Viator Viator Travel Blog

Editor’s Note: This is the 2nd post from writer and playwright Anto Howard. He’s writing about his hometown of Dublin — about the good, the bad and even the ugly. Last time round Anto explored Dublin on a Saturday at 2pm; this time he’s exploring the very same Dublin streets on Saturday at 2am.

Temple Bar, Part 2: Saturday at 2am (well, let’s call it 1am)

Ubi sunt nunc gloria Babylonia? Where now the glories of Babylon?

Beer Street, Gin Lane: Where now, Babylon?

My best days are clearly behind me. I had it all planned, I’d have a few pints in ‘The Swan’ - a classy old Dublin pub with a weird mixture of inner city regulars and med students from the nearby college – then I’d go home, watch a late night movie, stay up until 2am before heading out on my tour of the dreaded Temple Bar in the full glory of its early morning revelry.

That’s been the plan for three weeks now, but on last two weekends I flaked and found myself in bed by 11pm. Secretly, I think, I was a little afraid (after all, no sane Dubliner over the age of 18 goes near Temple Bar after 9 o’clock).

But this week I was determined, and my blog deadline was looming. To stiffen my resolve I got the slightly younger and considerably more intrepid Katie to accompany me, and together we managed to stay up until 1 am this past Saturday and venture into the little Hades on the Liffey. Even at that relatively early hour we were privileged to observe enough liquid wantonness and debauchery to fill a wall of Hogarth engravings. In fact I think his Beer Street, Gin Lane series would stand as the perfect representation of a typical night on the tiles in Dublin’s primary tourist attraction, Temple Bar.

To understand Temple Bar at night you need to go straight to its spiritual core, the little, beating, slightly clogged heart that captures the essence of the much-hyped area. No, I don’t mean the post modern, generally empty Temple Bar Gallery; nor even the genteel, scandalously overpriced Organic Food Market in Meeting House Square; to be at one with the zeitgeist of Temple bar you need so stand across the road from Abrakebabra on the eponymous central drag and simply observe.

If Temple Bar had a soul – it doesn’t – it would be found rotating like a lump of Donar meat on a slick spit under the murmuring halogen lights of Abrakebabra. Even writing the name has a power, just say it to yourself a few times and try not fall under its spell. Then imagine the power the cheap and greasy kebab franchise has over the battered and drowned mind of the drunken reveller. It calls to him as he downs his last pint and stumbles onto the cold streets. It is a place to delay the inevitable – yes, you have to go home – and to abuse your insides one last time.

If Temple Bar had a soul: Abrakebabra at 1am

I do not judge the dripping mob who swarm around the place as I stand aloof but understanding across the other side of the street. ‘Eram quod es,’ (more dead tongue, you say, but better that than a shady shish) ‘what you are, I was.’ I know the power of the place in the wee, desperate hours when the taxis and the ladies have all betrayed you. Despite the best efforts of armies of copywriters and graphic designers hired year after year by the tourist authorities to promote Temple Bar as a cultural centre, the one magical word Abrakebabra will tell you most of what you need to know about the area: It’s fake, a bit greasy, and probably not good for you in the long run.

Ibiza in the rain. Bourbon Street without the breasts.

As we walk down the crowded street strewn with empty glasses and bottles and watch the mainly young crowd spill in and out of the countless bars, it strikes me that the partying in Temple Bar feels a little frantic and forced. Less than 15 years ago the place was one of the quietest and truly coolest areas in Dublin, with a couple of hidden late-night joints and a few quirky shops the only disturbance on its narrow cobbled streets.

Now it must have more pubs per square foot than most places on this alcohol loving planet. But it has no tradition of wildness, no history of gin palaces or sheebeens (unlicensed public houses). No, everything feels new and yet already grubby, beneath the garish paint jobs and fake ‘Oirish’ ornamentation the plasterboard and veneer is already showing through.

Oliver St John Gogarty, packed like sardines

The nearby Thunder Road Café reminds me of the awful, overpriced, sanitized eateries that dominate the cleaned up Time Square. I drag Katie into the Oliver St. John Gogarty, a once above-average Dublin pub that has mutated and morphed into a complicated mechanism for turning cheese into gold. The bright green facade now dominates a whole block of Temple Bar. Cead Mile Failte (A Hundred-Thousand Welcomes) boasts their sign. Yet looking at the size of the crowd they’ve packed into the three-storey bar, I’d say the number applies more to the quantity of pints sold on an average night.

Inside it’s heaving, bodies pressed up against each other and pints lifted above heads to make room. ‘You couldn’t turn a sweet in your mouth’ to borrow a country phrase, but everyone seemed to somehow get their hands in their pockets and the tills where hopping. Fake Irish trinkets adorned every inch of the walls, a nasty rash of paper shamrocks spread to fill every nook and cranny, and oversized portraits of writers and poets who wouldn’t have been caught dead in the place – unless someone else was paying in the case of Joyce and Kavanagh perhaps – incongruously shared space with large TVs showing sport. On the tiny stage a male singer belted out some rebel song, but no one is paying attention.

I climb up a few steps and look out over the crowd. Mostly a mixture of tourists (primarily English) and Irish people up from the country. For a moment I want to shout out, ‘what the hell are you doing here!’ Don’t misunderstand me, I know the pleasure in getting drunk, I even understand the occasional joy of an overcrowded, loud, slightly tacky place late at night. But you’re in Dublin, the one thing we do well is a good pub, a good party, a good crowd, a good pint, some good traditional music… but you won’t find any of these in Temple Bar.

–Anto Howard

Next week Anto searches for authenticity in Dublin to help him forget about the horrors of Temple Bar. In the meantime, if you are planning a trip to Ireland, see all the other things to do in Dublin that don’t include hanging out at Abrakebabra at 2am in Temple Bar.