https://www.eater.com/2017/3/7/14839472/irish-pub-design
"The walls of the bar are covered in old art, photographs of Ireland, and
yellowing posters in frames. A pair of hurleys, the flat ash stick of the
Gaelic game, are tacked above the door frame. The bar’s otherwise full of
dust-coated bottles of bygone whiskeys and stouts, musical instruments, and
familiar ridged glass partitions that gracefully generate several spaces where
there might have been just one.
Christy Moore, beloved grandfather of contemporary Irish folk music, hums over
the speakers. The manager — who, pleasingly, shares a first name with Moore —
flits warmly and easily from bar to table, genially, and in a Donegal accent,
asking about the general well-being of diners and drinkers. Notably, there are
few shamrocks, in any form or medium — they, along with leprechauns, are
generally derided as emblematic of a very loose grip on Ireland and
“Irishness.”
The Auld Dubliner — small, dark, and convincing, with a flat, matte, unassuming
facade (red and yellow lettering over black paint, on wood) — rests between a
heavily illuminated branch of T-Mobile and a “dueling piano café” on a street
approximately 5,000 miles from the place invoked in its name. Almost every part
of the bar the eye falls on — from the stocky tables and the upholstered chairs
to the floor tiling and the mock oil lamps dangling from the ceiling — were
railed into the unit in Long Beach, California, from a 40-foot container that
spent between three and five weeks at sea.
The bar’s trappings belie its location — a retail complex — and the year of its
opening: 2003. Like thousands elsewhere, it was designed and prefabricated in
Ireland: an export not cultural or theoretical, but actual. The assiduous
export and installation of these pre-made Irish bars has been going on for more
than 30 years, resulting in a global network of establishments that are
interrelated but unrelated. A loose confederation. A franchise without a name."
Via Esther Schindler.
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
