I've added hundreds of closed pubs and old names from sounds like old tour guides, trade directories and newspaper articles - the latter giving huge amounts of info, usually backed up against the trade directories to be certain of names and locations. The City Libraries photo archives was also a huge source; but the newspapers have come out on top.
I have standing access to the Irish Times archive, and I've paid for a few months of Irish News Archives access to get the Independent and Press - leaving just one publication that could contribute something missing. The Sunday World
One of the newer newspapers, this mass-market tabloid was founded in 1973 and was for a time the most popular Sunday paper in the country. And it has a weekly "Pub Spy" column - running since '73 - reviewing pubs from across the country - but mostly Dublin. This should be gold-dust for me, and I waited for someone like the Irish News Archives to get the World uploaded. And waited, and waited, and eventually gave up on the idea
I found out this week that the British Newspaper Archive actually uploaded nearly 900 editions of the paper, from 1987-2006 with some gaps, in January 2019. This completely passed me by, as they were not a provider I expected to have access. One months subscription was paid for and I dived in. I have now read every entry found by the search engine from 1987-1998; with a list of missing weeks to go back and check manually.
Did I find a cache of pubs I had never known of before? No. If anything, it seems that the Pub Spy author(s) seemed to pick pubs of staying power - there are very few which are closed down at all, and as yet I haven't picked up a single 'new' premises from it.
Did I find a pile of gossipy content about pubs I already knew of? Yes - and of incredible depth. Topless barmaids (The Castle, Finglas in 1990); constant accusations of pubs being popular with Furstenberg-drinking yuppies - or even worse in the eyes of Pub Spy, students; suggestions of the best places to find women - or men, as one of the regular "commandos" as they were referred to was female; and so on
Pub Spy usually used a pint-rating system in place of a star-rating system; but like many reviewers rarely uses either end of the scale. So far, the only zero-pint rating I have found was given to N0583 Shamrock Lodge, Finglas for refusing to serve women in the bar in 1988; and the only five-pint rating given to John M Keatings on Mary Street in 1996 - shortly before it was obliterated for a McDonalds.
Pub Spy also rated the student bars in Trinity, the Dail visitors bar, the Enterprise train and the bar on the Irish Ferries St. Patrick II, none of which would count as pubs to me. He also travelled to review the occasional Irish bar abroad - frequently for the Guinness backed Irish Pub Company - which I am more than willing to do for suitable expenses! Christmas 1998 saw him review the Irish bar in Rovaniemi - the capital of Lapland and destination for most Santa flights; which would be one of the more obscure places to have a theme bar.
Because the archive only starts in 1987 at the moment, we only get treated to mentions of the era when Pub Spy was more of a campaign for quality than reviews. Reviews all the way to the current day frequently give a lot of time to the condition of the toilets - something Irish pubs were not known for for years; and there are frequent references to "Slopsmasters". This was a term used for bars which were accused of serving the contents of slops trays (and sometimes the dregs of unfinished pints!) as drinks to unsuspecting customers. There's plenty of discussion of this practice online; but the World made grand claims for their 25th birthday that Pub Spy effectively stopped it...
2021 Update
I've now signed up for another month of the archives and worked through a list of missing dates from 87-98; and also read every review from 1999 until the end of the current archive in 2006.
There's much of the same - some old names of pubs, some interesting gossip and a few landmarks. Only a few months after the 1993 decriminalisation, Pub Spy visit S0092 The George and give it a positive three pint review. There is a particular focus on picking up new pubs when they open and on revisiting places after significant refurbishment - I do the former, but not the latter - and far more non-Dublin pubs, presumably as the well was becoming quite dry.
Reviews get significantly longer in 1997, and in 2002 turn in to a full page with generally one main review and three smaller ones, local to the main; plus some general commentary on the pub industry.
Some of the old campaigning spirit returned in 2003, with a specific push for pubs to clean their toilets and people sending in pubs they wanted to receive scathing reviews for this purpose.
The frequency of five-pinters significantly increases - I've found them for S0242 The 108 in Rathgar, 1008645 Molloys on Talbot Street, S0165 Merrion Inn (although, reading the review text, I suspect this was meant to be four!), S1475 Brazen Head, N0089 The Temple and the original Tenters in Blackpitts.
There was also another zero pinter, not in Dublin, but in Cavan. Its worth mentioning for it getting zero pints *twice* in two years for filth and dereliction. This is still a very limited number of 0 or 5 awards out of about 800 reviews, not counting some occasions where they did an area writeup and gave every pub five - in this case I know all the pubs well, and they're not all fives!
By the time I could do it, there were only six pubs left on Arranmore and even then I've not tried do the lot in one day. Mainly because the hills are awful to walk between them. But Pub Spy did all seven in '97 pic.twitter.com/q1Ga68Oi96
— Cian Duffy (@cian_duffy) March 8, 2021
A particular objection during the early 00s time period is a dislike of CCTV in pubs - the reason why is not given; but it specifically reduces the score of a number of pubs.
No comments:
Post a Comment