Dubliners and Clevelanders

Reasons to go to Night town in Cleveland:

1. It’s named after the red light district in Dublin portrayed in James Joyce’s fattest book. James Joyce !

2. Lobster Mac & Cheese. Oh my stars.

3. They already have their St. Patrick’s Day plans on the menu.

4. They’re supposedly one of the 100 best jazz clubs in the world. The guy rocking out on the piano stood on his bench and played with his foot. What? So commendable.

5. There’s a completely diverse crowd. Young, old, jeans, suits, hipsters, nerds, packs of classy ladies, lots of guys with beards, etc… Literally, there were dudes with beards at every contiguous table.

6. Drinks named after Joyce characters, many of which include Irish whiskey or gin: I had the combo of Jameson, Frangelico, and Bailey’s (it was either called a “James Joyce” or a “Ulysses”; I couldn’t remember after I drank it).

7. They have music pretty much every night.

8. Bread pudding.

Also, this is the last paragraph of Joyce’s “The Dead.” And it’s really, really pretty.

“A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It
had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver
and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had
come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the
newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was
falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills,
falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly
falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too,
upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael
Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and
headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns.
His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly
through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their
last end, upon all the living and the dead.”