For Frank Cunningham, who peers out behind wire-rimmed glasses under a traditional Irish tweed cap, the pubs of Boston offer a chance to reconnect with his heritage beyond wearing green on St. Patrick's Day.
Although Cunningham lives on Nantucket as a carpenter, he knows Boston pubs well, expertly picking his way through the streets on his evening travels.
Yet, as he traverses the Charles, he is traveling not only into Boston, but back into the world of Ireland.
The sound of a melancholy Gaelic singer fills the car.
"You can hear the lyricism as he sings," he muses, explaining that the song is about a deceived girl who waits fruitlessly for the return of her love.
As he drives through the back streets of Boston, he weaves his way to Jamaica Plain and finally to the Brendan Behan Pub.
While "Behan" is located off the beaten path, it offers a world vastly different from the trendiness of many Irish bars today.
The pub, instead of the usual television above the bar, has a kitschy fish tank; instead of Top 40 teeny-bopper music, it showcases an Irish seisun (session), in which Irish musicians form an impromptu ensemble, playing everything from traditional flutes to a bouzouki, a guitar-like instrument.
"You tend to go to the bars to reconnect you with the land you left behind," cunningham says.
"Everything happened there. If there was a funeral, everybody would go there," he adds.
Yet, even these traditional centers of Irish culture do not remain as entirely exclusive cultural environments.
In the Behan, Boston Irish congregate along with a full-blooded American Indian.
"It reflects the notion that people from all over use them as a common embassy," Cunningham says.
In the face of a disintegrating Irish community in the Hub, public houses, or "pubs," remain at the center of In recent years, as everything Irish hassuddenly become commercially successful, a slew ofIrish pubs--some more traditional thanothers--have created a pub scene that is far fromauthentic. The New Crowd Read more in NewsRecommended Articles
