3.5 Stars to Glory
Look, I don’t know what separates an Irish pub from an English pub. And I don’t understand the werewolf transformation that turns Irish pubs into sports bars at night. But, fuck, those places are the Uber of getting drunk. They’ll get you where you’re going, on budget, and the best ones won’t fuck around with the pleasantries unless you decide to engage. And sometimes there’ll be a homely passenger sitting next to you demanding New Music Friday from an AM/FM radio.
When looking for an Irish pub in New York, I’m scouring Yelp for geofenced budget restrictions as well as a mediocre score. Well, a little above mediocre, but that’s the point of this article. So fuck off with your prying eyes and read the following.
1 Star
Congratulations! after dodging coat hangers and natural selection for twenty-one-ish years, you’ve decided to go to a place that serves chicken tendies medium-rare. A one-star pub can’t be called an establishment because the only thing keeping it open is that the owner has photographic evidence of the health inspector tickling Catholic school boys during recess.
A one-star Irish Pub is like Northern Ireland, a place I haven’t taken the time to research, but I know it’s not a part of Ireland, so I’m inferring it’s somehow either more sober or of lesser quality. In the End of Days where everyone is going for a final pint before the asteroid of bird flu– global warming– homosexual agenda ends our 4.6 billion years of misogyny, everyone is skipping the one-star pub because they want to go out with some dignity and don’t want E. coli in case our sad lot is spared.
2 Stars
Well roll out the fancy fucking carpet because we now have Wi-Fi (for employees, not for guests). They have food on the menu, provided the Duane Reade frozen food section is open. This doesn’t mean this place has a microwave; they just throw a few mozzarella sticks in the dishwater to thaw and bob at the surface like a stubborn shit.
If you’re at a point in your life where a two-star pub is acceptable, then I have a Dixie cup of Jameson to sell you that’s been used only once by a sorority girl who thought she could keep down a satchel of cheese fries at three a.m. If you find yourself at a two-star pub, you’ll probably soon find yourself in the bloodstream of a number of bedbugs that are crawling around in your barstool’s polyester stuffing.
3 Stars
At twenty-eight years old, you realize the kid who ate the tips of your markers in fifth grade can now serve as one of your jurists should you ever chance about the other side of legality. That’s a three-star pub. It’s not a felon! It has something resembling a job but definitely wears sweatpants in public. Probably also a Tapout T-shirt with a noticeable sliver of exposed belly.
A three-star pub often actually has its priorities mostly in order. They have alcohol. And food! However, their signature burger’s steak fries are somehow colder than a February bus stop yet hotter than the rash you got from the person who led you to this pub. Look, they’ll get you drunk, but maybe the pints are cups? Maybe they have a swastika on their bathroom wall? Maybe their business subsists of people kicked out of the Applebee’s across the street?
4 Stars
Oh, monsieur, I deeply apologize that our Artisanal Double Hickory Smokeshit Burger comes with blue chese and not Gruyère. Perhaps you’d like to wash that down with our seasonal Sierra Nevada ale.
A four-star Irish pub is too terrified of losing that half-star yet too shitty to earn the fifth. They’re Ashton Kutcher, who begs to be taken seriously, but secretly you hope he just goes away. If I want a good meal, I’ll go to a good restaurant. If I want a good cocktail, I’ll go to a place where their ice cubes are obscenely large, square, and decidedly translucent.
A four-star Irish pub has a Trip Advisor sticker in its window and spends every waking hour providing moderation for any review that falls below exemplary. Your bottom-shelf vodka soda had too many ice cubes? We’ll have you know that we fired that bartender, set fire to his grandparents’ cottage, and spared the glowing cinders of your extra ice cubes. Please give us five stars.
5 Stars
Are you fucking kidding me? The only five-star Irish anything is obviously related to whiskey or Gaelic football, but something tells me that most of the world cares about only one of those things. A five-star Irish pub is like going to a five-star strip club; you’re inundated with esteem and respect when all you want is to be told you’re a dirty girl with daddy issues and have a crinkled wad of money stuffed where your daddy used to jam your allowance.
Okay, in this allusion, we’ve done role reversal, and you’re now both the bar and the forlorn dancer because you’ve made this happen. No five-star Irish pub existed before the internet and its neediness. Before the WWW, a pub’s primary selling points were that they weren’t churches, they soothed (and ignored) your sins, and had a few fried potatoes and meats to appease your liver (and toughen your stomach). But now your cocktails need styling, your fries need rosemary, your burgers need not-prions, and your ambience needs nondepressive lighting. If your life is so grand that you require these things, why the fuck are you at a pub trying to drown them?
3.5 Stars
Which brings me to the point. You’re 3.5 drinks from sobriety and 3.5 drinks from texting an ex only to realize you’ve accidentally texted a Tinder failure you forgot to delete. This is a safe space where everything makes sense.
The customer is an asshole, you’re a customer, and you don’t need to understand transitive properties to accept that you’re probably not someone who walks ladies across the street. Being a sad shit means you’re not an active priority. Be a bit of an asshole but not memorable. Like Matt Damon in Ocean’s Something Number. You order your drink, and the bartender gets you a drink in a responsible time, provided you’re not too much of a prick and that you’re not too much of a My Chemical Romance track. You’re a depressive, not a downer.
A 3.5-star pub encourages you to be yourself while subtly discouraging you from being a belligerent rapist. In spite of the abundant alcohol and fried food, it’s the antithesis of a frat house. If you’re lucky, there’ll be a limited jukebox with discounted plays for Tom Petty’s Worst Album and Johnny Cash Not Singing at a Prison. You just sit there, unjudged, eating chunks of cholesterol, nodding to dad rock, and drinking away the disdain for every other bar in the city.
And the best part? If you’ve been a good drunk three times, they’ll give you a freebie.