15 ms·

I've got to say, compared to a lot of other prefabricated faux-cultural establishments these pubs seem pretty nice. Handmade wooden stuff, things made in Irelan

I've got to say, compared to a lot of other prefabricated faux-cultural establishments these pubs seem pretty nice. Handmade wooden stuff, things made in Ireland, made by Irish people... doesn't seem half bad. Sure, in an ideal world the bar would have its own completely genuine charm, and would be handmade, and the carvings would be whittled by the owner's son... but this strikes me as a pretty good compromise given the harsh realities of starting a new pub/restaurant.

gech 10y ago
Pretty sad though, the loss of authenticity. And the resignation of a comment like this. Also the part about how customers should accept it because of the considerations capital has in starting it up.
- CPLX 10y ago
  I'm not convinced it's particularly inauthentic. It's an Irish bar made by Irish people in Ireland purporting to be exactly what it is.
  - schwap 10y ago
    I don't think 'authenticity' is that simple. I'm a Canadian, I love hockey and have a pretty good understanding of it. I could make a 'hockey stick' shape out of plywood and paint it up to look good, and you could even in theory use it to smack a puck around, but its still not an authentic hockey stick.
    - CPLX 10y ago
      Of course that's an authentic hockey stick, it's just DIY.
    - sanswork 10y ago
      But that would be an authentic hockey stick. It'd just be a shit one.
- startupdiscuss 10y ago
  But what is authenticity? That is a serious question. What is it? When I was in Dublin the thing that really surprised me was how every bar.. er... pub had these amazing Irish musicians who sort of picked up various instruments and just went at it. I would identify it as "irish folk music" though if they were belting out lesser known Richard Thompson tunes, I would not know. Were they paid? Did they carry their instruments with themselves? Who knows. Now, I consider that authentic. Was it authentic? Do Irish people read this and think "he was stuck in that tourist trap area" or do they think "yup, that's good 'ol homestyle music"? And can we reproduce that here?
  - keithpeter 10y ago
    "But what is authenticity?" Good question. Probably an accumulation of our experience of a 'third place'. I like family run Italian cafes and restaurants. There are a few in Birmingham, I was in a very nice one in Liverpool a couple of weeks ago, and there are lots (still, just about) in London. You could probably define a script that would reproduce a typical interior, and you could probably build a reasonable facsimile of a family run Italian cafe in a shopping centre easily enough. But I would not have been eating there for 30 years...
  - anigbrowl 10y ago
    Authenticity is individuality. It's a trying question though, best considered in depth. Here's my favorite exploration of the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIVgUjj6RxU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIVgUjj6RxU
  - mirimir 10y ago
    I encountered that in Manhattan in the late 80s. It was fashionable among anarchist hippies to support the IRA.
  - subpixel 10y ago
    That's probably a seisiun (pronounced, sometimes spelled session): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_traditional_music_session https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_traditional_music_sessio... There's a bar in Queens that has a killer session Sunday nights (there are dozens at other bars in NYC throughout the week). It drives me insane but during football season, they cancel the session if the Giants or Jets are on TV. Alas, at least 2x as many people show up for football as for music.
- owenversteeg 10y ago
  In most of the world, the foreign community there isn't large enough to create a genuine foreign pub, so if you want a genuine pub it's going to be "native", and that's not as interesting to the natives. There are exceptions: New York City has a very high density of people from different countries. It's possible to walk around Flushing NY (part of Queens) and sit down at a completely genuine Chinese restaurant, where you will be given a menu with either a highly questionable English translation or none at all. Everything you will be surrounded with, from the language to the people to the decor, will be Chinese, and it will be a very authentic experience, and I personally love it. But that can only happen where there's a dense population of Chinese people. It can happen in Flushing, where the population is 71% Asian. But it cannot happen in most of the US, where the local population is mostly homogeneous. That's why bars like this are in demand.
  - anigbrowl 10y ago
    But that's the problem. There's demand for places like this because people want to know and experience more of other cultures, but at the same time we have politicians stoking hostility to actual people from other countries that could establish those communities and bring that cultural diversity, like that Steve King jackass from Iowa saying 'we can't rebuild our civilization with other people's babies.'
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
anigbrowl 10y ago
No, it's all horribly fake. The last time I was in an Irish bar like this I got closer to peer at an interesting photograph and realized that what I had thought was damage to the picture was actually a JPEG compression pattern. IT's like visiting a Panda Express and feeling like you've been to China. As an actual Irish person it's nauseating and I'm ashamed of whatever one of my countrymen decided to make money out of this tacky fakery. We do have a hospitable tradition in Ireland I'm proud of that, and I don't see anything wrong with starting a business on the back of that. It's the fakery that upsets me; it presents culture as something to be consumed rather than experienced, which is especially irritating given Ireland's former colonial status..
- AlgorithmicTime 10y ago
  I don't see how it's fakery. It's a pub in a certain style.
- owenversteeg 10y ago
  Hahahaha that's actually pretty damn funny. But there are some that are more authentic - I know fiddle music fairly well, and one I visited actually cared enough to have real Irish fiddle music, as well as pretty decent authentic woodcarvings, and no tacky fake-1800s fonts or faux-aged photographs. The ones they talk about in this article seem to at least be slightly decent: they at least have stuff handmade in Ireland by Irish people. That takes a certain degree of commitment that's at the very least more authentic than a Panda Express. I think what it boils down to is that people want to go to a "foreign" bar, and Ireland is a nice target. So at the end of the day -somebody- will open one, and you have a choice between this (which is at the least handmade in Ireland) vs some monstrosity decorated with dollar store shamrocks and green accent lighting.
  - stcredzero 10y ago
    you have a choice between this (which is at the least handmade in Ireland) vs some monstrosity decorated with dollar store shamrocks and green accent lighting. In Cincinnati in the 90's, Hap's Old Irish Pub sometimes had such decorations, but stopped short of the green accent lighting. Ironically, it was arguably the most authentic pub, in that it came about organically to serve locals of Irish descent. As a result, most of the customers had little interest in Irish trad music and much more in the game on the TV. I suspect there are a lot of bars of this pattern in the US. I know of one in SF.

gech 10y ago

Pretty sad though, the loss of authenticity. And the resignation of a comment like this. Also the part about how customers should accept it because of the considerations capital has in starting it up.

CPLX 10y ago
I'm not convinced it's particularly inauthentic. It's an Irish bar made by Irish people in Ireland purporting to be exactly what it is.
- schwap 10y ago
  I don't think 'authenticity' is that simple. I'm a Canadian, I love hockey and have a pretty good understanding of it. I could make a 'hockey stick' shape out of plywood and paint it up to look good, and you could even in theory use it to smack a puck around, but its still not an authentic hockey stick.
  - CPLX 10y ago
    Of course that's an authentic hockey stick, it's just DIY.
  - sanswork 10y ago
    But that would be an authentic hockey stick. It'd just be a shit one.
startupdiscuss 10y ago
But what is authenticity? That is a serious question. What is it? When I was in Dublin the thing that really surprised me was how every bar.. er... pub had these amazing Irish musicians who sort of picked up various instruments and just went at it. I would identify it as "irish folk music" though if they were belting out lesser known Richard Thompson tunes, I would not know. Were they paid? Did they carry their instruments with themselves? Who knows. Now, I consider that authentic. Was it authentic? Do Irish people read this and think "he was stuck in that tourist trap area" or do they think "yup, that's good 'ol homestyle music"? And can we reproduce that here?
- keithpeter 10y ago
  "But what is authenticity?" Good question. Probably an accumulation of our experience of a 'third place'. I like family run Italian cafes and restaurants. There are a few in Birmingham, I was in a very nice one in Liverpool a couple of weeks ago, and there are lots (still, just about) in London. You could probably define a script that would reproduce a typical interior, and you could probably build a reasonable facsimile of a family run Italian cafe in a shopping centre easily enough. But I would not have been eating there for 30 years...
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  Authenticity is individuality. It's a trying question though, best considered in depth. Here's my favorite exploration of the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIVgUjj6RxU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIVgUjj6RxU
- mirimir 10y ago
  I encountered that in Manhattan in the late 80s. It was fashionable among anarchist hippies to support the IRA.
- subpixel 10y ago
  That's probably a seisiun (pronounced, sometimes spelled session): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_traditional_music_session https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_traditional_music_sessio... There's a bar in Queens that has a killer session Sunday nights (there are dozens at other bars in NYC throughout the week). It drives me insane but during football season, they cancel the session if the Giants or Jets are on TV. Alas, at least 2x as many people show up for football as for music.
owenversteeg 10y ago
In most of the world, the foreign community there isn't large enough to create a genuine foreign pub, so if you want a genuine pub it's going to be "native", and that's not as interesting to the natives. There are exceptions: New York City has a very high density of people from different countries. It's possible to walk around Flushing NY (part of Queens) and sit down at a completely genuine Chinese restaurant, where you will be given a menu with either a highly questionable English translation or none at all. Everything you will be surrounded with, from the language to the people to the decor, will be Chinese, and it will be a very authentic experience, and I personally love it. But that can only happen where there's a dense population of Chinese people. It can happen in Flushing, where the population is 71% Asian. But it cannot happen in most of the US, where the local population is mostly homogeneous. That's why bars like this are in demand.
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  But that's the problem. There's demand for places like this because people want to know and experience more of other cultures, but at the same time we have politicians stoking hostility to actual people from other countries that could establish those communities and bring that cultural diversity, like that Steve King jackass from Iowa saying 'we can't rebuild our civilization with other people's babies.'
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

anigbrowl 10y ago

No, it's all horribly fake. The last time I was in an Irish bar like this I got closer to peer at an interesting photograph and realized that what I had thought was damage to the picture was actually a JPEG compression pattern. IT's like visiting a Panda Express and feeling like you've been to China. As an actual Irish person it's nauseating and I'm ashamed of whatever one of my countrymen decided to make money out of this tacky fakery. We do have a hospitable tradition in Ireland I'm proud of that, and I don't see anything wrong with starting a business on the back of that. It's the fakery that upsets me; it presents culture as something to be consumed rather than experienced, which is especially irritating given Ireland's former colonial status..

AlgorithmicTime 10y ago
I don't see how it's fakery. It's a pub in a certain style.
owenversteeg 10y ago
Hahahaha that's actually pretty damn funny. But there are some that are more authentic - I know fiddle music fairly well, and one I visited actually cared enough to have real Irish fiddle music, as well as pretty decent authentic woodcarvings, and no tacky fake-1800s fonts or faux-aged photographs. The ones they talk about in this article seem to at least be slightly decent: they at least have stuff handmade in Ireland by Irish people. That takes a certain degree of commitment that's at the very least more authentic than a Panda Express. I think what it boils down to is that people want to go to a "foreign" bar, and Ireland is a nice target. So at the end of the day -somebody- will open one, and you have a choice between this (which is at the least handmade in Ireland) vs some monstrosity decorated with dollar store shamrocks and green accent lighting.
- stcredzero 10y ago
  you have a choice between this (which is at the least handmade in Ireland) vs some monstrosity decorated with dollar store shamrocks and green accent lighting. In Cincinnati in the 90's, Hap's Old Irish Pub sometimes had such decorations, but stopped short of the green accent lighting. Ironically, it was arguably the most authentic pub, in that it came about organically to serve locals of Irish descent. As a result, most of the customers had little interest in Irish trad music and much more in the game on the TV. I suspect there are a lot of bars of this pattern in the US. I know of one in SF.