I am a Dublin-born travel writer, with a full-on block about writing another word about my hometown. Just how many times can you scribble “great craic” with a straight face? I’ve told all the secrets, dished all the dirt, gone off every beaten path, and ruined my favorite pubs ratting them out to the tourist mob.

Something has to give.

Can a native Dubliner find something good to say about Temple Bar?

So I’ve taken up this blog in an attempt to take a fresh look at Dublin, trying (with a lot of desperation and a little hope) to find some of that old magic in this Celtic Tiger capital (oh God, how many times have I written that phrase???).

A search for something to love, again

A little background to begin. Dublin has arguably changed more in the last 15 years that any city in the western world. When I was in school unemployment ran at 15%, university was a training ground for inevitable emigration, you could get a pint and then another pint for two pounds, and there were 10 foreigners living in the city and everyone knew them by name. But the craic was great! People had more time than money and there was a certain East Berlinian bohemian feel to the place (with all-knowing priests taking the role of the STASI, perhaps).

Dublin in 2007, all changed, changed utterly. Unemployment is 4.5%, around 15% of the city’s population is foreign born (at last! restaurant food worth eating), house prices are the second-highest in Europe, the SUV owns the overcrowded roads, and the church has been engulfed by a wave of scandal and secularization.

But the one inevitable down side of catching up with the rest of the First World is you tend to become the same as everywhere else. At times, when this writer is stuck in traffic and eating an overpriced tasteless ham sandwich, the difference between modern Dublin and Birmingham or Philadelphia can be hard to remember. So my new blog, and a search for something to love again in the old city.

But first, the foul-mouthed drunken elephant

For my first entry I thought I would dive straight in and take on the bugbear of every Irish travel writer, the drunken elephant in the room, the carousing, foul-mouthed Emperor in his new clothes: Temple Bar. Yes, for the Dublin-born travel writer, Temple Bar offers a bit of a dilemma. Every travel editor has heard about it, the local tourist board promote the bejaysus out of it, and just about every tourist plans to make a beeline for it - so how do you break it gently to them that you (and most Dublin residents) wouldn’t be caught dead in the place. “Ibiza in the rain,” a close friend and Lonely Planet writer once christened it, after witnessing a particularly over-crowded, debauched, vomit-heavy Saturday night on the little streets of the once cool, cobbled neighborhood, where the hen parties roam wild and the kebab is the de rigueur fashion item not to be seen without. Could I find some good in tacky Temple Bar?

Well, a man has to make a living, so I thought I’d give the place one more chance. I decided to take not one, but two – all good experiments need to be verified – stroll through Temple Bar on a Saturday. One at 2pm and one at 2am.

Temple Bar, Part 1: Saturday at 2pm

Temple Bar, Saturday, 2pm: Spot the Irishman

First impressions, hey this place isn’t so bad. I sit down outside the Joy of Coffee. I am impressed with their huge selection of herbal teas – as a real tea addict, I prefer the term ‘infusion’ for this flowery stuff – and the ‘Bad Weather Tea with Honey’ proves a little too sweet for my taste but I admire the daring do. The walls are covered with good-quality local art and the Maud’s ice cream really raises my spirits.

The narrow, cobbled streets are crowded, Saturday is the busiest day in Temple Bar, and I look up at the passing crowd. The vast majority of them are under 30, European (when an Irishman says ‘European’ he means Continental European, excluding Britain and Ireland), and pretty damned healthy looking.

There are a few American accents scattered about and I could count the number of Irish people on one hand. I sit there for a while and something else strikes me, none of these fabulously sallow-skinned and trim Europeans are spending any money! I must have sat there for an hour and watched them, focusing on one or two groups at a time as they sauntered up and down streets, shopping — no, just window shopping — maybe splashing out on an ice cream (a big maybe!), and then off for some more walking and saving.

I spotted a couple of buskers playing their hearts out on guitar and drum 20 feet away on the corner of Temple Bar Square. They had gathered a nice, enthusiastic crowd about them, again young and European. I couldn’t resist and got up to have a look in the guitar case they were using to collect money. Five, maybe six euro. Once again no one was putting their hand into their pocket.

Suddenly an idea struck me and I hurried down the eponymous street at the centre of Temple Bar until I came to the Temple Bar pub (yes, everything is called Temple Bar in Temple Bar). Outside it’s quiet. A couple of young Spanish men stop, take a photo of the exterior, and walk on. Another successful and totally thrifty transaction. I stuck my head inside the door. It was dark, football was on the TV, and I saw a room full of clearly hung-over bald-headed men of indeterminate ages between 18 and 50 – hair is a big help when guessing someone’s age – staring at the telly as they supped on pints of larger and shouted abuse at the soccer players on the screen.

Three of the groups wore t-shirts that identified them as stag parties (bachelor parties) in Dublin for the weekend. All the accents I heard were English. A quick calculation: Probably a tenner each for the breakfast and at least four pints each during the game at a fiver each. That’s 30 euro a man. Before three o’clock. Before their big, expensive night ‘on the piss.’ And right there I saw the dilemma that has given Temple Bar such a bad rep. Try as they might to market themselves as a Dublin’s cool, artistic quarter, with galleries and little markets dotted here and dear, the only people spending real money – even at two in the afternoon - are the boozers and the party animals, and the publicans will do whatever it takes to keep them coming.

Up next: Anto takes a 2am stroll through Dublin’s Temple Bar, the poor fella.

–Anto Howard

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This entry was posted on Sunday, October 7th, 2007 at 12:39 am and is filed under Destinations, Europe, The Art of Travel, Travel Inspiration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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