The lively pubs of Ireland

It's snowing. Under the snow, it's icy. It's still February. (And how is it that the shortest month is always the longest month, anyway?) Time to take a trip!  A virtual one, of course.

I've been thinking about Irish pubs lately, partly because I just read a rather interesting book about Irish pubs, written by a guy who writes for the New Yorker. It's called "A Pint of Plain" (as in the Flann O'Brien reference--"a pint of plain's your only man," referring to a pint of Guinness). In the book, the author travels throughout Dublin and beyond, visiting pub after pub, trying to find one that matches his understanding of the old-fashioned traditional pub, one that hasn't been all mucked up with false sentiment and fake antiques and scheduled sessions.

It's a fun book to read because I've been to a bunch of the pubs he visited--including Mulligan's on Poolbeg Street (as seen in the picture at top), and O'Donoghue's, and the Brazen Head, where I must confess I got extremely, um, happy the last time I was there, on account of the very fun band (Eamonn and the Boys) and the very nice people we happened to be sitting with, who liked us more and more as the night went on (and we them) and who kept buying us pints (and we them).

Anyway....all of this reminded me of the very first time that Doug and I went to Ireland, back in 1997. (My goodness--twelve years ago already.)

I've already told you one story from that trip, and I'll not repeat it here. (It was about the Strings and Flings festival in Donegal, and you can read it here, if you like.) On that same trip, we stayed with a friend who lived in a village outside of Galway City. 

One evening we met up with him at his local, and we sat in a snug and talked for a couple of hours. I'd never heard of snugs, and I'd never realized that women had to be cordoned off in the old days in separate rooms. The great advantage, of course, was the little shelf under the sliding window, where women placed their pint glasses when they wanted another.

Being modern times, it didn't work quite that way for us. We had to go up to the bar. But still; it seemed like a charming idea, as far as segregation goes.

Last call came around 11 p.m.  I'm trying to remember how the publican did it--I think he called out, "Time, gentlemen!" and clanged a bell, but maybe I'm getting that mixed up with some BBC miniseries or another.

What I remember is that nobody moved. We ordered another round, and it came. I wondered about this, but didn't ask.  The publican pulled the shades and locked the front door.  The hour moved past 11:30, on toward midnight.  People continued to drink, and it seems to me that the publican continued to serve.  

Our friend explained: "last call" technically meant no more service, but in reality it simply meant that nobody else could get in. After midnight, we got up to leave, and our friend beckoned us away from the front door. "We go out the side door, as a courtesy to the gardai," he explained. "They let us stay here and drink, and in return we don't flaunt it in their faces that we did."

So those of you in Ireland--is it still that way? Or has last call come to truly mean last call?