taint.org: Justin Mason’s Weblog

Dublin: Lean forwards on this story from today’s Irish Times. Sadly, it’s behind their subscription firewall, so I’ll just snip out a few choice quotes from Philip Shaffry, the current owner:

‘(The Stag’s Head) has been part of my life for three decades and I’ve been running it for 10 years,’ he says. ‘I’ve two small children and I’m living 10 miles out of town, so I’m hoping to find a pub a bit out of the city centre. But of course I’ll miss this place. I have got really attached to the clientele and the crowd that comes in.’

Looking around at the Victorian bar, opulently decorated with mahogany panelling and a red Connemara marble bar counter, Shaffry is confident there will be no changes to the building.

‘They won’t be able to touch it. This is the crème de la crème, the jewel in the crown, of Dublin pubs. It has been here since 1760, although it was completely refurbished in 1895. This is a grade-one listed building.’

But the bad news?

There are no State laws regulating some aspects of the pub, namely his family’s refusal to allow music - live or otherwise - or television in the bar. Any new owner could change this tradition, says Shaffry, which is a source of concern for some regulars. (….)

A spokesman for CBRE Gunne, which will auction the pub this afternoon, says there had been ‘enormous interest’ in the premises from Irish and international buyers.

Eeek! The guide price is 5 million Euros, if you fancy a shot.

Thanks for Philip for his excellent stewardship — here’s hoping any new buyer will keep his approach. That approach made the Stag’s what it is today — the best pub in Dublin. (In my opinion, at least ;)

Tags: approach, bar, building, crme, dublin, irish, owner, pub, stag, story, today

Dublin: This is it — it could be the end of an era. CB Richard Ellis auctioneers have a page up noting a new property to be auctioned on Wednesday 11th May 2005 — The Stag’s Head, 1 Dame Court, Dublin 2:

The Stag’s Head is one of Dublin’s most famous and finest landmark licensed premises, with many outstanding Victorian features.

The bar is lavishly appointed with many fine Victorian features from the beautiful mahogany panelling through to the red Connemara marble counter and the ornate stained glass windows.

Accommodation briefly comprises ground floor traditional style bar with feature mahogany and marble topped bar counter and terrazzo flooring with a snug area to the rear with ornate stained glass skylight. On the first floor there is a further lounge bar area with feature bay window. On the second floor there is a large catering kitchen, dry goods store and office. In the basement there is a further lounge bar area, cold room and toilets.

Many nights were spent in the Stag’s Head partaking of their excellent Guinness. It used to be my local, at one stage, and I still drop back in for a night when I get the chance. Save the Stag’s!

As my mate Ben put it –

The new owners will doubtless get rid of the (moth-eaten, stuffed) fox, put in recorded music and big-screen televisions, hire bouncers, open on Sundays, extinguish the distinctive odour of damp, replace the marble with formica, and dig up the Dame St mosaic and trade it to the Russian Mafia for heroin and trafficked women. Evil bastards.

Tags: area, bar, counter, dublin, floor, glass, head, lounge, mahogany, marble, stag

Funny: So, I guess this is the Korean equivalent of Dublin’s Mao restaurant? Hitler Bar. (thx Eoin)

Tags: bar, equivalent, funny, hitler, mao, restaurant, thx

Hmm. I don’t remember spotting a tiki bar in GTA3:VC… must go searching when that VGA adapter turns up. ;)

I’ve been repeatedly struck, while in California, what an incredible job the GTA3:VC designers did with the graphics and level design. It evokes so many visual aspects of US cities, perfectly, and this is pretty impressive when you consider they’re a Scottish games house. This interview details how they did it:

GS: Did you do any on-location studies of any areas to help with the design of Vice City? If so, where did you go, and how helpful was it?

AG: After the near-death experience that was the development of Grand Theft Auto III, the entire team flew out to Miami to recover and soak in the atmosphere of the area. While the rest of the team sunbathed or propped up the News Bar, the ever-industrious art team headed out onto the baking hot Miami streets armed with digital cameras. We split up and covered every area we were interested in using for Vice City. The animation team armed with digital camcorders spent time examining exactly how women in bikinis and roller skates moved, and the city modelers braved both the seediest, scariest parts of Miami and got kicked out of all the best places. By the time we returned to sunny Scotland, we’d amassed countless hours of video and close to 10,000 digital photos. When scouting locations, we tried to get a cross-section of shots — a good few were wide angle to remind us how the place fit together, and the rest were details to aid in modeling and texture usage. The guys in the New York office also sorted out some professional location scouts from the film industry for us who provided us with some really excellent locations for any areas we hadn’t managed to get enough detail on. I can’t imagine capturing the feel of a city without all this resource material, never mind actually spending time in the place. Sending the entire team rather than a few leads allows everyone to understand what it is they are trying to make. We couldn’t have done it any other way.

Tags: area, bar, city, design, gta, hmm, place, rest, team, time

BlogStart:

Booze: BBC: Threats close Kabul’s Irish bar:

Terrorism alerts have prompted the owners of Kabul’s only bar to close down temporarily. The Irish Club has been a roaring success with correspondents reporting hundreds of drinkers inside at a time since it opened on Ireland’s national holiday, St Patrick’s Day.

But the popularity of the bar, which is open only to foreigners in the predominately Muslim state, appears to have attracted the interest of terrorists, United Nations staff in the city said. ….

Owners of the bar hope it will reopen next week, but its clientele is set to shrink after the UN banned its staff from going there for security reasons and other foreign aid organisations and diplomatic missions have issued warnings to their personnel. ‘It’s been placed off limits indefinitely after warnings that it could be the target of a terror attack,’ said UN spokesman David Singh.

Still, the owners say they’ll do some renovation work while it’s closed. Looking forward to the Beeb story about ‘Kabul’s Irish bar now boasts extensive beer garden and function room’ next month…

Spam: In other news, it seems AOL, Yahoo! and Hotmail are banding together to ‘reduce spam’. This could be interesting.

Tags: bar, bbc, blogstart, booze, club, irish, spam, staff, terrorism, threats