Company Town

I'd heard jokes all my life about how much the Irish love to drink, and every St. Patrick's Day at Boston College drove home the attachment of Guinness to national identity. But I never appreciated, prior to my arrival here, the strength of that attachment. The way GE is for Schenectady and GM once was for Flint is how Guiness is for Dublin.

Personally, I've always thought Guinness to be a nice accompaniment to a meal or a nice quickstart to St. Patty's day, but as a drink of choice it is thick, black, expensive and filling (and extremely high in calories). The Irish, though, often drink it the way American college students down Busch Light. They drink it with meals, at pregames, ingames, and postgames, at pubs and night clubs alike. The brand name is plastered on almost every single pub window and sign in the city, on busses and tourist maps and even on a bridge over the River Liffey. I took a bus past the brewery today and found an extremely massive, walled complex; from a distance I thought it was a medieval castle plopped into the middle of the city. The biggest tourist attraction in all of Dublin - bigger than Dublin Castle, Kilmainham Jail (where many of Ireland's leading freedom fighters were imprisoned or executed, not to mention many thousands of petty criminals), the Book of Kells or literally anything else - is the Guinness storehouse, a museum of the old brewery and the highest point of the city, offering the best views. Many of the statues around the city were commissioned by the Guinness family at some point over the past two centuries.

I don't know how big their economic footprint is on Dublin these days. But if they ever closed down, I think Roger and Me would seem like a prequel to the anger and sadness that would fall upon this city.

By the way: I've always been told that you can never appreciate a Guinness until tasting it in Dublin, on draft, served by a bartender who knows how to give the perfect pour for its unique consistency. I can now say from experience: Guinness, when done right and fresh, is delicious.