What's everybody doing for National Drinking Day?

[Angrboda]

In a tiny Irish pub delivered to your doorstep, a St. Patrick’s Day for the covid era

Everyone at the party could remember how they used to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.

There had been all-day affairs at local joints like Rolf’s or the Irish Cottage, pints and music with friends and strangers. Or during the pandemic, a quiet drink at home over takeout corned beef.

This, however, was entirely new: drinking glasses of Guinness inside a tiny, meticulous re-creation of an Irish pub parked in a friend’s driveway.

Much like 2022, Thursday’s get-together was both a reminder of how life used to be and how much smaller it has become.

Two years into the pandemic, the virus is in retreat (or maybe not). The White House is reopening for public tours. Masks are coming off in schools. Boston is again holding a St. Patrick’s Day parade.

Meanwhile, the Wee Irish Pub, measuring eight feet by 17 feet, has not stopped moving since word of its existence began to spread early this year. There is something about it that people find irresistible: the intimacy, the simulation of public space, the sense of being transported.

“I don’t know how to say this,” said Craig Taylor, a marketing consultant who built the miniature pub on wheels with his younger brother Matt. Some of his customers have beautiful homes in which they could easily host a party, yet they love the idea of sitting in a little trailer. Craig thinks he knows why. “It’s something different,” he said. “It feels like you could be a million miles away.”

(Washington Post)