My friend Azahar got a laugh out of me this evening. It resonates with something I have been thinking about a lot since I started work in Dublin two weeks ago.
Temple Bar is the central tourist district in Dublin. Walking down its streets, you are assaulted by American themed sports bars, Spanish restaurants, Romanian buskers, French jugglers and Polish and Czech beer-joints, with all things Irish* well out of view. I’m sure this is no accident. Marketing being what it is nowadays, this is likely to be what most tourists to Dublin want. Instead of shamrock emblazoned bars, trad sessions, and Brendan Behan wannabes mouthing off about the price of a pint, what you get instead is an idiosyncratic and vibrant display of World Culture.
I don’t see this in a particularly negative light. To a large extent, “culture” is directly related to backwardness. When Ireland was a land of great culture, thousands of people were buying one-way tickets out of the place. Neither was it a mecca for hordes of tourists back then, as far as I know.
Actually, before I leave this entry, I remember reading once about an accident in the 19th century, where a very large whiskey barrel broke, its contents spilling out on the streets, flooding the gutters. Great crowds of people had to be physically pulled off the streets in a state of extreme inebriation.
Now that’s culture for ya.
Passive Impressions 
If you’re looking for shamrock emblazoned bars then come to Sevilla – tons of them here. Also came across quite a few in Lisbon, in what Nog decided must be the ‘Irish quarter’ there. One of them even had my surname up on its shamrock emblazoned sign, but of course it wasn’t spelt *correctly*. 😉
When you walk streets of Prague, you’re “assaulted” by all sorts of Irish pubs as well.
Except people of Prague do not consider it an “assault” – rather, they welcome the variety.
You paint a picture that restores my faith in my ancestry. The doctor walked in, stinking of gin and proceded to lie on the table…
They say you should never walk past a bar that has your name on it.
I visited London a few months back, for the first time in years. It goes without saying that London is thoroughly multi-racial, and I was struck by its easygoing tolerance. One thing I noticed in particular was that the pubs around Soho and Chinatown, which used to be rather intimidating, are now far more laid back.
Incidentally…you know that Guinness-pouring trick, whereby the barperson uses the flow to trace a picture of a shamrock? Until relatively recently, I was under the misapprehension that they used their pinkie.
Being in posession of a very common Irish name, if I stuck by that rule, I’d be very drunk just walking from one end of a big street to the other end..
I’m still fascinated by what I see in Dublin. I went down into Temple Bar a few days ago again, and everywhere I looked I saw quite a lot of Irish kitch :-). I even saw a trad session being advertised..
However I don’t think it’s the diddley eye days and the shamroguery that make Temple Bar what it is – it’s a much richer experience than this. A melange of different cultures of which Irishness is just one small piece.
Have you read Roddy Doyle’s ‘Paula Spencer’? She’s an alcoholic Rip Van Winkel, waking up in a new Ireland. It’s very good!
Favourite bit: Folk are gossiping about a Polish neigbour, saying she’s bound to be a prostitute or pole dancer. Turns out she works for Google. 🙂
Tell you what, though…isn’t multiculturalism just fucking great?
So true!
A Russian girl managed to ace her Leaving Cert today – 8 A1’s – over 85% in every subject she sat. Many of our foreign born children have done disproportionately well in their final exams.
Actually I must read that book – most Irish of my generation and older are still in a daze regarding all the changes (for the better) in the last 20 years or so.