Dublin Dereliction Duty: The Snug

The Liberties, Dublin

I like this one, even though the crouching kid in the window reminds me of that precious Tears for Fears album cover. Cheer up, kid, and go get yo'self some mad bric-a-brac.

Outside the Locksmith's

West Village, NYC

Typespotting: Tea or Coffee?

Baggot Street, Dublin

Poor W.B. Yeats. Seventy-one years after his death and while the rest of the world reveres him as the formidable author of poems of terrible beauty, in Dublin, he's still the guy who was dragged into Toner's, ordered a sherry, and rose stiffly from his chair, announcing, "I have seen a pub. Will you kindly take me home now." Hard to live that stuff down, bud.

Toner's happens to be home to my favorite "James Joyce and Sean O'Casey drinking absinthe" mural, but it's also home to this small typographical gem of a sign on the exterior of the pub, just near the entrance. Perhaps Yeats, not known to be a drinking man, could've saved himself from ridicule by ordering a simple tea or coffee instead of a sherry, which I've only ever imbibed because I was getting drunk on a Sunday morning in the chaplaincy with the Trinity College Chapel Choir. (Proper routine was to drain the bottles quickly, then wait out in the street till O'Neill's opened to wash the churchy taste out of our mouths with a proper pint and a carvery lunch.) It's hard to imagine sherry being anyone's poison of choice, but then "The W.B." had other things on his mind than what he was drinking.

Hard drinking habits aside, I'm always a sucker for a good Irish/Gaelic "T" and a hand-painted steaming cuppa. Goes down wonderfully with a slice of "The Second Coming" or "He Wishes His Beloved Were Dead."