Michael Moynihan: Changing relationship with alcohol puts Cork back in bottle

'Is this lack of open pubs a good thing? I didn’t see herds of mournful tourists roaming the city in search of drink while on my whistle-stop tour'

There are economic factors behind reduced pub opening hours but what about changes in drinking habits?

Aux armes, citoyens! Incoming threat to the very fabric of our beautiful city, identified by yours truly and now verified after gruelling investigations undertaken at great personal risk!

The background to this drama is as follows: a friend of this column recently attended the Opera House for an uplifting evening of theatre, one so uplifting, he and his companion felt the need for refreshment immediately afterwards.

Out with the two of them and onto Emmet Place, and in they went to.... “This is the thing,” he said to me, still badly rattled.

“We couldn’t get a pint anywhere. Academy Street, Patrick Street, zilch. Nothing open. We walked here and walked there but nothing.

“Everywhere closed, the doors shut against us. In the end we had to beat a retreat back to civilisation north of the river.”

Where?

“Dan Lowreys on MacCurtain Street.”

At first, I found this difficult to believe — that someone could not find a pub open on Cork’s central island on a random Tuesday evening — a Tuesday evening which wasn’t marred by spilling rain and rising floodwaters, at that.

In fairness to my informant, he did admit that their own search wasn’t exhaustive — that there might have been a grimy shebeen or bijou cocktail lounge in one of the smaller side streets which was hosting a riotous evening of merriment, and they just didn’t find it.

But his point was an interesting one. Finding a hostelry open, a serious challenge in the centre of the second-biggest city in the country on a weekday evening? Surely not.

This has not always been the case in Cork. Your columnist can recall — very dimly — a midweek evening in the 80s when a college classmate, fresh from a losing engagement with the Cork U21 footballers, insisted on heading out.

‘Out out’ was the term, and the night concluded in a strange dancing den somewhere behind the old Square Deal on Washington Street.

(Subsequent visits to find the place proved fruitless, suggesting it was a more modern, and certainly more uninhibited, version of Brigadoon, appearing only once every 100 years.)

If you go back even further, to the 19th century, the quality of the nightlife in the middle of the city was even celebrated in poetry:

It’s there good liquor can be had on tick, or

If you’d like it quicker for the ready shot,

With high gentility to breed civility,

In every company of this famed spot,

No disputation upon sect or nation,

In this location will be ever found,

Where you’ll see proud Normans and both Jews and Mormons,

With the Flynns and Gormans drinking on one round.

The educated among you will recognise this immediately as a verse from the Chant Of The Quay Called Coal. If you’re not impressed by the imaginative rhyme of ‘tick, or’ and ‘liquor’, then surely you are struck dumb by the composer’s name (Phineas O’Gander).

This masterpiece first saw the light of day in the then Cork Examiner of Christmas Eve 1870, thus illustrating the long history of companionable revelry in the city, one which now seems in something of a decline.

Nowadays, though?

Nothing would do your intrepid reporter but a selfless investigation; given my own experience of midweek nightlife is now far in the past, I felt a first-hand appraisal of the state of play was the only acceptable approach.

Accordingly, I drove the city streets on a recent Tuesday evening in order to find out how bad the situation was. Travelling in along Georges Quay I found nowhere open for a drink, and the same when rolling over Parliament Bridge and heading left along the South Mall.

When I turned into the Grand Parade and approached Singer’s Corner, SoHo looked to be open, in fairness, but the rest of Patrick Street was bare, as was Academy Street when I glanced to my left as I passed. Sadly, I trundled back home, grateful only that Phineas O’Gander had not lived to see such days.

There are caveats, of course. Even if you are not familiar with every yard of Cork, you’ll appreciate that this is a brief skim of the main drag, not an exhaustive accounting of all licensed premises in Cork.

It’s quite possible there were pubs open in some of the more secluded parts of the city centre, and I excluded the strip along Washington Street before I even left home because it’s an ecosystem all its own, with a captive audience of students which sets it apart from the rest of town.

The substantive point remains, however. It seems to be difficult to find a pub open in the city centre on a random weeknight.

That may change as Christmas gets closer and closer, with shoppers maybe treating themselves to a drink or workplaces organising a festive night out. But still.

Why is this? The obvious answer revolves around the changes in one of the most calcified cliches in Irish life: Our Relationship With The Drink. Drinking habits have changed hugely in recent years, and many people now choose to imbibe at home rather than in bars — a process accelerated, no doubt, by the recent pandemic.

There is also a cultural change when it comes to alcohol and the acceptance of drinking, of course. The idea that someone would head out for a couple of drinks on a Tuesday evening — no pretext, just because they feel like it — is more outlandish now than it would have been decades ago.

Cost-of-living challenges

All of which has a knock-on effect on the pub before we even come to modern challenges such as sourcing staff and the crippling costs of keeping any small business premises open. A woman with a small village shop in Clare recently posted online her energy bill for two months: €20,803. If that’s replicated for pubs in Cork then it’s a wonder that any of them are open.

Other changes have had an impact on pub opening hours as well. On my jaunt around Cork that Tuesday, I noted that Bean and Leaf, the coffee shop on the Grand Parade, was doing a roaring trade.

When I spoke to Steve Grainger for this column a few months back, he made the point that more places like Bean and Leaf would liven up the city at night, in particular for those who prefer a coffee shop environment to that of a drink.

Is this lack of open pubs a good thing? It doesn’t aid tourism, obviously, but by the same token I didn’t see herds of mournful tourists roaming the city in search of drink while on my whistle-stop tour.

If pubs open in response to demand, and close earlier or don’t open on evenings when that demand dips, then that seems reasonable. It also echoes the recent debate on the changes in opening hours, when pubs will have the option to remain open longer but with emphasis on the ‘option’.

Is Our Relationship With The Drink maturing? And, as ever, is Cork leading the way?