17) The Saddle Room Bar, The Shelbourne Hotel, Stephen’s Green, D2

The Shelbourne Hotel boasts two bars – the brighter bigger Saddle (also called No.27) and the darker more intimate Horseshoe. The place is the go-to for Trinity students clad in black gowns come every graduation day as tradition demands. The seat of the elite and the moneyed, the celebrity stars and globetrotters, the kingmakers and the politicos, the most wealthily obnoxious of clientele. Usually too prohibitively expensive to merit frequent visiting – with two exceptions. In 2009 one came to the dark Horseshoe bar with then costar Andrew Clarke, who educated one on a previously unknown tradition – rapidly necking pints then departing without paying.

More legally, in 2018 one returned with Enrique Wedgwood Young [1] as part of a very staid stag night. The groom-to-be wanted to take a crap, and so one resigned oneself to ordering a costly round for politeness sake. Fortunately, the barman knew me from a previous birthday – and upon hearing of the impending wedding, he put the pints on the house. A small thing, but freebies come so seldom in this money-grabbing metropolis that each must be marked and celebrated. By way of literary pedigree, it is mentioned several times in Ulysses and Dubliners - Elizabeth Bowen has also devoted an entire book to the topic of the hotel, aptly titled The Shelbourne. By way of filmic pedigree, scenes from the (notably lousy) 2011 thriller Haywire were shot here, most memorably a vignette set in a plush suite where Gina Carrano garrotes our very own Michael Fassbender with her thighs. Now available for streaming!

FOOTNOTE

[1] Enrique Tomas Wedgwood Young (1989 – present): schoolfriend and longtime collaborator of Sam Coll's, occasional seller of hammocks and filmmaker, happily married and currently engaged with a PHD in Edinburgh. Highly accomplished and much travelled, he has sampled pubs/bars/clubs in far-flung places such as Spain, England, Scotland, France, Panama, China, Rwanda, Uganda, Mulawi, Singapore, Denmark and the Philippines, among many others.

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