[NYTr] Ire: Bewley's Faithful Savor Last Drop

[nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com]

sent by rdooling (ireland news)

Irish Times - Dec 1, 2004
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/ireland/2004/1201/1141609357HM3BEWCLOSE.html

Nostalgia Tinged with a Little Hope
Bewley's Faithful Savour the Last Drop

by Frank McNally

As befits a business founded by Quakers, Bewley's Cafés departed this world
with a Quaker-style funeral. The mourners who queued outside the Grafton
Street branch all day to pay their respects were determinedly sober.

Once inside, they drank nothing stronger than tea and coffee while
celebrating the life of the dearly beloved in prose, poetry and song. And
even as they said their goodbyes, many hoped the parting would be temporary.

With the café doors closing behind him, the Lord Mayor updated supporters on
the campaign to save "the front room of the city" from permanent closure. It
would require changes in both planning and rental law, Cllr Michael Conaghan
said. But he added: "We cannot allow a non-regulated rental market to drive
every vestige of heritage off the streets of Dublin."

Earlier, Michael James Ford of the Bewley's Theatre Group drew loud applause
from customers in the Harry Clarke Room when he spoke of a "glimmer of hope"
that this was not the end. Dubliners still had a chance to decide whether
the café remained as "a monument to mahogany, stained glass and 1920s
workmanship" or became "a monument to mammon in a soulless age".

But the prevailing emotion in Grafton Street and Westmoreland Street
yesterday was one of nostalgia for an era passing. Cameras flashed at the
interiors all day as customers hedged their bets on whether they would be
seen in this form again. A high number of buggies spoke of parents planning
to tell children in times to come of the day they went to Bewley's.

The former Irish Times columnist, Sam McAughtry, who queued in Grafton
Street with the artist Esmé Lewis, remembered arriving from Belfast in the
1970s and being welcomed in the café by three separate writers, Michael
Hartnett, Benedict Kiely, and John B. Keane.

Inside, nostalgia dominated the musical offerings. Managing director Cól
Campbell danced with branch manager Deirdre Clarke as the theatre group
performed the Carpenters' Yesterday Once More. Hot counter assistant Eugene
O'Brien took a break from serving customers to deliver a magnificent version
of Molly Malone (an unfortunate precedent, in that she was a Dublin
institution no one could save). Rathfarnham singer Ray McDonnell raised the
rafters with Raglan Road.

Campbell insisted that yesterday was not a sad day, but he admitted today
would be as staff began new lives. Regretting that so much of the focus was
on the cafés' physical structures, he compared the closures to the
evacuation of the Blasket Islands.

You could preserve the islands and the buildings on them, but today the
community who lived and worked there would be gone, to be absorbed "into the
mainland".

The daily specials blackboard in Grafton Street's balcony café became a
multinational noticeboard yesterday as employees recorded the same message
in umpteen languages: Au revoir, Adios, Ate mais, Zegnaj, Hejda, Auf
Wiedersehen, Ciao, Slán, Goodbye.

© The Irish Times