Normally, the "Press Up ladies name" premises are food first, drinking second - but when I arrived here, they were in a gap between brunch and dinner service, so you could only drink. This may be a new thing, considering this was in the immediate weeks after the refinancing and restructuring of Press Up; but it was definitely a bit surprising.
Otherwise, its all the same. Dear, insipid drinks lineup, fancy interior.
Only sort-of a club space, but I primarily drank here before going to Tripod; as well as the occasional birthday party; or when attending Eatyard next door.
Not massively my type of pub, but with a huge fanbase, this is a definite loss to the Dublin social scene. The replacement venue (N2405 Bernard Shaw) on the Northside isn't quite the same; but is at least in a much better condition building.
I have scoured my phone camera roll, cloud storage and so on to find a photo of the "Enda Kenny rolls shit joints" grafitti which adorned the toilets in here, and was one of the two main defining features of the pub - but I can't. If I ever do find it, I'll come back and update the post with it.
The other defining feature was a Daimler Fleetline double decker bus converted in to a pizza restaurant. This did not make it to the new venue, presumably being too tall for the covered areas there; but the bus lives on at a pub in Wicklow.
The pub lies empty at time of writing, but redevleopment is planned. The main building is a protected structure, but the rambling, shambling outdoor spaces that made up Eatyard and the smoking area are not; so what may re-open - the approved plans have three hospitality spaces - will not be anything like what was there before.
Formerly the original branch of The Chophouse - now relocated entirely to what was their second branch (S4470 The Chophouse) in Sandymount - this was very briefly one for the list of "sad 2024 closures".
However, within a matter of weeks - or days, even - the Morans, of Red Cow Hotel ownership note, had taken over and reopened as The Cow, with much of the original staff remaining.
I dropped out fairly shortly after, and despite not being entirely sure when they were opening - it was a Bank Holiday weekend, they didn't have social media set up yet, and additionally there were workmen painting the premises when I got there - I got in. After lurking in The Old Spot for a pint first, that is.
The setup here is very much restaurant, but they are also willing to serve drinkers - I did, however, actually get food here. There's bar seating but also spare dining tables were made available for those looking to just drink while I was there. There's more choice of beer on offer than often available in this type of restaurant pub - something shared with The Old Spot actually - and the food was decent.
Another club space? How on earth are these dominating a list of the closed venues in Dublin that I visited...
Well, this didn't really start as a club space as such. In the actual vaults of Connolly Station, this started life as a trendy cafe bar that opened late with its own DJs; but it didn't take long for it to be rented out to promoters for ticketed events.
Opening in mid 2002, as the IFSC expanded towards this side of Connolly, the bar was primarily food-led, and this continued pretty much until it closed - I had a fully catered work Christmas party here; and also became a common location for supporters clubs to watch football matches. I only remembered actually going here for this purpose when checking the newspaper archives for listings - my first drink here was probably watching Brighton play in the FA Cup or similar in 2003 or 2004.
Laid out with two (or was it three?) bar areas to the front of the premises, and a number vaulted function rooms to the back, the food, sports and events business did continue; but most of my trips here were to trance nights; using anywhere from one to three vaults for different DJs. These were primarily promoted by Letrik but I did attend events here with other promoters over the years.
The venue had its problems, but I'd be quite happy to jump off a train and head down the steps in there for a gig again - although I'd probably not make it to 3am anymore!
The Vaults finally closed in 2012, a ten year lifespan that I would have sworn was more like 15-20 had I been asked without checking the dates.
That closure, which the operator blamed on uncontrolled water ingress, pretty much ended any chance of another venue coming in to the space. CIÉ eventually gave up on another bar opening here, and converted the space to relocate their staff medical centre; in what is an odder re-use for a Dublin nightclub.
For those keeping count, that's one hotel, one still empty (January 2025) and one medical centre on the "dead club afterline" tally.
If the previous writeup covered a pub that isn't really for me (Pygmalion), this one covers a pub that isn't really for anyone that might read this!
This is somewhere I wish I'd visited when it first opened - the All Sports Bar that was here before might have been a bit brash; but I don't think I'd have spent quite so much money on quite such a disappointing meal just to tick the premises off the list. However, it became the Hard Rock Cafe a few months before I turned 18; and I had only drunk in a handful of pubs by that stage.
The staff were decent though. And I never have to go back.
Oh look, its another club space on the "closed before I got to write them up" list. That's a surprise...
But there is a surprise here - this place is still licenced; and externally seems to be intact. But there's never been the vaguest hint of it reopening. The registered owner is Nolan Transport, the trucking firm familar to any long distance driver; and has been for as long as I have records.
The setup here was a more 'normal' bar - originally The Isaac Butt - upstairs, and a basement club - called Radio City downstairs; although in its final incarnation it was The Good Bits upstairs and down. The venue opened at some point in 1999 or possibly late 1998 - event listings start in September '99, but there is a reference to the bar being there in February.
The club space was used for anything and everything, genre-wise - there are lots of writeups of metal gigs there, a promotional piece by the supplier of the sound system showing a very stereotypical mid 00s indie band playing (I have no idea if they are, they just look like one) through to the trance events I was there for.
Even though I was actually sober (driving) for some of those events, I don't remember much about it - nightclub interiors, at night, are never the most easy to differentiate I guess. I also don't really know when it closed - it only became The Good Bits in late 2009 or so, and I think it may have closed by 2011 - the last event reference I can find anywhere is October 2011.
A month of social interactions mostly in Kildare leads to a fairly small list of revisits:
S1451 Mollys, Francis Street - last visited as Anti Social, which was very different
1015887 Hyatt Centric - work Christmas party - the formal, company wide one
N0097 Underdog - The Beoir Christmas party
4 Dame Lane - Work Party 2: The Pintening
This is a pub that had eluded me for quite a while, as it is often very busy - even when other places aren't.
I swept up a lot of the South City Centre busy pubs over two Easter Sundays (2018 and 2019), and on both days, Pygmalion had ticketed events on. Other times I've gone past, and there has been a queue outside, with door staff using tickers to confirm the numbers inside.
However, on the day I visited, the city centre was oddly quiet for the time of year, and Pygmalion was even quieter, so I had no issues heading inside. Indeed I think I may have been the only customer inside, as most people were sitting in the external seating area on Coppinger Row.
The other reason is that it just isn't my type of pub - a very hip cafe bar that becomes a nightclub that primarily plays music I have no interest in listening to.
As far as I can tell, this space - in the Powerscourt Townhouse shopping centre which itself is a redeveloped Georgian mansion - only became a pub for the first time in the early 00s, as a branch of the small Ba Mizu chain that also existed in Howth and Belfast.
I think, but cannot be certain, that the space was originally Timmermans Wine Cellars - its the only unit that goes in to the cellars, that I know of; but this would have had a wine licence, and the pub licence serial number is early 00s. Timmermans vanishes from newspaper records in the late 80s and I don't know what was there before Ba Mizu appears in about 2003.
Ba Mizu lasted under a decade, but Pygmalion is now well in to its second decade, so clearly it is keeping up with changing tastes in pubs and clubs; and I'm not.
As I write this, its pretty close to Halloween (yes, the post are currently scheduled that far in advance) so what better time to get vaguely spooky, and follow up my RetroReview series of pubs I visited (for the first time) pre-July 2016 by filling in the gaps I left.
These gaps were left because the premise was closed by the time it came to do the RetroReview - properly closed, not temporarily closed. I did start the RetroReview series during the pandemic after all, when they were all shut.
As before, this is in licence number order, ish - I managed to leave some out, often by de-scheduling a post to replace it with something more important and only realising later - and the first licence up is the former Andrews Lane Theatre on, well, Andrews Lane.
As a theatre-class licence, I can be fairly certain that the hotel that replaced it, 1018129 The Wren is not using a conversion of this licence.
The initial theatre opened in a converted building on the site in 1989, but was sold to developers and closed in 2007. However, like a lot of things sold for development from 2006 onwards; it didn't get redeveloped for quite some time; and the theatre, minus its seating, became a nightclub for the interim.
I'm pretty certain I did attend a play here in school - I had some teachers very in to theatre and I also attended a play in the Riverbank Theatre, now the Merchants Quay Night Cafe; but I didn't drink here until it was a nightclub unsurprisingly. As ALT until 2014, and latterly as Hangar, it survived until 2018 as a club until the demolition crews finally came.
I never particularly cared for it as a club venue; but at the time I was attending Dublin had so many, many more club venues - a lot of this series is going to be a series of the lost clubs of Dublin.
The building was in extremely poor condition, the two rooms didn't work from a sound separation perspective, the cloakroom was a mess and and the toilets were a problem. But I'd prefer we still had the space even with all that. May have been a dump but it was *our* dump, etc etc...
Nothing. There's a file, it has some bits and pieces of ownership changes in it, but nothing worth mentioning here. But if I don't post this, it'll be obvious in a future month.
A flat pint of Smithwicks for 7.20
Just go to 1000012 The Green Room, pretty much directly across the road. Or to 1015426 Rubys around the corner if you want food.
We start the ninth calendar year of this 'project' with a writeup from six weeks ago; but this backlog can only get shorter now that I've all but exhausted the well of "pubs I visited before 2016"...
The last pub in Rush was rammed; the lounge area of the first pub in Lusk *sounded* rammed (I was in a bar area) and this pub was rammed; both in the bar and the lounge.
Which don't appear to be connected to each other internally, for customers at least - something I've rarely seen.
And in terms of connections (I'm really straining this segue), I also don't know if this pub shares ownership with Murrays - as the owners of The Top Shop are also called Murray; but are not the same as the name on the licence for Murrays. It isn't that odd for an owner or a family of owners to have pubs very near to each other - directly across the road in Balbriggan for The Milestone and The Harvest for instance - but owning the only two pubs in a town isn't common.
I initially sat outside, but drizzle began and I found some space inside in the lounge as someone else was leaving - which was useful, as due to the relatively poor bus service here, I had quite some time to hang around.
I believe the GAA club bar takes quite a lot of trade in Lusk, which may explain there only being two pubs - there was once a third, Murtaghs, significantly outside the town on the old N1, which closed at least in party due to the loss of the passing food trade when the M1 opened. This was sold, minus licence, a few years ago - the ad is still up as of time of writing.
