James Nolan
On the lash in Dublin’s cultural quarter?
You know how this ends.
“…What I find once I leave that pub isn’t exactly pretty. Despite being in a good mood, not to mention pretty drunk, walking those streets for 45 minutes probably sours me more on Temple Bar than anything I’ve seen in the previous ten hours. As the tourists continue taking pictures, as they attempt to drink with dignity and enjoy late-night horse and cart rides, the Irish and British take over and go berserk.”
“It’s inevitable, I suppose, that in a melting pot of international drinkers, the two nations with the biggest love for getting shitfaced will rise to the top. Hen and stag parties spill out everywhere, wobbly cellulite and aggressive sweat stains running in chaotic formations down the cobbles. People jump out in front of strangers, startling them, whooping. Others fall down and puke.”
“A distaste rises in my stomach – I know, soon, I’ll have to leave. Needing photos, however, I persist – the camera needs only be held up for someone to dive in front of it, sticking out their tongue, their arse, and contorting their face into an expression that says, “I am a dickhead.””
“I find myself wishing that more tourists were here to force these people out, but in the long term, the opposite will surely happen. What right-minded person will come here, see this and return? How long until Temple Bar becomes – instead of a tourist attraction – something repulsive?”
“That said as long as drinking is considered our main means of coping with the frustrations of modern life, huge amounts of our populations will continue flocking to places like Temple Bar because, here, forgetting isn’t just tolerated, it’s encouraged.”
“Now I really need to leave, and the way I’m feeling, I kind of don’t want to come back. On my way to get a cab, however, I realise I need a piss – I’ve been walking for almost an hour with the dregs of eight or nine pints in me. In a 24-hour Starbucks I came to a conclusion. I’d gone out to discover something new and had ended up basically where I started. I didn’t want to admit it and be too cynical like people said, but late at night, Temple Bar up close looked like the same shithole it did from a distance.”
James Nolan, of Vice, on a night out in Dublin’s Temple Bar.
FIGHT!
I got pissed with strangers in Dublin’s biggest tourist trap (Vice)
We are a nation that hates to be criticised but has anyone asked what does Temple Bar represent? Temple Bar is reflective of everything that both right and wrong with Irish civil society and vivaciously captures the current thoughts and issues with Ireland at the current point in time. Our wonderful theatrical history is shown in the Project Arts Theatre and the wonderful little theatre at the back of Connolly books, itself a one of a type bookshop from a leftist perspective. The IFI is a cornerstone of alternative and non mainstream cinema. The photo gallery is ok but as the rest of the people say Irelands bad side is captured perfectly in what Temple Bars flaws are. Irish people self medicate with alcohol to see the world as it shouldnt be as they are unable to face reality. Temple Bar sees hoards of hen/stag parties or birthday parties on a pub crawl so as to get so hammered they puke down a storm drain, have sex up a laneway or take a crap or a slash on the side of the street letting the smell waft up. Violence comes added into the mix as well, I have seen three seperate fights over the years including one where a man got a boot to the face and had his nose smashed in and a fractured cheek bone, I had to scream at the lads to stop. There is more flaws in temple bar than there are good things. Temple Bar has also never really left the Celtic Tiger years, stupid tourists ripped off by greedy publicans who over charge for a pint because greedy landlords charge over the top rents for buildings which may have been justified ten or fifteen years ago but certainly now does not warrant the rent that they pay. What the journalist at Vice has done is give an outside opinion on something we cant face, criticism. Its like being in bed on a Sunday morning with our hangovers and someone dares dangle a curtain slightly open to allow a ray of sunshine to come in and we say ‘f***k off*. Welcome to the realities of life BS users….
How is it an outside opinion on something we can’t face ? Every sane adult in the city knows this.
Who is this rant aimed at exactly?
Those whose comments are ‘The problem I have with all this is that everybody criticises Temple bar for what happens at night time in a few pubs.’ etc.
Most of us know Termple Bar is like Ireland, a bloody shitehole undergoing a transformation of sorts. We are trying to recover from our economy being wrecked, unemployment, emmigration and Temple Bar is reflective of us having more flaws than positives at the moment….
Yeah, i think you are giving this absolute fupphead far too much credit. I think you’ve gotten carried away with yourself a bit. Vice don’t want anything with subtext. There is no subtly in this article. Moany old shite, the same as his other articles. Thoroughly unfunny nauseating bollox.
Yawn. He has a point but there is a strip like this in nearly every European city that draws tourists, some more garish than others. It’s a shame ours is in such a strategic location but equally a bonus that it is confined. Most people, tourists included, are well able to vote with their feet if it’s not their scene.
“I went looking for trouble and I was shocked to find it”.
You’d swear he was writing a piece on Basra.
Tell ya what James, try Las Ramblas (Barcelona, not Basra) after nightfall and you’ll be crying to have some regurgitated Guinness on your sandals.
There’s some neat theatres and cafes. There’s one good pub. The markets can be interesting. There’s a ladybusker that plays a bass guitar and sings, and she’s quite good. There’s churros.
Temple Bar at night-time is definite keep away territory – it can get very, very messy. It may be tonight – there was a group of English chaps batin’ pints into themselves outside Bad Ass at lunchtime who seemed game. There can be roaming groups of shirtless necktattoos who are angry at everything, and groups of very shook drug victims.
The author of the article is wrong about the ‘blacked-up’ guy – he’s a chap from the Caribbean somewhere, Hugo Reis is his name, and he was part of that hackneyed marketing stunt at the Web Summit last year – http://blogs.ft.com/photo-diary/tag/leprechaun/
Some idiot heard about a cliché called Temple Bar and indulged it without actually looking beyond the cliché, then writes about it in a clichéd manner. What a gimp! Zero imagination.
Medium Sized C gave the best answer to it above – July 25, 2014 at 1:40 pm