Before the tech colonialists annexed the Silicon Docks, Irishtown played a vital role in the geopolitics of Dublin 4. Consider the Dodder as Dublin’s own Rhineland; Irishtown acted as a buffer zone between the prole population of Ringsend and the bougie stronghold of Sandymount-Donnybrook. Boyzone, as mixedclass a boyband as the world has ever known, cemented this cordon sanitaire’s diversity credentials by shooting a promo video down one of its streets. Then some genius filled the gasworks full of biscuit-cutter apartments and queues of famished office workers rose up from the earth around Junior’s to queue daily for Dublin’s Best Sandwich.
It’s an area with apportionment built in. Lansdowne Road divides rugby and football hordes into their appropriate zones, demarcates the local and the visitor into home and away. Way back in the pre- #feminist drinking days of the 1970s, two pubs at polar ends of Irishtown, Nolan’s and Clarke’s, exercised a different sort of apartheid. These bars were strictly boy zones. Should cheeky motts decide they’d like a half-pint of their own, they would be kept partitioned, mechitzah style, into the snug.
These bars are now named Slattery’s and Sober Lane, and (thanks to the tireless work of Caitlin Moran) girls are now accepted as legitimate drinkers. Not that you can observe the gender boundary’s dissolution in Slattery’s tonight, the Saturday of our 7-0 slaughtering of Gibraltar (a landmass that knows a thing or two about geopolitics itself). Slattery’s reputation is as a rugby pub, though, since its recent voracious expansion, it will be grateful of the mass of Umbro jerseys spread across its expansive digs on nights like these.
Slattery’s front bar remains a fine boozer, match day or no. Its conservative simplicity is offset by the addendum of its new venue at the back, lit up with tricolour spotlights and pumping out Julio Bashmore and Jacques Greene tracks over the Germany vs. Poland match. Its capaciousness still stretched by the influx of thirsty football dads, we take seats in a corner up on its mezzanine. We try, unsuccessfully, to scrounge free drinks out of a friend who’s manning her own cocktail corner. The balcony is hung with street art prints which aren’t quite to my taste, but thankfully the celebratory free pizza that is dished out to us hits the spot. The pints are good, though everything tastes like a Robbie Keane hat trick at this point.
A jaunt up Bath Avenue, interrupted by the appearance of some pretty adorable otters barking up out of the Dodder at London Bridge, takes us to Sober Lane. Irishtown’s rapid technocratic gentrification means that this addition to the area isn’t even the newest joint in town (this honour goes to gastropub The Old Spot, built on the ancient burial ground that is The Lansdowne). Nonetheless, Luke’s nostrils flare up on entrance as he sniffs in ‘the bang of New Pub off this place’. His olfactory senses are spot on. Shabby chic, conversely, spells new owners, and this place is dripping with it. White Lady statues are legion. The walls are hung with artworks that collage genteel landscapes with lolcats in army helmets. There’s a Bosco doll behind the bar.
A franchise of the Cork bar with the same name, Sober Lane hammers at the big red button marked ‘nostalgia’. Their menu offers ice cream sandwiches, fish finger butties and Coco Pops brunches. Biographies of its founders can be found on its website, sharing tidbits such as,’Colin moved to South America to finally answer the age old question put to him: “Are you a hipster or a hobbo?” [sic].’ It’s sort of like a student union, only the clientele are in their early 30s and most appear to be on bound for the city centre after the next one.
The heavy-handed kookiness, thankfully, does not over clutter the high-ceiling shell of the former Clarke’s. If you’re of quiet pint stock, there are plenty of nooks to cranny into (though perhaps you should avoid Rock Paper Scissors Wednesdays and Sick Music For Sick People Thursdays). The pints selection errs more towards premium than craft. There are actually women here too – it’s always nice to be reminded that they exist.
Words: Daniel Gray
Slattery’s
62 Grand Canal Street Upper, Dublin 4
(01) 6685481
Sober Lane
82 Irishtown Road, Dublin 4
soberlane.com
Snapchat: SoberLaneD4
