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Closing Time
The Irish country pub is thriving everywhere except Ireland.
by Martin Morse Wooster
11/7/2009 12:01:00 AM, Volume 015, Issue 09
A Pint of Plain
Tradition, Change, and the Fate of the Irish Pub
by Bill Barich
Walker, 242 pp., $25
There are lots of reasons people go to pubs: to get blotto, watch sports on TV, find someone to date. But the best reason to be in a pub is that you're with your friends.
Those of us who enjoy a good pint know that moderate drinking--say, three pints in an evening--makes you happier and eager to start up discussions with someone who would be a stranger if he wasn't sitting on the next barstool. I've had all sorts of conversations, with everyone from archaeologists to film historians, that I never would have had if I didn't like beer.
The Irish have long understood that conversation is the best reason to go to the pub. They even have a term for it: craic (pronounced "crack"). When you're spending the evening sitting next to a crackling fire having a really good discussion, with hand-pulled pints of Guinness fueling the argument, then the Irish would say that you're having "good craic." Throw in a band playing traditional Irish melodies, and you've had a really fine evening. Craic, however, is something that is easy to want and hard to find. Bill
Barich, an experienced American author of books on horseracing and California who now lives in Dublin, has spent an entire book trying to discover the perfect Irish pub. This excellent, elegiac book shows that far too many Irish pubs aren't what they once were. The city pubs have ...
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