Irish bars

This week's inductee into the "Overrated Hall of Fame" is ... Irish bars.

I was recently in Chicago's Midway Airport one afternoon looking for a place to get a beer while I waited for my plane. I always drink in airports, because if I don't drink, I won't be able to diffuse the anger I feel at having to look at a few thousand sets of malformed feet in flipflops, and if I don't diffuse my anger, then I will kill someone, probably someone sitting next to me with long, gnarly, unkempt toes sticking out of flipflops, which are distracting me from reading another set of scintillating, in depth, 200-word USA Today articles, because, let's face it, the only time anyone reads the USA Today is when you're out of town. So I head to a bar instead of sitting in the bare-toe infested gate areas. (Note to humanity: Flip flops are for home and the beach. Period. End of list. Your toes disgust me. This goes for all men and about 60 percent of women. Sandals? Okay. Flip flops? You are vile.)

In fact, finding a bar is the very first thing I do once I'm past security. I don't care where my gate is, I don't care where the bathroom is, I don't care where the overpriced, underflavored food is, and I certainly don't care where the gift shop is, because I'm not a fan of that praline-caramel concoction that seems to be the local candy specialty in every goddamn city in America. I just want to throw back a few drinks while I wait for my flight and to avoid the disgusting sight of people's toes in flip flops.

However, the first bar I saw was an Irish bar. In an airport. An Irish bar. In ... an ... airport. And of course, it was packed, as Irish bars always are, because most Americans are suckers for any faux-authentic Euro-experience. How else can you explain the proliferation of restaurants with the word Bistro in their names, Oktoberfest weekends at bars and Epcot?

Thirsty and angry as I was (it's those damn toes, you know, thousands of them, short and stumpy, bent, hairy, curling over the edge of the flipflops ... have you people no shame?), I bypassed the "Thirsty Belfaster" or the "Drinking Dubliner," or whatever it was so cleverly called, and walked a few extra yards to the next bar down the terminal. I'm sure that it, too, had a clever name (the "Half-Crocked Pit?"), but I don't recall what it was. I ordered the tallest of the tall beers and watched some golf ... or tennis ... or whatever boring-assed sport was playing at on ESPN at 2 p.m. on a Thursday. But at least I was not in the Irish bar.

What is the fascination with Irish bars in this country? They all have that dark wooden decor, with posts and heavy beams scattered throughout. And green shades over the lights. I guess this is supposed to convey warmth and quaintness, but for me it has the opposite effect. The dark wood conveys a decades-long sense of hard-drinking despair and hopelessness, staples of the Irish drunk. I guess this doesn't have the same effect on the middle class Americans - white, all of them - downing drinks - oh, sorry, I mean "pints"- at an airport in Chicago or in the trendy section of any big American city, where the bars are called The Dubliner or something that starts with O' or Mc'. ("Oh look, honey! Let's go into Seamus O'Shea's and down a few pints and pretend to brood about the past. Remember how much fun we had doing that at Paddy McMulligan's in Orlando on that Disney trip?")

The few times I have had the misfortune of being in an Irish bar, I go out of my way to distress the bartender by ordering the nastiest, blandest, most boring non-Irish beer they carry. "What? No Keystone Light? Then gimme a Coors Light, Conor, and keep 'em comin', my good man." I'd even suffer through a few Natty Bo's if they carried those, just to watch the Thinks-He's-Really-In-A-Genuine-Irish-Pub bartender give me that superior look of bartender disdain. But I will never, ever order a Guinness draft. On the Pretentiousness Scale of 1 to 10, with a 10 being referring to the Atlantic as "the pond" and calling people "Love," ordering a glass - I mean pint- of that tarry black swill is a 17. First of all, I don't want to wait 20 minutes for a damn beer to be poured. Pouring a beer should be a five-second exercise in mindlessness (tilt glass, hit tap, wait, stop, serve, done), not a process requiring the deft touch of a diamond cutter. The stuff tastes like, well, like it looks, tarry and gelatinous. If I want black and thick, I'll order either strong coffee or suck on Shaq's dick. If I want beer, I want something gold, because I am, for better or worse, an American, and our beer is gold and cold and bland. And, I might add, fucking delicious. Watch a man take his first gulp of a golden American draft light beer in a bar. His face exudes a look of pleasure matched only by the face he makes when jerking off to Angelina Jolie. But watch a man take that first big swig of Guinness, and you see the poor sap's face take on a wince he hasn't made since he was nine and his mom made him suck down two teaspoonfuls of that old Vick's Formula 44 black cough syrup. But he's in the Irish bar, so he feels compelled to drink the clichéd drink and to pretend he likes it.

Once he gets rid of the contemptible taste in his mouth, he can usually manage a genuine smile, because he is so very pleased with himself to be where he is. When a person is in an Irish bar, it's not really about the drinking. It's all about being in an Irish bar. Eavesdrop on the cell phone conversations next time you're drinking in an Irish bar. The person will never say, "I'm having a beer at [insert name of O'Bar or McPub here]." It's always, "I'm having a pint of Guinness in an Irish bar!" I'm not sure why this counts as a source of pride, but it always seems to make the caller's chest swell in size and his voice swell in volume.

If anything, I'm always embarrassed to be caught in an Irish bar. The Irish are the last people I want to emulate while drinking, the last stereotype I'm interested in playacting. Why in the hell would I want to try to experience the life of defeated Irish losers who use decades old grievances as an excuse to be pint-guzzling Irish alkies? Hell, if countless years of abject misery translate into a quaint bar experience, I might just open a string of Comanche Cafes or Apache Taverns? It's the same principle. Instead of Guinness, they can offer half-priced Manhattans, decorate the walls with smallpox blankets and have the jukebox play old war chants instead of those sad Irish laments..

Which brings me to the Irish music you hear in these bars, er, I mean pubs. Why in the hell would I want to listen to that maudlin dreck while I'm drinking? If I'm sitting in a bar by myself, I'm probably already depressed, and I sure as shit don't need my depression deepened by the sounds of some doleful Irish melody that dredges up a horrific past filled with Anglo abuse and blighted potatoes. Those tunes make Merle Haggard songs sound uplifting. The music itself is depressing enough, but when you add in the lyrics, it can make one downright suicidal.

"Ohhhh, do you remember the finer days,
When times were good, And the nectar flowed,
And we lived in peace, And full moon glowed?
Me neither."

Repeat a variation of this verse for next five minutes, and you have your standard Irish bar song.

By the time the second song is over, I'm too depressed to drink or eat. Not that I'd ever eat in an Irish bar. The words "Irish" and "food" are about as oxymoronic as "English" and "tartar control." People left Ireland by the thousands years ago mainly because they couldn't get a decent meal.

Check the Ellis Island archives. On over 90 percent of the Irish immigrant registration papers, the most commonly checked item under "Reason for Emigrating" was: F. Can't Get a Decent Goddamn Potato in That Shithole Country Anymore." Where I live, the annual Folklife Festival is going on right now. (Talk about overrated, not to mention overheated, overcrowded and overboring.) One of today's features in the Northern Ireland tent is called "Tastes of Ulster," where an Irish chef will prepare the following: fish chowder with cockles and mussels, beef with creamed celeriac and mushroom dressing, and - mmm, mmm ... save me some seconds! - oaty biscuits. I bet that would all go down great with a tall Guinness, which might at least kill the taste of the oaty biscuits.

Most American drinkers can go on their merry pretentious ways and do their drinking in the pretentious Irish bars. I'm sorry, I mean pubs. Me, I'll continue to do my drinking at your standard issue non-ethnic bars, where the Bud Light flows cheap and cold and fizzy. I'm scheduled to fly out of Midway again next month. I'm sure I'll be having a few beers before my flight. I'll have the option of drinking at "Lush of the Irish" or "The Vodka Tarmac." Look for me in the latter. I'll be the only one not wearing flipflops.

Ned Bitters is, in fact, overrated. You can contact him at teacherslounge@hobotrashcan.com.