gill’s.

Obviously, this piece is going to contain a lot of Behan references – and nobody needs me to tell them that there are a great many Brendan Behan quotes on the subject of drinking and drunkenness – but there’s one that I believe is most appropriate here. This is the one where Brendan remarked that “drunkenness was not regarded as a social disgrace”, in the Dublin of his time, and how “To get enough to eat was regarded as an achievement.” and “To get drunk was a victory.” And the reason I deem this one to be so appropriate is that when I finally managed to raise a glass to my lips within the walls of Gill’s, it did feel like a bit of a Victory.

Opening on a strict schedule of big match days, concert days, and whenever the owner feels like it, James Gill’s public house is one that can be difficult to arrange around a busy drinking schedule. Hence the sentiment of victory! Yours truly managed to successfully board the bandwagon and get in for a pint on the occasion of the aftermath of a draw tie between Dublin and Kerry in the first of the two 2019 All-Ireland finals.

Having found myself, initially, in the main bar, I was happy enough with the décor. Brendan Behan ephemera abounds. A considerable portrait of the man is painted on the wall on the Russell Street side of the pub, under this sits a physical bibliography of his works – each encased in its own frame. The rest of the featured imagery and trinketry is remembered as being fairly standard, as compared to temporary pubs. Though I should emphasise that my visit to Gill’s was at the tail end of a day which saw my thirst adequately quenched for quite some time.

With that said, I should move on and mention the pint, insofar as much as I can. I took no notes on price, and the fact that I don’t remember it as being in any way awful must mean that it was ok. If that makes sense. I did find myself surprised to receive a glass, glass and not plastic, on the occasion though.

A raised section sits to the rear of the bar. Walking into it on my last visit, I found it to be harshly lit and reminiscent of a comic book store – its walls being lined with hundreds, if not thousands of, colourful magazines which turned out to be various match day programmes from nearby Croker. The toilet is situated out beyond this back section of the pub and has the distinction of being one of the only pub toilets in Dublin where the sight of something shrouded in tinfoil is not to be automatically construed with illicit recreational opiates. Yes, should you find yourself the discoverer of tinfoil in a toilet cubicle in this pub, just as I once did, be assured that this, more than likely, is only indicative of a countryman who defied the best wishes of his mother and opted, instead, to obey the long-respected creed of ‘Eating is Cheating’, leaving poor Mammy’s hang sangwiches in the lurch.

I don’t think any Brendan Behan admirer, such as myself, would ever come to rate this pub too harshly. Its infrequent opening hours are certainly a pain, but to finally get in and enjoy a pint is a real treat. The appearance of the pub doesn’t really seem too dissimilar from the way it appears in the excellent Brendan Behan’s Dublin, which is up on YouTube. And in amongst all the mayhem of sweaty GAA jerseys, there are one or two locals to be found who will give you a story or two about the area. And what’s not to like there?

December 24, 2020
The Bohemian – McGeough’s: Phibsborough Road

Regardless of whether some politicians want to hear it or not, there can be little escaping the fact that drink is interwoven into our national fabric. Come temperance, cafe culture and minimum unit pricing – one and all – there are literally centuries worth of work that will be required to separate us from our association with lady liquor.

I say this not because of half the public parks in the city being former Guinness estates, nor is it to do with the porter prescribed to new mothers or blood donors. This opening statement is prompted by my recent discovery that many of the well-known junctions, or corners, of Dublin, had their name bestowed upon them not by figures of historical or mythological fame but by the names of the very publicans (and sometimes grocers) which they gave frontage to. So think Bakers, Harts, Hanlons and Leonards – all baptised in intoxicating liquor.

Image credit: National Library Ireland

Of course, I wouldn’t be bringing this up if it weren’t relevant in the case of the pub pictured. And given that The Bohemian is situated on Doyle’s Corner, it seems an apt subject. Doyle’s Corner has an interesting history, of which this particular pub is a part. Back around the turn of the century, the intersection of The North Circular and The Phibsborough Road was known as Dunphy’s Corner. Now, this is where it starts to get a bit confusing because the word Doyle is about to be bandied about as much as it might be in a series or two of Father Ted.

The name Dunphy’s Corner was derived from another public house which sits directly across the road from The Bohemian – now named Doyle’s Corner, formerly named Doyle’s. The pub that provided this name was owned by a man named Thomas Dunphy, who presided over it from the mid-1800s up to around the 1890s. The name Dunphy’s Corner must have been widely used by Dubliners because it’s well represented in song, literature and lore. It gets a mention in Peadar Kearney’s anti-enlistment Ballad about the recruiting sergeant William Bailey (Lankum do a great version), who is said to have stood on the corner in the process of his enlisting. And Peadar might have been working on a subliminal as well as a perceptible level here because ‘going round Dunphy’s Corner‘, as it would have been put, was seemingly an idiom used to describe those who had gone to the great beyond, given its nodal point on the route taken by hearses on their way to Glasnevin. Those familiar with the first half of Ulysses might remember that Poor Dignam went the very same way along that route in the earlier stages of the book.

So, in the mid-1890s or so, along came John Doyle. And John Doyle fancied he might usurp Dunphy, and in setting about doing this, he acquired both number 160 and number 66 Phibsborough Road and placed within each of them a public house which bore his name. It was a trick that evidently worked because, as I’m sure you will know, the corner is still referred to as Doyle’s. Seemingly, someone by the name of Murphy – proprietor of the nearby Botanic House – took ownership of The Bohemian in the 1970s and figured he could usurp Doyle by erecting signs which read ‘Murphy’s Corner’. But the inhabitants of Phibsborough and Dubliners alike never took to it. So it remains – Doyle’s Corner.

image credit: archiseek

But what about the pub? We’ve collectively visited here just the once over Christmas time, and what a gem. Though it doesn’t seem to make the frequent lists of Victorian bars that do the rounds online, this must be one of the more polished in the city. Hard dark wooden floors adorned with flashes of complementary tilework give the pub a durable feeling – it’s a floor you can imagine was well equipped for the sawdust and saliva it might have suffered in days gone by. But it’s far cleaner these days, which is in keeping with the rest of the bar. Traditional seating of couches and small and large stools is ample throughout, and plenty of light protrudes from the large windows to bounce off the coffered (new architectural term of the week) ceiling and illuminate the dark, ornate wooden bar and partitions in which decorated glass is set.

Pints, on the occasion of our last visit, are remembered as being dispatched in good time and with plenty of competence. The taste was spot on, and the price was most certainly right at €4.50 a go (Dec 2018)

Though we only did have the few on this occasion, we did remark on how the locals were in good spirits and gave us the warmest of welcomes at all the local pubs. And as we vowed to return, I couldn’t help but think of one of the lads.

Although he might be starting to catch up now, Pintman Nº5 was once an old head on young shoulders and in the indulgence of one of his favourite pastimes of reintroducing old Dublin phrases, he managed to bring the bewildering threat of “wigs on the green” into our lexicon. Anyway, I was thinking I must get onto him about bringing back the whole going round Dunphy’s corner thing. I mean, wouldn’t the great gig in the sky be all the less terrifying if it had the promise of a pint in The Boh on the way out to the cemetery?

August 7, 2019
The Dominick Inn: Dominick St.

What is it about these places and karaoke?

Such was the question that I posed to Pintman №2 as we took our first tentative sups in The Dominick Inn. He attempted a response but found himself interrupted by the howls of a rotund, wrinkled grandmother pitching noisily across the room. This interruption led me to become transfixed by the woman’s jewellery – generations of it, gold and cheap-looking – hanging from her sweaty frame; it tended to reverberate in a more and more hypnotic manner with every thunderous stomp she made in her enthusiastic yet poor attempt to emulate Tina Turner. “I couldn’t tell ya”, Pintman №2 finally responded, having timed his response to the verses of the song.

By ‘these places’, we refer to boozers that are a bit rough around the edges – a statement we make without judgement – because pubs like this one are usually just normal community boozers – we’re well aware of that. These sort of pubs have no frills and no gimmicks, but are, undeniably, also that bit coarser in décor and atmosphere than most others we normally tend to write about.

The thing is, though, we’re quite fond of pubs of this ilk – the drink tends to be cheap, the characters plentiful, and the opportunities to send Pintman №3 up to deliver his famed Elvis impersonation are many. In his absence this time around, we’d come to discuss whether our ease in these types of pubs is a direct attribute afforded to us from having spent more time than we care to admit drinking into the wee hours in Northside Shopping Centre’s former premier after-hours spot – The Blacker (aka Liz Delaney’s aka Dusk aka Club Hamunaptra). It was in this sawdust-peppered den of iniquity that we served our time and developed the requisite skill set for conducting oneself in establishments of such notoriety. Some even served tougher apprenticeships than others, with one of the troupe being spontaneously put into a state of semi-consciousness via the means of a choke-hold one evening. His crime? Whispering sweet nothings into the ear of a young lady who, as it turned out, was probably not single after all.

Now we can’t promise it, but we’d be confident enough that you won’t be choked out in the Dominick Inn.

Regarding the interior of the pub, there wasn’t a whole lot to write home about. The seating and tables comprised traditional stuff mixed in with the odd sofa here and there – the arrangement of these was somewhat haphazard. The physical bar itself was noted as being a nicely crafted bit of woodwork, but was at odds with the rest of the room’s sterile aesthetic, with the hard flooring and flashing LED lights making for an uncomfortable sensory experience overall.

While the senses of sight and sound mightn’t have been well served on this occasion, we can gladly report that the sense of taste didn’t fare too badly from the experience. The pint, which was priced south of the €5 mark, was a good one and deemed to be of a high standard by all around the table at the time.

And so it was, as the wailing tone-deaf strains of a merry young one attempting her best ‘Maniac 2000’ rang out through the pub, we glanced at one another and decided that we’d leave the second round for another time.

You won’t find The Dominick Inn in any guidebooks any time soon, but that’s okay. The locals enjoy it, and so did we. And you should look not one millimetre further if you’re after a few decent pints in unpretentious surroundings that won’t break the bank, or even if you just want to knock out a few bars of ‘Killing Me Softly’.

February 21, 2019
Grainger’s: Talbot St.

On more than one occasion, we’ve happened to find ourselves in conversation with an older generation of pub patronage, whereby the topic at hand will wind its way around to that much-favoured subject of ‘The Dublin Character’. Generally, these conversations will go the one way – we, being the younger side, will ultimately find ourselves on the receiving end of the older side’s lament for the demise of The Dublin Character. Usually delivered with a swathe of clichés, there’s no room for irony when they just don’t make ’em like they useta anymore.

Naturally, though, we’re always poised to argue the contrary – and it is a matter of public record that we believe Dublin, and in particular, its pubs, to be ripe with characters for the pickin’.

Objectively, though, we can bring ourselves to admit that the nature of the Dublin Character has changed down through the years. Recently, we took in a crawl along Talbot Street, which prompted a discussion on Dublin characters of old, and one in particular – Matt Talbot. Matt, or The Venerable Matt as he is now known by some, was a terrible man when it came to the demon, drink – an alcoholic by thirteen, his early years were defined not only by his dependence on sup but by the scheming, thieving and cajoling that came along with such an addiction. Eventually, though, Matt saw the light and decided to live in servitude to the divine – a life that ultimately would include a bizarre self-inflicted regimen of food deprivation, sleeping on planks and wearing chains upon his body.

Given all of that, and having incorrectly assumed that Talbot Street had been named for Matt, we couldn’t help but wonder what the man himself would make of the proliferation of boozers along the street that bears his name if he were still rattling along the streets of the city. Probably not much. We were also thinking that we’d been indulging in some of his penance ourselves in the name of the craic. Skipped the odd meal to nip in for a scoop? Check! Slept on uncomfortable surfaces? Yep! Wore chains upon your person?…. Eh, we really should get onto the topic of Grainger’s here.

Grainger’s, depending on your geography, sits at the start or the end of Talbot St. A mainstay of the street, the Grainger name has adorned the façade for as long as any of us care to remember. A narrow pub, it’s probably best identifiable by its striking black and white chessboard flooring. The fit-out of the pub is typical of a modern style of interior design seen in new and newly refurbished pubs – Chesterfield-esque upholstery and trendy lighting fixtures sit amidst pastel tones. It’s quite evident that the recent refurbishment seeks to establish the space more as a café-bar than just bar.

Overall, the look is effected nicely enough. That is, though with one exception – sitting atop the bar, there lies a plywood covering at the base of the beer taps. As if plucked straight from Cassidy’s or P Mac’s, this anomaly sits in defiance of its refined surroundings, having apparently been designated as the pub’s proverbial plaster cast, it being littered with signatures and doodles.

Anomalies aside, it should be noted that the livery sitting beneath the graffitied plywood is far more extensive than one might expect, or than was by us. With plenty of genuine independent craft brews alongside the old reliables – there’ll be no lip out of your Granda or your cousin from NCAD, should you decide to bring them to Grainger’s for that big family get-together you’ve been meaning to have. Guinness clocked in at an even fiver and made no negative impact on the taste buds of me or Pintman Nº2, no mean feat when you consider that it followed a few in Cleary’s.

Vibe-wise, the pub could have stood to have had a bit more atmosphere befitting of a Saturday night when we last visited. Sparsely populated, it seemed to lack the benefit of a regular custom that its neighbours seemed to enjoy. Crawling though, as we were, it can’t be said whether we had just ducked in before the rush.

None of us, with full conviction, could say that we dislike Grainger’s. But it suffers from being situated too many other beloved boozers for us to find the charm in it that we do with the rest. It’s certainly a better pub to be waiting out a train in when compared to Connolly Station’s in-house boozer.

December 5, 2018