While my haterade is dyed bright green for the month of March, I drink it all year round. Everywhere I turned last month, I saw that sickening shade. I saw humongous, garish shamrocks strewn over pubs that are already offensively ugly. There was an inflatable LEPRECHAUN scaling a pub in the city centre.
Has anyone else started to feel like there is no off season for Irish tourism?
To be fair – this is a nice and a good thing. I’m glad people like to visit my country, and I’m glad that the Irish economy gets to benefit from it. But it’s the image of Irishness that we export that I find so offensive, and it’s the image of Irishness that tourists expect when they come here.
Let me vent to you about it. I hope you enjoy the soapbox.
THE Temple Bar
I refuse not to emphasise “THE” when I refer to the monstrosity that is THE Temple Bar. I do this because I resent that they have branded themselves to be synonymous with the Temple Bar area. The pub has benefited greatly from tourists’ fair assumption that it is the area, rather than simply in the area. THE Temple Bar, while being the oldest licensed premises in Temple Bar, has only been known as THE Temple Bar since 2012, when the owners realised that they could bamboozle visitors into obfuscating visiting the area with visiting the pub.
These days, it seems like tourists are told that a visit to Dublin requires them to take a photo in front of the pub, which is covered in fairy lights and annoying signage. For the month of March, this ugliness is amped up to the nth degree by the presence of giant, LED-lit shamrocks. The streets get more and more congested by people needing the same photo as everyone else.
It’s a bit rich of me to complain. I took the obligatory Eiffel Tower photo in Paris or Colosseum photo in Rome. But at least those landmarks mean something. THE Temple Bar maybe will mean something in a hundred years, but right now it’s just a place that rebranded in 2012.
It’s not like THE Temple Bar was this amazing, iconic pub that the entire city of Dublin used as a landmark, like the Five Lamps. Dubs weren’t saying “Oh I’ll meet you around THE Temple Bar!”, using the great red eyesore pub as a shorthand for the area.
I wonder how many tourists think that the area is named after the pub, and therefore they think Irish identity is even more synonymous with alcohol consumption. This is already a nagging annoyance to Irish people. I would think that our colonised history is a lot more relevant to our identity and to our unhealthy relationship with alcohol. In fact, Temple Bar, like most areas and streets of Dublin, is named after an area of London.
I can’t be too judgmental of people. I carry out my touristic duty when I visit another city, and I’m sure a lot of these visitors are well aware that the pub is exactly as much of a trap as it appears. They’re just doing the Dublin thing, and they should not be blamed.
One more attempt to be fair to THE Temple Bar: at least it is not as eye-wateringly ugly as the Oliver St. John Gogarty.
Fitzsimons/O’Riordans
Oh, a regular Hatfield vs McCoy situation. Both located between Eustace Street and the quays, these two pubs are locked in a constant battle to see who can be more obnoxious.
Fitzsimons has been around longer, and employs bands who play songs that kill at stag dos. It used to be that, when passing Fitzsimons, you’d catch strains of “OhHhHhhhh your sex is on fiiire” and could imagine the swaying, braying, farting Heino-clutchers within, tears in their eyes.
Then, last year sometime, O’Riordans opened across the narrow street. It has this rather temporary looking signage, so it adds to the sense that this place has been hastily put together to attract as many tourists as it can, that just inside is a pit filled with spikes. They used to have a sign outside which read “It’s never a bad decision to drink alcohol” and, not to be a spoilsport, but it very patently often is. Like, there is definitely a better pithy “have a pint” phrase for your sandwich board.
Anyway, O’Riordans opened and decided to employ their own cover band, but they use incredibly loud speakers which mean you can hear their music from across the river. This set off a kind of speakers arms race with Fitzsimons, so now it’s a horrible battle of the witless to see who can drown the other out.
I haven’t heard a mediocre cover of a Kings of Leon song with any clarity in years.
I’m sure the bands are skilled, and I am glad these artists are employed, but this is audio domestic terrorism. It’s pushing me into deranged territory, where I have started pretending to flinch at the noise when I pass and trying to catch tourists’ eyes as they enter the pubs, with my lip curled in judgment and disgust.
I think they consider me some kind of local eccentric.
Ireland and drinking
Listen, let me dismount from the sober high horse for a moment. I did drinking, I completed it. I have finished alcohol. Box ticked. I do not think drinking is a bad idea for most people.
I was passionate about this topic which I am about to discuss long before I quit drinking.
When I worked in a whiskey museum, I frequently gave tours to groups of tourists. Most of them, especially Americans, were absolutely delightful. I wanted them to have the best time, and they wanted me to do the best job, and they were sweet.
But my god, did they (especially Americans) drop some absolute CLANGERS.
“I’m Irish, so I’ve got that short temper and I drink a lot”, said a nice young American woman to me, an actual Irish person.
I restrained myself from being visibly irritated by this, lest I appear to prove her stereotype that Irish people are furious by nature.
She’s not the only American person I’ve ever encountered who displayed this proud tendency towards anger and alcohol consumption, tying it directly to their Irish heritage. I wondered why it hadn’t occurred to her that this might be an insulting thing to say.
What do Americans think we do all day? Do they think we’re all falling-down drunk, punching one another constantly? I want them to really think about the implications that an entire nation has anger management problems inherent to their ethnicity.
If we have a tendency towards alcoholism, it’s maybe more due to the depressing weather which limits us to indoors activities much of the year, and it seems like it might be a postcolonial thing too.
If Irish immigrants were stereotyped as having anger and alcohol problems, it probably had a lot more to do with horrible living conditions and the trauma of escaping famines and the like. I’m sure that anti-Irish immigrant sentiment informed the stereotype as well.
Side note: isn’t it great that no Irish people hold anti-immigrant views? Jayze, wouldn’t that be a horribly ironic stance to take?
In the whiskey museum, I also remember, between tours, bringing some whiskey bottles from storage up to the tasting room, as was my literal job, when a sweet old American man goes “Bet you’re gonna drink all of those yourself, huh?”
I laughed along, because he seemed like a sweetie and I know it’s a joke. For him, it’s the one week he’s in Ireland, and he’s just making a little joke that occurred to him in the moment. I wasn’t mad at him. But I was a bit annoyed, and I could tell that my feeling was not in proportion to this gentle little joke, which he very likely would have also made in an American establishment, to an American staff member.
It hit me because I am angry that Ireland seems to have sold itself as a nation of happy alcoholics.
We see how we are marketed. People visiting us seem to think that we should all be linking arms with them, swinging tankards, ruddy-faced and unkempt, telling bawdy tales and riddles. Irish tourism has in recent years tried to correct this by presenting us instead as wise, magic people who live in wild, rural areas who also tell riddles.
The more boring truth is that we are simply a country. We’re not all twinkly little weirdos. Did you know we actually have accountants and offices and 00s décor? We’re not always on either, not always ready to hear you gently imply we have the most adorable drinking problem you’ve ever seen.
Top tips for tourists
Tourists, I like you and I want you to enjoy your time here. Some of you (Americans) do not get nearly enough holiday time (vacation days) so I really want this to be a good time for you. Here is how not to irritate us when you visit Ireland:
- Don’t say the Lucky Charms thing, because we don’t have that cereal or its accompanying marketing campaign over here. We’ll laugh politely but most of us won’t have a notion of what you’re on about.
- It’s generally safest and most accurate not to tie any of your personality traits to any Irish heritage you might have. But if you must, maybe surprise us with something fresh like “I’m really prudent and sensible, it’s the Irish in me!”
- Don’t be shy if you’ve done any research on Irish history or culture. I love when people have made the effort. For a small country, it’s great to see that people are interested in us.
- Have some spatial awareness. To be fair, this is much more of a problem with the hordes of European tweens who are sent to learn English here, and do so seemingly by standing in groups of fifty on narrow streets, wordless and carrying neon backpacks. But please, remember to be a bit cognisant that this a city where people live and work, as well as your holiday spot.
- In the name of whatever you hold holy, whatever or whoever that may be, it is an affront to every single thing that is good and right to wear those horrible plush leprechaun hats from Carroll’s “Irish” Gifts. Or those horrible little berets with ginger hair coming out from below. It is morally wrong. It is both offensive and ugly. You look stupid. I hate you. Take it off.
On a final note, you should also not be taking us too seriously. Irish people, especially very online Irish people, looooove to give out (“giving out” means to admonish someone or complain about something). You could have had the most enlightened and wonderful trip around Ireland, where you learned a lot and supported lots of small businesses and avoided allllll the tourist traps. Then you hop online and write a lovely post about it, but you accidentally say Magner’s instead of Bulmer’s. Or you say that Walkers crisps are the iconic crisp of your visit to Ireland. Or you say you really enjoyed Dingle in County Cork.
My fellow c[o]unt[r]y men will be eviscerating you in seconds. Don’t mind us. We’ve been rendered extremely defensive by years of paddywhackery and the English. We have a disproportionate expectation that everyone understand us perfectly and we also actually want you to get it wrong, so that we can say our little catchphrases.
Yes, yes, call them a yank. Ooh, Brits out. Very good. That was a very good joke. Let’s get you to bed now shall we?
I call solemnly upon my compatriots to get a grip and some perspective. I call upon visitors to Ireland to bear in mind that this is not a theme park known as IreLAND™.
A quick word from me: I have been soooo slow to post this or anything. I was very busy at work, and then I had some writer’s block with this post, then I had illustrator’s block. If the art is a bit more half-assed than usual for this post, it’s because I could not allow my block to delay this any more!
Thank you once again for coming to read my words, and subscribe below if you’d like a reminder when I do post. Also, follow me on @cora_writes on Instagram!