Given its proximity to the Phoenix Park it gets a fair amount of footfall from walkers and wanderers. There’s a collection of photos depicting iconic Dublin landmarks mounted on the walls that surround the wooden U-shaped bar, and there’s a great light owing to the large front windows. Patrons are mostly impure, a few of which are living to die by drink. It’s currently the closest pub [1] on Parkgate Street to the Anna Livia monument: the representation of both the river Liffey and Anna Livia Plurabelle from Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, sculpted by Eamonn O’Doherty. Lovingly known as ‘the Floozie in the Jacuzzi,’ she formerly sat in O’Connell Street, now she stretches at the centre of a pond in the Croppies Memorial Park within viewing distance of P. Duggan’s, the busy little Parkgate pub.

1: The Floozie in the Jacuzzi, O’Connell Street. 2: Anna Livia floats up the Liffey towards her new home. 3: Anna Livia in the Croppy Acre memorial park

FOOTNOTE

[1] The Millennium Bar stands firmly closed directly opposite, and has been shut for many years. The interior of this pub has been forever preserved and one may witness it whilst listening to shitty Irish tourist Titanic movie music here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyN02YprdBU This Millennium Bar also has the distinction of being one of the few pubs in Dublin that Sam Coll ever had the privilege of receiving a free pint in, in 2010 on a long trek to Chapelizod in the company of TCD Scholar Tim Smyth, who later wrote hardboiled Mexican-based literary thrillers under the name of Tim MacGabhann, the fruits of his time spent there as an investigative journalist exposing the cocaine trade. (Some choice pearls from Tim MacGabhann nee Smyth, circa 2010 period: ‘Every reading is a misreading… I’m on the side of life… It’s gonna rain brother and it’s gonna rain hard, when fate comes calling with his calling card… I can keep going for hours… I love wanking… I have a lovely knob…’)

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