Reason behind the death of the Irish Pub

southsiderosie

Happyman42 wrote: »

Give it a rest, you can't just wish for a 'cafe culture' (like the PD's did...remember the PD's???) and it will appear.
In Paris, Rome etc etc these places exist because.....wait for it....people want it...I.E. they are willing to pay for it. Far as I can see anyway they exist mainly as tourist traps.
The Irish socialite hasn't expressed a need for it, it doesn't suit us and we don't have the weather to invest heavily in outdoor - on street - cafes.

They don't need to be outside. They just need to serve food, coffee tea and drinks. It isn't rocket science. Dublin has a very large immigrant community that would be quite interested in something like this, and based on what I have heard and seen I would guess that quite a lot of local people would be too.

As for the 'tourist' or 'socialite' aspect - oh please. I lived in a working-class neighborhood in Madrid, and the local cafes opened at 7am and had traffic through them all day. You got your morning coffee with a croissant or ham and toast for 2.20; it's only in ripoff Ireland where it was a "bargain" to get a morning coffee and muffin in the city center for a fiver.

The biggest impediment to this isn't that there isn't desire, it's the stranglehold current publicans have on the licensing process, and the pressure they put on each other to keep prices high. Part of the reason why cafes and bars in places like Madrid are so cheap is that there are so many of them: there aren't nearly the kinds of restrictions on getting a liquor license there as there are in Dublin. Publicans have had people over a barrel for years, and now they are reaping the 'rewards'. I have about as much sympathy for them as I do for taxi drivers.

patwicklow

The irish bar trade is a cartel and wont be any better until its broken up,
I was twenty years in the trade between here and london an irish pub in london is more irish then a pub over here thats a fact.

mikemac

€5.40 for a rock shandy
€5.10 for a toasted sandwich with a tiny side salad
Pop music blaring when I just want to read my paper in the afternoon

There are plently of deals for pints. I see many promoting Bavaria at €3.50 a pint so the price of minerals makes me sad

Also, you can judge how much the staff care by the state of the toilets.
No excuse for them to be poor state but some places are foul! Staff just don't care while others do hourly checks and have them sparkling.
A small thing but it matters

Degag

mikemac wrote: »

€5.40 for a rock shandy
€5.10 for a toasted sandwich with a tiny side salad
Pop music blaring when I just want to read my paper in the afternoon

There are plently of deals for pints. I see many promoting Bavaria at €3.50 a pint so the price of minerals makes me sad

Also, you can judge how much the staff care by the state of the toilets.
No excuse for them to be poor state but some places are foul! Staff just don't care while others do hourly checks and have them sparkling.
A small thing but it matters

Minerals are far too expensive but a fiver for a toastie is very reasonable IMO.

smalltalk

Price,price,price
5 euro for a pint of Guinness in a scruffy little tourist trap off the top of Grafton street.I pity Dublin drinkers, that pint is worth no more than e3.50 ,greedy robbing pub owning b@::;ds.

Clareboy

Most Irish pubs are seedy little places that only open in the evening or when they think that there will be a ' good drinkin' crowd ' around such as a funeral or a match. They are providing a very poor service and good riddence to them! Its an awful pity that here in Ireland, we have nothing in the tradition of the English Country Inn, a place of refuge for the weary traveller, where one can find good food, accommodation, hospitality and a friendly welcome in comfortable and historic surroundings.

diceyreilly

Standing in an inch of piss in the jacks.

daveharnett

southsiderosie wrote: »

I lived in a working-class neighborhood in Madrid, and the local cafes opened at 7am and had traffic through them all day. You got your morning coffee with a croissant or ham and toast for 2.20; it's only in ripoff Ireland where it was a "bargain" to get a morning coffee and muffin in the city center for a fiver.

Given the average wage in the two countries, that's about as affordable for locals as it is here

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

diceyreilly wrote: »

Standing in an inch of piss in the jacks.

Go to a different pub.

Dionysus

ItsAWindUp wrote: »

Televisions.

ItsAWindUp wrote: »

what about pubs that have televisions on constantly with Sky News or something?

This. 100%. It's a joke how these whinge-bag publicans give out about their profits declining when they intentionally run those of us who like a quiet chat out of their pubs by blinding the place with televisions broadcasting utter shíte sports at what must be an illegal noise level across their premises.

Increase the volume ==> people drink more. These moron publicans think they are smart when they do that.

Dionysus

Wile E. Coyote wrote: »

you can't beat the banter that goes with watching a big match, be it soccer, rugby, gaelic, hurling etc in a pub with a load of other people.

And that attitude is the problem: people who subscribe to it are deciding the culture in the vast majority of so-called Irish pubs. In doing so, they have suppressed all those people who can't abide that rubbish blaring into conversations. They have convinced themselves that they are the majority: they are not. Soccer, and soccer followers, are a minority in Irish society. This very recent conquest of Irish pubs by publicans broadcasting soccer-obsessed (and to a far lesser extent rugby and GAA obsessed) tv stations is an imposition on the rest of us who are perfectly happy with our own conversations and the company, wit and humour of friends. This tiresome fare of soccer broadcasts by the average Irish publican is more a case of "same shíte, different day". I go to a pub to talk with people about real things in our real lives, not contrived crap about people I have no interest in and who have no impact upon my life other than intruding upon the civilised conduct of organic social life in Irish pubs.

Televisions are anti-social, and I still subscribe to the (clearly outdated) idea that a pub should be a social centre, a public house. The trend for the past 10-15 years of blaring television noise across entire pubs irrespective of the preferences of large numbers of patrons, and that trend alone, is enough for me to look forward to the speedy demise of these so-called "Irish" pubs.

With the exception of tv-free pubs like The Gravediggers in Glasnevin the modern Irish pub has nothing to do with a quiet pint and a quality conversation. The conversation in these pubs entails shouting over the noise, and the noise is put up louder with the intention of encouraging customers to drink more. Fairly shíte psychology going on in the minds of the "Let's blare tv sports all over the pub" pub owners.

Paparazzo

jetsonx wrote: »

The main problems:


1) Cultural Problem in the Industry - An industry which always taken its customers for granted as (up until now) there has never been any real competition to the drinking culture in Ireland.

2) Poor Customer Service - Frankly, there are way too many Irish people who
work in this industry who are rude and aggressive. At least, the Chinese and E. Europeans who work in this industry actually seem to care about the job they perform.

3) Dim Witted Lobby Group - The Licensed Vintners Association is a joke of an organisation. Advertising pubs on the radio? Yes, there were funny ads. But they failed to tackle the real issues. Reminded me of British Rail in the 1980s telling everyone to "take the train" when at that time their service sucked. Those ads never worked either.

I agree with 1 and 3. The LVA are terrible, we all know about price fixing, and them blaming absolutly everything but high prices on falling trade, shouting down the cafe bar idea, actually having the cheek of trying to get supermarkets charge more for alcohol to increase customers.

But not 2. Irish barmen are the best. Go to a bar almost anywhere else in the world and they won't take an order till they poured the last customers drinks, handed them out, and charged them and given them change. Irish barmen have an amazing ability to take orders from 5 different people at the same time and not forget who ordered what.

Dionysus

And another reason for the decline of pubs: the hygiene standard of their toilets reflect an Irish mentality on hygiene from, perhaps, 1955.

The hygiene standard in the average pub is shocking. If we had hygiene and health legislation in this state that was enforced, a huge number of these "Irish pubs" would be shut down on health and safety grounds. It's really breathtaking the low quality of what the average pub offers us.

tommyboy2222

JustAddWater wrote: »

Also bought a koppaberg in the czech inn recently and then went literally across the road and it was €1 dearer in Turks head

Someone explain please!

They were charging a different price in the Turks head :pac:

mikemac

Have a beer with your pizza instead of a pizza with your beer

It's very clever when you think of it, of course it was a barrister who came up with it, it's their job to be able to communicate

That Café-bar was a great idea
Huge lobbying to the republican party ended that idea but there were not alone, there are even more publican TD's in Fine Gael.

A good idea shouted down by self interest

homerjay2005

Minstrel27 wrote: »

Excessive greed is what is killing the Irish pub.

please take into account though that about 40% of the pricing is down to the greed of the government. add in rates and rent and running a pub becomes a poor proposition.

im not ap pub owner before i get accused of one or work in a pub.

homerjay2005

Dionysus wrote: »

The hygiene standard in the average pub is shocking. If we had hygiene and health legislation in this state that was enforced, a huge number of these "Irish pubs" would be shut down on health and safety grounds. It's really breathtaking the low quality of what the average pub offers us.

it says more about the people, than the pubs to be honest...dirty people breed dirty practices. Ireland is full of people who appear to have been dragged up, rather than brought up.

helimachoptor

Honestly been a while since i had a good session in the pub. Had a mate over for a few beers there a couple of weeks ago and we've done a couple of other sessions.

The last few times we bought 2 boxes (12 bottles) of Cobra for €12 each and then a pizza deal(€20) from the local place so basically €22 quid for the nights entertainment.
Last time we bought a box of cobra, 7 bottles of polish beer and 6 bottles of kopparbeg and it came to €35, in the pub across the road the beer would have cost over €100... cant argue with staying at home!

FTA69

jetsonx wrote: »

I am mainly referring to the doorstaff. A few decent ones but most are boneheads who are completely tactless and give me the impression they are just out of the "the Joy".

That's a load of crap to be honest because door supervisors have to be licensed and the Private Security Authority generally doesn't license those who served time in prison for any serious offense. The notion that most bouncers are "boneheads" is complete b*llocks to be honest as the vast, vast majority of them are decent people doing a demanding and necessary job.

helimachoptor

homerjay2005 wrote: »

im not ap pub owner before i get accused of one or work in a pub.

Not exactly true now Ed is it:D

the bolt

i worked in a pub in london a good few years ago and had to go on one of their training days and was asked if i would rather sell one pint for one million pounds or one million pints for a pound a piece.anyway after i was done telling him that i would rather sell the million pints at a quid as otherwise it would be a pretty boring pub i knew i was on the way out.the funny thing was that this wasnt one of the big chain pubs but a small brewery/pub but the were losing the way already
the main reason i dont go to the pub any more is because of the smoking areas,no mater how good the are i dont want to be in and out all night although i know of 1 or 2 where they have a bar in the smoking area and on a nice night there is nothing better.
the price argument wouldnt persude me as before the smoking ban came in i would have prefared 1 pint in the pub to a load of cans/bottles in the house.
arsey landlords that think your a troublemaker if you ask him why his pint of whatever is as flat as a witchs tit and then offer to fill you another one from the same tap as if that one was going to be any better.

maringo

Extortionate prices especially for mixers

Degag

Paparazzo wrote: »

But not 2. Irish barmen are the best. Go to a bar almost anywhere else in the world and they won't take an order till they poured the last customers drinks, handed them out, and charged them and given them change. Irish barmen have an amazing ability to take orders from 5 different people at the same time and not forget who ordered what.

+1 on this. A competant Irish person behind the bar is better than three foreigners put together. Generally. If that's racist then i won't apologise.

lizardhunt

Come to Oz there are loads here.

Rabidlamb

I've a thought, many people seem to prefer the cafe bar idea that they are familiar with from Italy.
There are now hundreds of full on licences going unused & former premises that have shut down.
What's to stop a proprietor opening one of these former pubs as a cafe restaurant that can also serve beer.
What am I missing, surely the Vintners couldn't object to this model ?.

Tubsandtiles

I think for people living in towns the Pub can be full of people you don't want to see eg "that wnaker from up the road". I'm glad the smoking ban came in but as a non-smoker among friends that all smoke its a pain in the ass at times having to accompany them out there or stand like a loner in the pub as the smoke

mandrake04

I was back in Ireland in 2006 for a holiday and went to my old local (in large country town), even then the place had changed so much since 2004. I was sitting having a drink with a few friends on a friday night and this crowd of Eastern Europeans came in with a carryout of cheap cans and just sat and then cracked them open in the pub, when confronted by staff they just sat pretending they didnt understand what they were doing wrong.

It started to get a bit ugly and they were told to leave, started threatening people etc and left. 5 minutes later there was a bottle through the window and hit some girl in the head.

Then on my way home I was tortured by these old Romany begger women trying to sell me flowers and crap while I was waiting to get a taxi at 1 o'clock in the morning, I had to check where I was ....I thought this crap only happened in Dublin.

A few friends told me they didnt really go out that often anymore and the lads who used to play Trad on a wednesday night stopped playing etc. The old local where everyone knew everyones name and there was a sense of community and plenty of jokes & craic its all a distant memory now. That was 2006 so I suppose the GFC and the prices certainly put the nail in the coffin these days.

Gummy Panda

I'd rather go to the gym tbh.

Only pub I really like is The Church on Jervis st. Feels more social bar and professional then a pub that wants people skulling pints.

It's expensive no doubt but I feel I'm paying for what I get. Also the toilets are generally spotless.

Jaysoose

Degag wrote: »

+1 on this. A competant Irish person behind the bar is better than three foreigners put together. Generally. If that's racist then i won't apologise.

Racist? probably not.. Complete nonsense? definitely.

Dyr

Gummy Panda wrote: »

I'd rather go to the gym tbh.

Only pub I really like is The Church on Jervis st. Feels more social bar and professional then a pub that wants people skulling pints.

It's expensive no doubt but I feel I'm paying for what I get. Also the toilets are generally spotless.

Professional? do you go to a pub to feel professional

Plus I don't generally drink in the jacks :pac: