Tales from Dublin pubs: Clarke's City Arms of Prussia Street
This pub lies on the grounds of 55 Prussia Street, which was once the City Arms Hotel immortalised by James Joyce’s Ulysses. One can still see the ruins of a small traditional pub. We visited one sweltering summer’s day (admittedly with drink already taken) and found a pleasant exterior with a medieval door and lots of squared windows. On first entering it seemed silent and serene. Light was blissful and motes of dust spun basking in its beams. One can imagine how we were lulled and unprepared for what was soon to come.
We installed ourselves at the wooden, pillared bar and ordered a pair of pints. The stout arrived promptly, and after just his first sip Stephens noticed with horror that at the same said bar, sat a real-life zombie. He was extremely ancient with undusted shoulders and twisted mouth agape. He wore a heavily stained shirtfront, had long claws for fingernails and sat battling for breath between sloppy gulps of pissy beer. Coll turned tentatively to have a look but swiftly turned away repulsed. And hark, up from the depths came forth a demon! He shuffled quickly with arms outstretched grunting and dribbling towards the front door with a pack of smokes tightly gripped in his white-knuckled hand.
Some silence restored after his departure, but only briefly, for a set of banshees burst into cackle further startling us. We were becoming very uneasy. Other creatures dotted around the pub seemed equally dejected and void of life. Stephens rose to use the lavatory in the hope of escaping the misery, but upon entering was met with a gang of rotten goblins. All were dishevelled, too many were toothless, and all their fiery eyes looked poisoned. ‘DEATH SOON’ seemed inscribed on the folds of their faces. Was this the Clarke’s City Arms, or the eighth circle of Dante’s Inferno? Andrew Stephens, sweating like a carrot in plastic, turned and headed straight for the door.
When he returned to the bar he found a crumpled Sam Coll utterly despondent and focused firmly on the dark of his drink. Perhaps we found this pub in a terrible moment on a dreadful day. Nevertheless, the atmosphere carried a virus and we were infected. It was quickly decided that under no circumstances were we going to stick around to see if the Devil Himself would make an appearance. So we upped and left smart and quick. And still, even out in the open air away from that awful place, a dark haze hovered over us and invaded our thoughts. Reader, just imagine how an experience like this would make your drink go dry! If previously we were drunk, we were now certainly sober. Sam Coll has appropriately named this inverted peak of a pub the ‘DEATH ZONE.’
...As the above account makes clear, this visit was something of an ordeal and a mild trauma, and the pub stands out as one of the worst in our experience. Still, in the interests of fairness, and just to be sure that we hadn't come across it on a bad day when our own visions were overly clouded (doubly re-enthused by the rediscovery that Clarke's is mentioned some twelve times in Ulysses – though not always in a drinking capacity – more than any other pub in the town), we elected to revisit it some two years later, on Bloomsday 2019. Fewer obvious gargoyles were in evidence, most having very likely died off in the interim; those who remained, however, were altogether louder and more obnoxious, and not above making derogatory remarks at the expense of stray outsiders. But worst of all, the Beamish we ordered was dreadful, reeking of detergent and soap, foully redolent of a glass ill-cleaned, and the most gratuitous sort of insult added to injury. Andrew Stephens is decisively adamant: 'The worst pint of Beamish I've ever had.'
All in all, an unpleasant revisit that confirms past antipathies and certain to be the last.
Beermat sketched by Sam Coll
