Happy 25th birthday, George!
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By Declan Cashin
Thursday May 13 2010
As the country's longest-running and most famous gay establishment, The George occupies a special place in gay Irish life, and this weekend the Dublin bar and club is celebrating its 25th year in business.
And so it should. That The George opened at all -- and, what's more, survived -- is an achievement in itself, seeing as it was set up in the midst of a devastating recession, and when homosexuality was still a crime in Ireland (and remained so until decriminalisation in 1993).
The George was the brainchild of Kerry businessman and entrepreneur Cyril O'Brien (who is no longer involved with the bar and isn't doing interviews for the anniversary).
The building itself on South Great George's Street had previously been a bar called The George, but it had no gay association.
Dublin only ever had a fledgling gay social scene throughout the 1970s and early '80s: bars like Bartley Dunnes, Sides and The Oak had intermittent success, while the Hirschfeld centre -- which operated from 1979-1987 -- had the nightclub Flikkers (the Dutch word for 'faggots').
In a rare interview with Gay Community News (GCN) in 1997, O'Brien described the circumstances in which he decided to buy the pub and turn it into a gay bar.
"I used to drink there with some friends, and I used to constantly say to the owner, 'Why don't you do the place up?' One night, the owner said, 'Why don't you buy the bloody place and do it up?', and that's how it occurred."
He continued: "Six months later I was saying, 'My God, what have I done?' I had never worked in a pub. I had no master plan. It was more or less the case that I saw a need, bought the place, and change happened around us."
According to gay activist and archivist Tonie Walsh, O'Brien's business instincts were finely tuned to the zeitgeist of 1980s Dublin. "Like any good businessman, Cyril was aware of changing trends and the subtle shifts in social dynamics in the mid '80s where gay people, and gay men particularly, were becoming more open and visible," he says.
"This had a lot to do with the wider discussion going on in society due to Senator David Norris' constitutional action in the European Court of Human Rights. But around that same time in 1984-85, there had been a couple of high profile articles in the press about the emergence of gay people's spending power -- the so-called 'Pink Punt'."
Be that as it may, Tonie believes that opening The George was still a courageous move. "It was brave of Cyril because a lot of places were still quite reluctant to actually acknowledge their gay custom," he says.
"This was a time when the state broadcaster refused to carry very innocuous gay ads for (gay magazine) Out because they feared it would be tantamount to encouraging criminal activity."
For his part, O'Brien has stated that he didn't encounter any hostility to his original business plans for the bar.
"You don't look for gay planning permission; you look for planning permission," he told GCN.
"There is no such thing as a gay pub. There is a pub that has gay clientele. I never had any open objections. Basically business is business."
As Tonie Walsh remembers it, once The George opened, it was instantly a success, despite the straitened times. "Individually people didn't have a huge amount of money, but collectively there was enough in the pot to allow for one, if not two major venues to succeed," he says.
The George later grew in size by taking over an old chip shop next door, an expansion many see as a metaphor for how gay visibility increased after 1993. In addition, it's become a kind of totem for gay Irish people. No other gay venue in the country has the same name recognition, and various recent tributes have all focused on how the first time in The George is a rites of passage experience for gay people in this country.
However, the man who started it all never expected any special thanks or praise for the contribution he ended up making to Dublin's gay social scene.
"I filled a need. Do I deserve thanks? I provided a pub, and people drank there. The thanks, I think, that anyone in a business like that should get would be expressed through feet coming back through the door. And I got that."
- Declan Cashin
Irish Independent
