Bar Talk

The Irish pub – that staple of community life and a major tourist draw – is in steep decline but could save itself by the simple expedient of rolling out free Wi-Fi. More than half of 18 to 24-year-olds would go to the pub more often if there was free Wi-Fi, a Molson Coors survey reveals.

No doubt the fine weather this weekend will boost business, but Wi-Fi for free I suspect would entice footfall in general.

I live 48 kilometres or more from Dublin in a little village with two pubs. When I am allowed off the leash and head off for a pint of the black stuff I observe a daft ritual where the few remaining ‘regulars’ would crook their mobile phones against the window pane or hand it to the bar man to put up on a shelf just so they could get just enough cellular signal to retrieve a simple text message.

Daft in this day and age.

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For his day job, Geoffrey Bartholomew gets to ask one of the most famous questions in New York: “Light or dark?”

Bartholomew is a bartender at McSorley’s Old Ale House in the East Village, one of the oldest watering holes in the city — one so set in its 158-year-old ways that it has only two versions of its own ale, always served in paired mugs, for five bucks.

“Light or Dark” is also the title of the second volume of Batholomew’s “McSorley Poems,” a book a decade in the making in which he pays tribute to the bar where he has pulled beers for four decades.

Bartholomew first discovered McSorley’s in the late 1960s, when he was on a visit to New York and planning to attend graduate school.

“The first night I was in New York, I came here with a couple other fellas… and I got drunk here,” he says. “Little did I know, this was gonna be my home.”

Literally.

By 1970, Bartholomew was living in an apartment above the bar and by 1972 he was working there.

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A hammer-wielding businessman has been jailed for smashing up a £45,000 TV in Britain’s ‘best sports pub’ as customers prepared to watch one of the key matches of the football season.

John Richards destroyed the 103-inch flat-screen set during a drunken rampage in which he also hit a customer on the head, damaged a cheaper TV, smashed a window, and made a hole in a wall.

When police arrested him and asked how drunk he had been on a scale of one to 10, the 44-year-old replied: “12.”

(Source: Daily Mail)

A local bar’s good intentions to aid a local nonprofit organization garnered some negative attention when Hootie’s Good Times Café sponsored a fundraiser that some advertised as a pub crawl last Saturday.

Brian Harrison, Hootie’s manager, explained the event his bar sponsored was a scavenger hunt and local restaurant visit “to begin the summer season.” He said he was well aware that pub crawls are illegal and never intended the food event to be considered a crawl.

He said it was a way for people to visit local restaurants they might not ordinarily visit and try some food they might not usually eat.

“It was geared toward the food,” he said, not the alcohol.

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David Hasselhoff wants to buy his girlfriend a pub.

The 59-year-old star — who has battled alcoholism — is smitten with Hayley Roberts and thinks fulfilling one of her dreams would be the perfect gift.

He told Closer magazine: ”Hayley’s always wanted her own bar, so I’m considering buying her a pub called the Hoff & Hounds.”

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