“We get a lot of Irish tourists to Boston who stop for a pint at the Rose before heading off to the airport,” Wilson says. Wilson says that people from Ireland know about one or two pubs in each American city, and the Black Rose is on everyone’s list. Paul Wilson of Dublin, the operations manager for the company, has worked there for twenty-two years, starting out as a doorman at the Purple Shamrock. Sweeney still works for the company in a management capacity. Glynn, who emigrated from County Galway to Boston some sixty years ago.Īll of P.J.’s children – Michael, Christine, Neil, Brendan and Kelly – are involved in the company, which also owns the Purple Shamrock, Hurricane O’Reilly’s, Jose McIntyre’s, Coogan’s in downtown, Dillon’s in the Back Bay and Cleary’s and Brownstown in the South End. Today the pub is owned and operated by the Glynn Hospitality Group, a family-owned restaurant business started by P.J. The Boston Business Journal called the Black Rose “the elder, but still vibrant, statesman of the Irish pub scene in Boston.” It has been cited as one of the best pubs in America, and consistently one of Boston’s best pubs. For the past thirty-five years, it has been a gathering point for people from all walks of life who appreciate the Rose’s chief ingredients: good atmosphere, good food and beverages, and good music. Indeed, the Rose is more than just another watering hole. And it’s a place where people talk and have good conversations.” “Here there is a sense of conviviality, enhanced by the music. ![]() “When people go into a pub they want to enjoy themselves,” Sweeney explains. ![]() Everyone, it seems, headed there for the same reasons. Then Faneuil Hall opened, and pretty soon tourists started to wander into the Rose. Office workers from the department stores, and college students stopped by. Locals came from Boston’s neighborhoods, and politicians from City Hall, just down the street. We had traditional Irish music every night, poetry readings and pints of Guinness, and pretty soon people started sticking their heads in the door.” “The Rose was the first pub in downtown Boston that was distinctly Irish. “In 1976, the only so-called Irish bars in the big cities in America were neighborhood bars, patronized by Irish immigrants,” Sweeney explains one morning over a cup of coffee at the pub he helped make famous. Thankfully for this Irish-American city, Phil Sweeney and Richard McHugh were on hand to open the Black Rose (Roisin Dubh) Pub at 160 State Street that summer, ushering in an era of Boston Irish pubs that flourish to this day. And Boston was in need of a good Irish pub. Since 2007, Parke has lived in Adelaide with his wife, fellow-photographer, Narelle Autio, and their two young sons.In the summer of 1976, Kevin White was mayor of Boston and Gerald Ford was America’s president.īoston was busy celebrating the nation’s bi-centennial. Parke is the first and only Australian to be elected a full member of the prestigious international photo agency, Magnum, dedicated to humanist documentary photography. Since the late 1990s he has worked as a street photographer and artist, creating several major bodies of work, which have been exhibited in galleries throughout Australia and internationally. ![]() He began his career as a press photographer in Newcastle and Sydney during this period he travelled the world with the Australian cricket team – for five years. Parke was born in Newcastle, New South Wales, in 1971. He eventually distilled his images, and words accumulated over seven years, into a series of artist books which then evolved into The Black Rose exhibition. As with his previous work, he photographed his new series on film, developing his images using conventional methods. ![]() His process of remembering was also stimulated by an email dialogue on the theme of ‘home’ with a group of fellow photographers, as well as through his experiences as a father of two young boys.ĭuring this period Parke made several trips back to his childhood home in Newcastle and undertook two road trips to various parts of Australia. The catalyst for the exhibition was a tragic incident in the artist’s past, which has led Parke to explore universal ideas from a deeply personal perspective – birth, death, love, loss, memory and the passing of time.īetween 20, in an attempt to reclaim memories of his childhood, Parke took thousands of photographs of his surroundings and of everyday objects and wrote down his dreams and observations in diaries. The black rose represents the culmination of seven years of work by internationally renowned Adelaide photographer Trent Parke.
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