The horror! From The Washington Post:
CONNOLLY, Ireland — For generations, Carney’s, the only pub in this tiny village in western Ireland, had been the place to strike up a romance, celebrate a birth or mourn a death — or just sip a pint of Guinness among friends near a warm fire on a damp day.
So when Carney’s shut down last year after more than a century in business, Teresa Tuttle, 62, took it hard. “Where can we go after a funeral? After work? Where would we all meet?” she recalled thinking, shaking her head in her kitchen, not far from the pub.
The “closed” sign abruptly posted on Carney’s door — and on the doors of 1,000 rural Irish pubs in the past three years — was another sign of the profound lifestyle changes that have accompanied the country’s dizzying rise to affluence.
“It was like a sudden death in the family,” said Anthony Scanlan, 51, a farmer who lives near Carney’s. “Everything has changed in Ireland. It’s as fast as New York around here.”
Ireland’s economic success has come at a terrible price – for public houses, at least.
