“I hate crusties. For anyone unfamiliar with the term, these are people who wear stripy woollen hats even when it’s boiling. The men have beards; some of the women do, too. The men wear multi-coloured threads around their wrists. The women never wear makeup; instead, they wear droopy home-dyed skirts and cardies made of boiled wool.” – Liz Jones, the Daily Mail, 5th April 2009
It’s a Monday night in Sweeney’s and the weather is hot. A Peruvian blanket-wrapped man with a feather in his cap (and a spliff in his mouth) wanders around by the bar as forty-something skinheads skank to Marlena Shaw. There’s an even higher concentration of muck-soaked backpacks as Life Festival refugees carry on their four-day rollover with pints of Caledonian served by a tattooed, violently-earringed barmaid. Chase the Devil comes on and I’m serenaded by one of the DJ’s disciples from the mezzanine, clad in a St. Pauli jersey and braces.
It’s a Monday night.
Consider the crusty’s lineage as a mesh of New Ageism and traveller culture, and it’s no surprise they attract such ire from the bathed classes. Crusties are the most dangerous threat to bourgeois mores in age where wearing dreadlocks and a failure to keep up with the national rate of consumption can be considered subversive.
Anybody who’s been looking for an after-after-party at 7am, bought a recreational amount of hash or been to Body&Soul, however, will know that this particular tribe contributes a necessary rough texture to the social fabric. This is no more obvious than on Dame Lane, where neo-yuppies, hipsters, Britpop die-hards, quiet pint people and stand-up comedy apostles collide in a smog of second-hand smoke from which Sweeney’s clientele always emerge as the last man standing.
Crusty prejudice means that Sweeney’s Mongrel, in the former short-lived Le Cirk building (from which the bar mirrors remain a fixture), is much maligned. In reality, it’s a solid bar. The main room, vinyl on the walls and cosy seating, stands somewhere between dive bar and shebeen, and its eclectic programming upstairs means you stand a 3/1 chance to not end up listening to dub reggae. Their house brew fittingly tastes like a can that’s been sitting in the sun for too long, but there’s more than enough range (well-priced) to make up for it. Their classic rock-themed cocktail menu (featuring the Major Tom, Dark Side of the Moon and Electric Ladyland) might be asking a bit much for your €9, but, look, you’re not in the Westin. You’re here to have a Madchester lad offer to take his teeth out for you to take a SnapChat of while the lads who busk outside Brown Thomas play Nevermind start to finish. Don’t be a Liz Jones about it.
Sweeney’s Mongrel
32 Dame Street, Dublin 2
t: 01 635 0056
Words: Daniel Gray
