Derrick Gerrety: Douglas Street, Loafers, Dublin,

Derrick Gerrety: Douglas Street, Loafers, Dublin,

Life History:

Derrick was born in 1950. He grew up in St Joseph's Square, Vernon Avenue, Clontarf, in a working-class enclave within a middle-class area. He describes his childhood as idyllic. The houses in the square were rented from the Sisters of Charity; nearby lay the estate of Lord Ardilaun, one of the Guinness heirs. He recalls his neighbours in the square.
When Derrick was 11 or 12 he joined the Sea Scouts. He became an engineer cadet in Irish Shipping and moved to Cork. He sailed to New York, South America and the Far East. He was a seaman for 18 years.
How he opened Loafers, a gay bar. The experience of being gay-bashed.
How people managed to drink on Good Friday. Derrick recalls characters who frequented the bar. Gay haunts around Cork. He describes some of the businesses of Douglas Street.
He talks about his house, and about Cooper Penrose

18 July 2012

CFP_SR00418_gerrety_2012

Cork, Dublin, Ireland, 1950s-2000s

Cork Folklore Project Audio Archive

Cork Folklore Project

English

Sound

1 .wav File

120min

Douglas Street, Cork

.wav

24bit / 48kHz

The following is a short extract from the interview transcript, copyright of the Cork Folklore Project. If you wish to access further archival material for this interview or other interviews please contact CFP, folklorearchive@gmail.com

DG: Douglas Street is a fantastic place to live. I mean it took a while for people to get the hang of what exactly was going on in that bar yeah I mean there were old men, it was the early ‘80s there were quite a few old men who would start drinking at one end of the street and work their way along the street and would always come into me and I’ve great memories of some old guys with soft hats, and eh pipes and whatever and would always eh and even when the bar got busy and even when the bar became quite gay those guys still came in [laughs] I loved that, I loved that. Now I was always particularly attentive [pause] I loved that anyway. So I would always be particularly attentive to older people and whether they're comfortable eh I suppose I got that from my parents. There was one man who lived two doors up Charlie Callnan and he used to come in and he had a soft hat, and he was just a sweet man and he always referred to his wife as The Queen. Yeah. And I actually became very friendly, she was very tall, very elegant lady. Mrs Callnan and I used to be quite, eh a little fearful of her she was quite a formidable looking lady, yeah and actually poor Charlie got Alzheimer’s in the end and I knew, you could see how he was getting. He didn’t know who I was after a while it was kind of sad then. And he used to tell wonderful stories about the pub. Yeah. Which he lived next door to all his life. So he had fantastic stories about who ran it and who lived in it and you know all the people who used to drink in it and all the crazy stories from years ago.

AC: What type of thing did he tell you?

DG: Ah, things like they used to do on Good Friday. On Good Friday the pub would close and eh rather than not drink on Good Friday the fellas would contrive all kinds of schemes and he told me this great story of some fella he used to drink in the bar used to drive a Tayto van and Good Friday all the lads eh he kitted the van out as a bar just for Good Friday, the madness of it like, they drove down to the Monahan Road and parked the van, the boys went on the piss for the day in the back of the van like, just because it was Good Friday you know. Crazy stuff like that. And fellas then who were [pause] in those days there was a snug. There was a little mark on the ceiling in Loafers which was the snug, the mark of the snug and of course in those days the snug was for women. Women would come in and have a bottle of stout in the snug right and he told me this lovely story of this woman who eh came in with a friend of hers and she had her bottle of stout in the snug and her husband didn’t think she drank and her husband never drank, well it was The Shamrock Bar in those days, her husband never drank in The Shamrock Bar right but on this particular day she was doing her shopping and came in with her friend and had a bottle of stout and went into the snug and closed the door. Whilst she was in there her husband and a few friends came in and she couldn’t leave. [laughs loudly], so that was another story and also Lunhams Bacon factory was in, when I opened Loafers there was a laneway directly opposite into what was the car park. That was Lunham’s Bacon factory which I remember from when I was a young fella in Cork and all the workers from Lunham’s Bacon Factory used to drink in all the pubs along you know and at lunchtime what they would do they would bring over a lump of bacon and the people who used to own The Shamrock Bar, the lady of the house she would boil up the bacon and then she’d have sandwiches and stuff ready for them at tea time and they’d come in and sure they’d stay there half the night then eating the bacon sandwiches that she was after making, stuff like that. Real old. And I remember Douglas Street from when I was, the early 60’s from when I was a kid and I remember actually number 27 Douglas Street which I eventually made and made part of Loafers was O’Callaghan’s bicycle shop and eh I remember bringing my bicycle in to have the puncture repaired in to Mr O’Callaghan little did I know as a 15 year old that I would eventually own the building but yeah so I always loved Douglas Street, because Douglas Street was always like to me the main street of a country town as opposed to being a town in the city it had that kind of atmosphere and it had a lovely curve on it. You couldn’t stand at one end of Douglas Street and look directly down it because of this little kind of a mischievous curve that was in it and all the higgledy-piggledy buildings you know there were two storey houses and three storey houses it always gave off that atmosphere to me of a main street in a country town and actually when I moved, when I bought Loafers in 1960 eh, losing track of time here, 1983 there was actually a little shop in Douglas Street run by an old woman and all she sold was tea towels and if you can imagine this little Dickensian shop about seven feet wide and a little counter and a woman in there sitting there and selling only tea towels.