316) The Bridge Tavern of Summerhill Parade, D3

Far and away the finest pub in this district – the competition cannot even compete, for this was obviously always expressly built and designed to function as a pub, and not a converted bare room. The small bar is packed with bric-a-brac and the capacious high-ceilinged lounge is even more lavishly stuffed with trinkets. A trumpet player is wont to start melodiously parping doleful ditties of a Sunday. A humourous cartoon on the wall is labelled: 'Are you still having sex or have you taken up golf? Sometimes it's the small one which is the biggest handicap'.

It also enjoys a healthy proximity (if you cross the road and go down a side street called Richmond Cottages Nth) to a massive and magnificent spray-painted mural of Brendan Behan, glass in one hand and typewriter in the other and casting a dramatic shadow on the wall behind him, towering over the neighbourhood through whose alleys he often trod, an awesome likeness that reduces the voluminous and messy rest of Dublin's graffiti to the merest scribbles, at best.

The Brendan Behan Mural, Richmond Cottages North

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