What'll ya have, ked?

April 19, 2012

My first Irish Stout in Ireland

As a proper tourist, I picked up flyer in my hotel to use as a bookmark and it was advertising the Dublin Literary Pub Tour.  I do not consider it a slur against the great Irish people to say that literature and pub life are two of their most notable contributions to world culture.  And I always believed culture goes down a little better when lubricated with a creamy stout.  Giddyup

I made my way to The Duke and had a fish'n'chips while waiting for the crawl to start.  When in Rome.

Really healthy afterwork crowd at the bar.  This is the type of music playing.  I fully acknowledge that I may be beating The Pogues to death, and that this is quite likely a tourist bar, but I'm just a reporter here. And most people there seemed local.

I liked the Beamish stout.  But I don't know enough about stout to compare it to Guiness...there's always tonight.  I also asked the barman for a taste of the best Irish Whiskey in the house.  Asking for a 'taste' is something I'm picking up here.  Sometimes they just give you a taste, for free.  Sometimes they make you pay for it, which was my intention anyway, so no harm done.  Plus, it makes me feel like Jimmy McNulty.

Here's what he offered me, without hesitation, and it was a worthy potion.  He did charge me10 Euro, which is like, 3 bucks

the duke, himself

The tour started at 8 with some local actors acting out a scene Waiting for Godot, a famous play by the famous Irish auteur Samuel Beckett.  It was well done and very funny.  We then went out on the tour and stopped at a few pubs including the awesome O'Neill's

Apparently a favorite haunt of Arthur Guinness, the world
record holder for largest book of world records

Oneill's impressive Tap Room.  Kudos, O'Neill

This stop was followed by a scene from The Risen People by James Plunkett, a famous play/show/movie that eventually starred Peter O'Toole.  The show was called Strumpet City, which is the name of a band I will start.  The book/play was about Big Jim Larkin, a historical figure who lead a strike of the working people of Dublin and delivered this rather WilliamWallace-esque line:

The Great seem so because we are on our knees...let us RISE.  

Business Idea:  Have someone draw a nice little sillouette of Big Jim Kelly, and throw it on a t-shirt with that quote.
He could be the Irish Che.  (patent pending)

For the names of other band names I've come across on my trip, click here:

We also had a stop at Trinity College, the alma mater of Samuel Beckett, Oscar Wilde and Jonathan Swift (author of Gulliver's Travels).

Main hall of Trinity College

You know you're in Dublin and not Hartford because no one is
wearing pastel colored polo shrts with red pants and refusing
to hold their liquor in a dignified manner.  Their mascot also
isn't a tiny chicken

 Next stop was a bar called The Stand.  It was a favorite hangout of Michael Collins, an early leader of the IRA who pilfered much of his life from an awesome movie starring Liam Neeson, who has not aged in over 20 years of kicking ass and taking names.  But we mustn't joke about the troubles.

One of the trivia questions for our crawl was "What was the original name of The Stand?"  We were warned that you could ask any of the four bartenders, but only one of them would tell the truth.  The one I asked told me "I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you."  People have said that to me before, but I believed it this time.  It seemed a crap risk to take for a 25% chance of getting the right answer, and possibly winning a pub crawl t-shirt.

The Smithick IPA (Irish Pale Ale) is apparently new this year, and I'd highly recommend it.  Too bad they don't sell it in 100 ml bottles so I could get it into my Ryan Air Flight...

Artists portrayal of Michael Collins as Liam Neeson

Few other high/lowlights:

As I'm wont to do, I befriended some folks and ended up talking to a solo traveler who was a professor at Penn State, who works as a therapist.  She was  a very interesting woman who told  me some very interesting things, among which were:

• "I used to date a trainer at Penn State. What a creep.  Great body though.  I only dated him for 2 months."
• "Me and my girlfriends used to go to bars, pick out a guy, and then not talk and see if we could get him to come over.  It was like that carnival game where you shoot water into the clowns mouth"
• I've been divorced three times.  After the last one, I figured I could no longer work as a relationship counselor and still sleep at  night
• Sometimes in Happy Valley, I'll see young men stopped, looking at signs that say "Thanks for the memories, Joe Pa" and I wonder what their remembering.  I always want to give them my business card...they'll need it

My new favorite Irish author is Brendan Behan, who famously claimed to be a drinker with a writing problem.  He was once asked if he could even tell the difference between prose and poetry.  He answered as such:

There was a young fella named Rollocks

Who worked for Ferrier and Pollocks
As he walked on the Strand

With his girl by the hand

The tide came up to his knees

Now that's prose.  If the tide had been in, it would have been poetry