I’m the opposite to a party animal. I like my pubs quiet and serving a perfect pint. But nearly seven years ago I recalled a cracking night in Cork.
Down at the fag-end of Cork city’s docks there’s a nondescript bar. Go in there most times and you’ll find it devoid of customers, atmosphere, anything. Just a wooden floor and some cheap chairs and tables. You drink your pint, read your paper and head off elsewhere. Yet venture in at weekends and you could be in a different time and place. Venture in on the Saturday night of a long (public holiday) weekend and you wouldn’t want to go anywhere else for your kicks. It’s busy getting on for 10 and good music is playing. You go in because you’re thirsty, Charlie’s Bar back down the road was impossibly noisy and packed and anyway this is the last bar out this way.
Idle Hour, Cork
There are several barmen busy behind the small bar so you get served quickly enough once you manage to squeeze in at the counter…
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Back On The Rock 
Has the pub changed much over the years?
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I’ve not been in there in a while Juliann – I didn’t when I went over to Cork last year. But I’d pay good money that nothing much has changed.
In Dunmanway (West Cork) where my Dad was brought up most of the bars are basically unchanged in 50 years, same names and everything.
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Ah that brings back memories of Irish pubs in Glasgow. Some of them still had sawdust on the floor….
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I don’t think I was ever in a pub with sawdust. I guess the Idle Hour may have been one back in the day 🙂
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I think it was for spills of beer but it was also handy for other liquids…😁
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Those will have been the days where pubs were a man’s refuge from the wife and kids. They have changed radically to become more family friendly, but most of the basic places have closed their doors.
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There’s still some out here in Texas. I was on a work trip across the south and visited a very strange little fishing village. My male black colleague would not go in to the desperate looking bar – I thought it couldn’t be worse than a Glasgow pub but it was… Silence, darkness and enough smoke to kill you. We went somewhere else where the servers just had limited teeth and extensive tattoos. Look out for a future blog entitled Millennials and the Baby.
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Brilliant! I was down in Key Largo with the family years ago and risked my neck crossing the highway across from our hotel to try out a bar across there. It was like the Wild West where they slid the Bud down the counter to you.
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LOL!
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