Just down the way from The Old Neptune restaurant at The Venetian Macau, I encountered another cross-cultural theme within a theme, when I sat down to order a beer at McSorley's Ale House. This is where things get really convoluted, and further illustrate the interwoven, overlapping, confusing, postmodern nature of thematic design. McSorley’s resembles just about every other themed Irish pub I’ve ever been in—and Irish pubs are one of the oldest mainstays of thematic restaurant design in the United States. They run the gamut from authentic to downright plastic, and McSorley’s feels more the former; in and of itself, a pleasant yet unremarkable venue.
Wonderfully staged prop vignettes fill the second floor's ledges, and each wall of the pub has a different theme. There is this scene for farm tools, for example.
And another for "gentlemen's sports" of the British Isles.
Also this one representing rail and steamship travel.
Guinness advertising ephemera (typical at all other such pubs), along with poetic witticisms of Ireland's most famous drunks (I mean authors!) cover the walls, typeset in large, green, gaelic script, of course. Certainly out of place within The Venetian, but not unheard of. Not the giant leap i was required to make to enter The Old Neptune. that is, until I did my research.
This McSorley's Ale House is a Hong Kong chain (with three locations, including Macau), and is itself a thematic representation inspired by McSorley's OLD Ale House in the East Village, Manhattan. This (original) McSorley's is quite famous as bars in America go—it opened in 1854 and was one of the last "men's only" pubs, admitting women only by Supreme Court lawsuit in 1970, and counts Abe Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Boss Tweed, and Woody Guthrie, among other luminaries, as former regulars. The place is simply legendary.
McSorley's Old Ale House in New York is not a themed venue; design-speaking, it developed slowly and organically over time, and only by virtue of its long history has come to represent "olde New York" in the eyes of its current patrons.
The McSorley’s chain in Hong Kong was inspired by this classic bar, yet retains a much more traditional Irish pub feel—actually, it feels more British than anything, from the beer selection to the fish ‘n’ chips served in newspaper. This anglicized expression—rather than the American of the source—comes, of course, from the long years of British rule over Hong Kong. Such pubs here are a dime a dozen.
Yet here at The Venetian Macau—inside the Italian renaissance—I’m drinking a pint in Ireland, by way of the Hong Kong McSorley’s Ale House chain, by way of Britain’s colonization of the region, by way of McSorley’s Old Ale House in New York City. And more than just the beer is giving me a headache. Am I in a thematic representation of an old English pub, an old Irish pub, an old American bar, or an old Hong Kong pub? Or all of these at once?