Like many folks this past Tuesday, I celebrated St. Patrick’s day. While I have my doubts as to how much the day celebrates Irish heritage as much it provides folks with a justification to drink until they are green to the gills, it is still a light-hearted holiday for me. We watched a local parade, then enjoyed some corned beef and cabbage later at my dad’s house. With a Black and Tan appetizer, of course.
Earlier this month, I came across this article in the NY Times titled “The Lost Art of the Irish Pub“. The article begins:
“A good pub is a place devoted to conversation, with drink as the lubricant,” Mr. Barich said one evening last week. “In an American bar, the minute you finish your drink they say, ‘Do you want another?’ You’d never see that in a good pub.”
Bill Barich, an author, went on a hunt to find a traditional Irish pub. He found this hunt to be more difficult than you would think, considering he was searching in a country that is home to over 12,000 pubs:
In years past, a pub was a family-run business, and the publican more than likely lived upstairs — an arrangement that created an intimacy across the bar.
“A good publican is a person with character, concerned about the welfare of patrons,” Mr. Barich said. That a barman could aspire to one day own a pub himself made for a system of dues paying that also resulted in better service.
But with trophy pubs now commanding as much as $8 million, a shift has been made to partnerships or corporations that may own and manage several bars. At the same time, more Irish are drinking wine, and drinking at home or in restaurants, chipping away at the social relevance of pubs.
What I found particularly interesting was this observation from Larry Kirwan, a singer from a NYC-based Irish rock band who was talking about a pub from his hometown.
The pub, Mary’s Bar, is basically one room and was run until recently by a now-deceased publican who was known to break out a harmonica and lead impromptu sing-alongs.
In pubs like Mary’s, Mr. Kirwan said, “there’s almost a Talmudic sense of rules and conventions to be observed.” Chief among them is not getting overly plastered.
“Nobody wants drunks in Irish pubs because they’re boring,” he said, “and the last thing you want to be called is boring.”
Instead, traditional pubs foster warmth and fraternity.
Undoubtedly, Kirwan would have been dismayed at some of the drunken behavior I saw in Lawrence KS on Tuesday.
Fortunately, Barich’s pub hunt had a happy ending:
Stepping inside, Mr. Barich was met by a wood bar that has been there since the 1830s, and a publican, Eugene Kavanagh, who lives above the business and is so devoted to his pub’s continued existence that he had been prepared to put it in a trust if none of his children wanted to take over. (It was unnecessary.)
“It’s not my job,” he told the writer. “It’s my life.”
Naturally, Mr. Barich sat down and ordered a pint.
Sláinte, Mr. Barich. Sláinte!