(Gnuse) Listening In--Temple Bar and The Boar's Head

                If you’re spending a weekend in Dublin, it’d be a disaster not to visit the Temple Bar area—the lively, sometimes seedy, drinking epicentre for tourists celebrating their travels in the town. Situated between the Liffey and Dame street, the historical docking area for ships sailing the Liffey has become a carnival of pubs, music shops, cafes, pubs, and many more pubs. The evening crowds in the Temple Bar can be some of the most entertaining and eclectic to watch and listen to as tourists from around the world of all different races, languages, and styles of pants prowl up and down the narrow, cobblestone streets shouting and laughing in a kind of drunken, pan global menagerie.

                “Où elle est?”

                “I’ve never heard such scumbags—”

                “Che cazzo stai dicendo?”

                “She’d had it in her mouth!”

                But if the prices of the Temple Bar are too steep for your wallet (and, given enough time in Dublin, they will be for anyone) a walk just several blocks north of the Liffey can offer you some tamer, quieter, and significantly cheaper pubs for food and drinks. Go to small pubs like The Boar’s Head for an affordable way to kick back, enjoy perhaps one too many drinks, and comfortably gab with old or new friends at the bar.

                On your way back from The Boar’s Head, heading towards Temple Bar, you may notice that the neighborhood doesn’t seem as friendly as it did earlier in the evening. With a quick stop at one of the many crowded pubs on the south side of the Liffey playing Irish music well into the night, you notice that two men who had been at the Boar’s Head are here now, too. They must have left immediately after you did. They look like locals. You order a drink at the bar. €6 for a pint—Temple Bar prices, you were warned about these. What was it you were saying at The Boar’s Head? It was a pretty long walk from there, probably too long for these guys to have happened here by coincidence.

                “We’re going to switch things up,” the musicians say, grinning into their microphones. No more “Star of the County Down” and “Foggy Dew” mash-ups. For the rest of the evening they’ll play American classic rock.

You notice neither men are ordering drinks. They don’t look happy to be here. They didn’t look happy at The Boar’s Head either. They ignore you when you try to catch their gaze.  In a break between songs, you hear one of the men say to the other over the din of the pub, “We’ll wait…outside…”

What were you saying earlier at The Boar’s Head? Are you going to stay at the bar? You watch your beer. Are you going to finish your drink? You look out into the dark alleyway. You can’t see anyone. Will you run if you have to? They were listening to you--what were you saying?