For anyone wondering what kind of place they've wandered into at John Mulligan's pub, near the River Liffey in central Dublin, the writing's on the wall.
Above the door it says, "Established 1782." Behind the bar, a sign urges patrons, "Please use mobile phones outside premises" -- which accounts, even in winter, for people making calls in the street outside.
For one of Dublin's oldest pubs, using phones infringes on the main activity: the nurturing and preservation of craic -- Irish for having a good time and a proper chat.
"A lot of the modern Irish pubs don't have any atmosphere. The large super-pubs just copy some place in England," said Cathal Brett, a 27-year-old accountant, as he and friend Valerie Clynch, also 27, supped pints of Guinness.
"There just aren't enough of these pubs, but that's the way it is, with a limited number of pubs in the city," he added.
A few streets away, at the super-trendy Sosume, not only are mobile phones welcome, but apart from the Irish accents and the endless pints of Guinness being served, you'd be hard placed to know you were in the Irish capital.
While you have to go two doors down for teriyaki, Sosume is lit by Japanese lanterns, the staff wear Asahi beer t-shirts and part of the fridge is reserved for the brews of Japan.
Even the doorman is Russian in a place that seems to go out of its way to remind you of anywhere but Ireland.
"I come in here because you can get a table," said Celine, a young Frenchwoman, who works as a waitress at a nearby cafe. "But it's nothing like a traditional Irish pub."
At a time when Irish theme bars, replete with "Guinness is good for you" posters and road signs to Tipperary, are an export business from Bahrain to Beijing, the real thing may be a dying breed in its native land.
In Dublin, places like Sosume, the African/Middle Eastern-themed Zanzibar and a host of other bars that are far more international than Irish are pulling in the punters.
There are also more and more "super-pubs" -- cavernous affairs that preserve a traditional exterior, but have expanded inside like a pub on steroids, pushing into the shop next door, upstairs and into the basement.
It's not that traditional pubs don't make money -- owners say they do. But with the number of pub licences strictly limited, and space at a premium in Ireland's booming cities, making your pub bigger or trendier, or both, lets you earn so much more.
Dublin City Councillor Ciaran Cuffe caused a stir in the Irish media when he said the old-fashioned pub, at least in Dublin, was an "endangered species."
"I used the term and I didn't use it lightly," Cuffe said.
"I think there is a real problem in Ireland, particularly in Dublin at the moment, that the small-scale, old local pub is under threat," Cuffe, an architect by profession and pub lover by avocation, said.
"There's only a limited number of licences ... so if you own an old pub you're under pressure to sell or expand, and expand fairly dramatically."
With more than 10,000 licensed pubs, one for every 380 of its 3.8 million people, no one in Ireland will "die of thirst."
But under a law that has hardly changed in a century, but which is now under review, no new licences may be issued.
This means rural areas, which had a bigger share of the population a century ago, may have more pubs than they need while booming Dublin, with 35 percent of the population, has only 12 percent of them, the Irish Competition Authority says.
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