2,100 pubs closed over the last 20 years

I don't go to pubs too often anymore but by chance found myself in one yesterday watching Donegal v Meath. It was a nice pub, nice decor, clean, but the atmosphere was dreary. About 40-50 patrons and I'd say 90% men. There were a couple of groups of lads making a bit of (welcome) noise, but other than that the atmosphere was just sour. I didnt enjoy it at all.
 
Persia said:
Another thing that I found deeply annoying, over the years with kids ordering coke only to get this tiny bottle that you'd typically see for a single mixer for a spirit.

Two gulps later and they're looking for another bottle.

Put me off pubs to be honest and just went to restaurants instead where they give a decent size bottle.
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This really bugs me too. There was a time you'd get a pint of coke (two bottles). The tiny bottles are a joke. It's really more expensive to not drink alcohol in a pub.
 
T McGibney said:
More than that, the blandness of and lack of choice in pub beers is utterly depressing.

Most pubs think it's beneath them to offer a single draught craft beer let alone the cask beers that make the better English pubs special and distinctive.
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Wetherspoons (cue burning torches) have a great range of beers such as you mention but are only in Dublin I think and I've only been in the one on Abbey Street and it seemed a bit dead (admittedly it was early in the day and I was only there for 30 minutes).
 
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I love pubs and would be a frequenter of some of the well-known spots in Dublin and the surrounding suburbs. (Was in Gleeson's Booterstown yesterday early evening and in recent weeks have been in The Horse & Hound Cabinteely, Gibney's Malahide, Smyths of Haddington Road, Doheny & Nesbitts Baggot St, Finnegan's in Dalkey, Harbour Bar in Howth and a few others.)

The recent warm spell has been a godsend to pubs with outside frontage and/or a beer garden - I definitely detect a slight increase in young people (early to late 20s) in some of the above.

Also, a big fan of London pubs having been there half a dozen times in the last year and a bit. Some favourites include The White Horse in Parson's Green, Fulham, Cadogan Arms on the Kings Road, Zetland Arms in South Kensington and The Fitzrovia - in Fitrovia. Too many favourite Soho pubs to mention!

Long may they reign!
 
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When I was in my 20s the local pubs were hopping most nights, and certainly at weekends. Same pubs 40 years later are dead most nights.

One local pub changed hands a couple of years ago. The new owner is there most nights, he has worked incredibly hard and it shows. His pub is busy at the weekends and has a few busy nights mid week too. He has added a limited menu, live music, screens for games, a well trained team of floor staff and quiz nights.
Meanwhile 300m away a pub that would have been turning away people in the 1990s is closed and the site has OPP for apartments. Sad it’s a lovely old building but as a pub it died a long slow death over the past few years.
 
ClubMan said:
Wetherspoons (cue burning torches) have a great range of beers such as you mention but are only in Dublin I think and I've only been in the one on Abbey Street and it seemed a bit dead (admittedly it was early in the day and I was only there for 30 minutes
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Weatherspoons offers all the things people say they want on this thread, cheap prices, craft beers, a much larger selection of beers, comfortable seats and clean toilets. Yet Weatherspoons has struggled here only the dublin ones remain open, the carlow and Waterford ones have already closed.
That shows you that pubs are a very tough business now with very fickle clientele, even when you tick all the boxes.
So what the English like in a pub is very different to what Irish people go for and that is hard to quantify. Sometimes you can have pubs that have limited beer selection, limited seating, bad toilets and the place is jammed even though it ticks none of the boxes.
Folk are strange.
 
joe sod said:
Yet Weatherspoons has struggled here only the dublin ones remain open, the carlow and Waterford ones have already closed.
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I didn't realise that they had opened any outside Dublin.

As I say I've only been in the Abbey Street one, once for a pint recently and a few other times to grab a takeaway coffee on the run, but I will give it another go at some stage. Otherwise I very rarely frequent pubs at all these days. Too expensive in the vast majority of cases in my opinion.
 
joe sod said:
Sometimes you can have pubs that have limited beer selection, limited seating, bad toilets and the place is jammed even though it ticks none of the boxes.
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A number of years back I brought my young lads (then teenagers) into one of the better and more successful pubs in north inner city Dublin as we were meeting people there before a match. They couldn't get over the absolute decrepitude of the toilets which I and everyone else had stopped noticing years if not decades previously.
 
ClubMan said:
I didn't realise that they had opened any outside Dublin.
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Three in Carlow, Cork and Waterford, which were subsequently sold.

They also bought a building in Galway, former niteclub, applied for PP, but that was also sold.


There are six remaining: three in Dublin city centre, three in the suburbs (Blanch, DL, Swords).
 
I don’t think the demise of the pub culture as I remember it in the 80s/90s is necessarily a bad thing.

It’s important of course to have a sense of community and strong options for social interaction but it’s a bit of a poverty of thought to conclude that alcohol consumption should be at the heart of it.

I recall Michael McDowell (I think when he was minister for justice) making some attempts to provide for a cafe bar culture (similar to the continent) by making licenses cheaper and more accessible. I suspect the vintners were responsible for choking that proposal but it would have been interesting to see how it would have played out.
 
Sister Sara said:
Respectfully, if people are dancing until 6am in the morning they are taking something. It may not be alcohol, but there is definitely a stimulant in there.
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Eh no, not all people take drugs to dance all night, my youth saw me through!!!

Used to go to Spirit nightclub all the time, it would be hopping. Would have a couple of drinks early in the night (3/4 not a big drinker), stopped serving about the 2.30am mark from what I remember and it used to stay open until 6am and you would get some form of a breakfast roll on the way out.

Good times, I miss them.
 
Sarah Ryan said:
Used to go to Spirit nightclub all the time, it would be hopping. Would have a couple of drinks early in the night (3/4 not a big drinker), stopped serving about the 2.30am mark from what I remember and it used to stay open until 6am and you would get some form of a breakfast roll on the way out.
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That model wouldn't work today you would need the bar to stay open until at least 3.30am to justify a 4.30am closure but even a change to that would give a new lease of life to the sector. Its a very costly business to run now with all the regulations you could not justify the cost of keeping a club open for hours with no bar revenue coming in. Ireland was a lot cheaper and less regulated place for social stuff back in the 90s when all that scene was really happening . Covid was the death knell for night clubs
 
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