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Shutting up shop on Dublin’s past
By McGreevy
With its stained glass windows, high ceilings and cavernous interior, Bewley’s of Grafton Street was more than just a café. It was a cathedral of coffee.
It defined Dublin in a way that no pub could. All God’s plenty was there: the woman laid down with shopping bags, the businessman seeking something other than the boozy lunch, the Trinity student, an ostentatious copy of Camus in hand, or the tourist looking to get to the soul of the city.
It always had an air of bohemia about it where, as JP Donleavy put it, the “hungover ill-natured poet would lurk studying the day’s racing form”.
To wander in the doors of Bewley’s is to feel part of the immutable city. Dublin may change, but you felt a connection with previous generations who took repose there.
It was an open secret that the two remaining Bewley’s cafes in Dublin, in Grafton Street and Westmoreland Street, were not profitable, but most people couldn’t believe that such an established institution could close, but close it will from the end of this month.
It was like an elderly relative you thought would hold out forever, until the inevitable came.
Campbell Catering, Bewley’s owners, have blamed changing times. Bewley’s was once the only place in Dublin you could get proper coffee. Now, it’s only one of many in Grafton Street.
Exorbitant rents — Grafton Street is now the fifth most expensive shopping street in the world — have not helped especially as Campbell Catering does not own the building.
The cigarette ban was also cited. Despite what Micheal Martin and his nicotine Nazi’s would have you believe, the ban is really hurting pubs and restaurants.
Whatever the reasons, the demise of Bewley’s says a lot about the direction of our consumer culture both here in Britain and in Ireland.
As consumers we have acquiesced — in the relentless homogenization of the High Street — to the proliferation of chain stores, which one recent report said was “like weeds in a garden”.
I’ve never been to Bolton or Bath, but I’m certain that the main shopping street will have a Boots, a Marks & Spencer, a Clinton Cards, a Tesco, a Next, a WH Smith or a Dixons.
How did it get to this? How have centuries of continuity which survived industrialization, the Depression and two World Wars been obliterated so severely at a time of peace and prosperity?
The New Economics Foundation estimates that a small business — a butcher, baker or candlestick maker — closes every day in Britain.
The truth is that, however much we rue the demise of small businesses, deep down in our pockets, we like it that way.
Price and choice are paramount over sentimentality and the chain stores can offer both in abundance.
Near me in central London there is a huge Sainsbury’s which opened last year. It’s a chrome and glass emporium which has everything you need and a lot of things you don’t. You can buy fresh bread, fish and meat and vegetables that are out of season.
The local retailers fought bitterly against it but lost, as they inevitably do.
Now, it takes a real conscious effort to give them your support, even if you are out of pocket for a point of principle.
The same thing is happening now in Ireland. The colonization of the Irish high street by British chains has not gone unnoticed.
Tesco, which accounts for one in every eight retail pounds spent in Britain, is now the biggest food retailer in Ireland with 79 branches.
Tesco is seeking to build an out-of-town supermarket in my home town of Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Leitrim.
Many locals see this as tangible proof of how the Celtic Tiger has lifted a town which has under-performed for generations, but for local retailers, who weathered those bad times, it must feel like an imminent death sentence.
They can’t compete on price, choice or availability. The demise of Bewley’s will leave a gap like a broken front tooth in Grafton Street, but it is certain that no Irish retailer has the resources to pay the market rate for such a prime retail space.
It will be left to the British chain stores or one of those identikit Starbucks or Costa Coffee outfits to fill the gap and a part of Dublin will be lost forever.
It’s called the free market. It's the reason why we can buy chickens for £2.99 and a farmed salmon for less than a tenner.
We can mourn the passing of places like Bewley’s, but we cannot blame anybody except ourselves. In the end, we get the high streets we deserve.
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