#pub-culture

#pub-culture

The art world has a real issue with making things overly conceptual, too complicated and using wanky jargon, says Trackie McLeod. It alienates people. So, for his latest show, Utopia, the 32-year-old Glaswegian has decided to create something more welcoming and familiar: a pub. Custom-built from scratch, the exhibition is a fully functioning boozer. McLeod will pull pints for punters, there's a dartboard where you can take aim at images of Thatcher or Trump,

Several photographers, entrepreneurs, sportspeople and musicians lived in the area Eric Clapton's house was just around the corner. Although I never quite got over answering the phone to someone asking for Mick and I made the mistake of asking Mick who? The champagne lock-ins were legendary but not limited to the rich and famous. Plumbers and painters and the local bobby shared the bar with industrialists and faces.

My generation's social lives revolved around drinking too much, but I'm glad it's not like that any more When I was growing up in the early 1990s, I counted down the days to turning 18 so that I could drink in the local hotspot - The Meeting Place.

To anybody who frequents pubs and dislikes feeling as if they are waiting at a bank, Loebenberg's exasperation is all too familiar. Pubs, bars, taprooms and watering holes of all descriptions are a cornerstone of British culture, where, for as long people have been able to buy ale, an unspoken system has been in place: come to the bar and a bartender will serve you at their leisure. This system, however, has seemingly been upended by a new way of ordering drinks.

The mixture of old world and new inside a pub that also features a dark, polished wood bar, feels just right for Corrib Theatre's variety show An Scéal (The Story), which combines traditional storytelling and music with modern movement to celebrate the Celtic feast day Imbolc and the return of the sun as well as the Irish National holiday St. Bridgid's Day, both of which are on February 1.

We gravitated towards the Blue Ball as teenagers, not because they served underage drinkers. They didn't. And we could only afford to drink lime and soda anyway. No, we loved this place because it had (drumroll) two bars. So we were not only cool enough to go down the pub (never to the pub, strictly down the pub or, better still, down the Blue), but we even had our own bar.

Terry Jones was a Python, a historian, a bestselling children's author and a very naughty boy. He loved to play women in drag, started a magazine about countryside ecology (Vole), founded his own real-ale brewery and was even once a columnist for this newspaper, beginning one piece in 2011 like this: In the 14th century there were two pandemics. One was the Black Death, the other was the commercialisation of warfare.

After Guinness, and people, Ireland's greatest export is surely the Irish pub, which can be found in just about every corner of the world from Alaska to New Zealand. But nothing beats settling in for a pint in one of the best pubs in Dublin - the OG city for pub culture and the home of the most famous stout on the planet.

The Dying Cow near Tinahely, Co Wicklow, stands as a testament to the creative and sometimes eccentric naming traditions prevalent in Ireland's pub culture.