I don’t think the price of beer in pubs is the issue. As a teenager in the late 80s I worked in a large pub on Corks northside. We had the same old codgers in each day and they complained all day long about the price of the beer. Yet, they still paid it. More people packed the lounge that night, complained about any price increase and came back every night.
Monday mornings used to be a very busy morning in the bar (the lounge only got busy in the evening) as those who were on the lash all weekend didn’t bother going to work on a Monday morning and instead came for a ‘cure’. Added to that a large amount of Postmen used the pub after their shift ended about 11:00 AM and there were often sing songs with 50 men singing ballads at lunch time (the pub didn’t do food).
Added to that the area had high unemployment but people still had money to spend as the black economy was doing well and those that were getting nixers (or foxers as they are known in Cork) could readily afford the beer.
The problem for the vintners now is that since those heady days when there was a social class known as the “drinking” class has gone and thankfully gone forever. I remember when we got in Ballygowan for the first time some of the old heads were laughing, saying no one in there right mind would pay money for water in a pub. Added to that there was a major crack down in the early 90s against the black economy and as the Celtic Tiger kicked in able bodied men no longer had the excuse of not being able to find work.
In that time Ireland changed but the pub industry didn’t. Most of the older guys who I would consider “drinking men” are now dead. There was this one guy who used to come into us every Monday morning and stay for the whole day. He would drink at least 20 pints over the course of the day. Not slug them back, but drink them steadily over the course of the day while smoking, playing cards or draughts. He would walk out sober as a judge at 11:30 that night. Needless to say, he died a young man (early 40s) and I see his anniversary on The Echo each year. Another regular came into the bar one morning and his hands were shaking so badly he couldn’t hold the glass that contained his whiskey. I had to put a straw into the glass for him. Once he drank the whiskey he was his normal self again and his hands were as steady as a rock. Again, he is now pushing up daisies.
As a child I remember old guys stumbling up the street as we children played football and they could barely put one foot in front of the other. They used walls and railings to get home and I dunno how they did it. It is a rare sight now and is a scene from yesterdays Ireland.
My wife comes from a tiny village in South Tipperary and growing up there was about 12 pubs in the village that had a population of less than 1000. There are 5 pubs there now and two of these are for sale with asking prices of less than that of a modest 3 bed semi in the suburbs of Cork City. Most of them don’t open until the evening time.
Pubs are closing down and I think it is a good thing. While there is still too much of a ‘drink culture’ in Ireland it is not half as bad as when I was a kid or when I worked as a teenager in a pub.
I get the impression from vintners over the last few days as they try to flex there lobbying muscles (and from the ad campaigns on the radio with Brendan O’Connor as the narrator) that they are nostalgic for the old days of money flowing across the counter. The two guys who owned the pub where I worked became millionaires in a short space of time (although I think one lost his again in the property crash) but I couldn’t see that happening now with anyone opening a pub.
But let me tell you that those days are nothing to be nostalgic about. Kids doing there homework in pubs while parents drank, customers asking the owners for a sub because there electricity was cut off and being refused, men falling and hitting there heads because they couldn’t stand and wives sending the kids up to the pub to ask there fathers for money or to come home and the kids being told to “go home”.
In fact the owners of the pub where I worked probably made more money because they never gave credit or gave a sub to the customers. All the smaller pubs around did and when customers reached there credit limit with those small pubs they couldn’t go back there and they had to go to the ‘big’ pub in the area and they actually paid more for their drink.
As I look back and think of the wasted lives that passed through the doors of the pub where I worked it makes me cringe as I hear vintners go on now about the special place the “Irish pub” is for atmosphere and craic compared to its European counterpart.
The Irish pub in about wasted lives and making money. Nothing more, nothing less.
