The Cornerstone

Im old enough to remember this as Barney Murphys. One of the first pubs visited as a student in 99! (Gosh I feel old)
I too recall the names Shine and Cornerstone, but it was also called Kharma
This pub became infamous a few years back when a guy was seriously attacked while drinking in it. A premeditated attack.
I have to be honest and say you don’t feel safe in it. Bottom line.
In addition, they only open the downstairs bar, but you have to go upstairs to the closed bar to go to the bathroom.
How can I give no stars and a place a bet the name changes.

I seem to have missed the identity crisis Rob mentioned because I only know this place as the Cornerstone. It’s a nice enough pub for a pint or two but I never really warmed to the place, because there are so many other– and nicer– places nearby.
When I was in here recently the staff were nice and efficient and the place was pretty busy. The music wasn’t too loud so you could have a proper chat with your friends. This is the sort of place I’d frequent on a pub crawl as a pitstop, but not for a whole evening. It lacks a bit of an atmosphere.

The Cornerstone has been suffering from something of an identity crisis of late. What was first The Cornerstone, then switched to Shine, then Shine/​PadThai and now it’s the Cornerstone again. Nothing much has changed though.
The Cornerstone has nothing really special goin’ for it. It’s a grand ol pub and the staff have been really sound (when it was Shine), but there’s barely any atmosphere in the place. Hopefully it will pick up under new management and with college season after starting again because there’s a lot of potential for the cornerstone, but I’d be hesitant to start a night’s boozing here as it stands.

Shine is waaay better than when it was The Cornerstone. Back then, it had really rude staff, and then they introduced their tyrannical anti-​student dress code bollocks that Rónan referred to, but thankfully this ill-​advised business strategy drove them out of business and their ignorant staff to the dole queues and penury so huzzah!
Shine now has really friendly staff, and yes, the pints of stout are dreadful, but I still retain a great deal of affection for the place. Part of this might be that I won a Simpsons-​themed table quiz there, or the fact that I often attended student functions there that had loads of free wine.
If you are in shine, try to get the couches at the back, cos otherwise you’ll probably have to sit at the high, narrow tables with the high stools, and I HATE sitting when my feet are unable to touch the ground (I don’t know, it’s a thing). Shine have a big screen for watching matches, but it isn’t actually that big downstairs, so the ambiance isn’t that great compared to other places on the nights of big matches. And the food isn’t half bad, neither — fancy sausages and mash and pies and things — standard pub fare.
The Cornerstone to Shine transition resulted in very little decorative changes, as Kate pointed out. until very recently, as now upstairs is a Thai restaurant. Bit of a surprise there. I haven’t eaten there, but they have an early bird menu — € 10 per main course — and 10 spots for Thai food is not half bad.
A pretty decent boozer.

When I was in college (just a mere 2 years ago might I add) Shine didn’t exist. The establishment was known as The Cornerstone back then.
Being a DIT student, we didn’t have an on campus bar (except for what we smuggled in ourselves and drank down in the SU obviously) so The Cornerstone was our local. Many days were spent here, drinking away when we should’ve been learning and ‘one pint’ at 4pm, often ended up with us propping up the bar still at 11pm.
Not a huge amount has changed since The Cornerstone (except for me having a job now) but the shine has a lovely new name and neon sign outside. I hear Pete Doherty is a fan and spent some time here when he was playing a gig in Dublin recently.

Shine used to be a respectable student bar called The Cornerstone. Unhappy with their place in the world they decided that a change of clientele was in order. Up went prices, in came a dress code and away went the customers.
However, the introduction of a poncy new name and yuppy friendly environment seems to have been a complete disaster, to the degree that Shine recently reverted to advertising ‘student specials’.
Lured in by the sign outside this gutsy reporter found that these ‘specials’ were yet to come into effect. This was at Easter and I think it highly unlikely that they’ll start offering specials outside the academic year so nuts to them.
The food is well rated, but I can’t comment as I’ve never tried it. The Guinness, however, is woeful.
But, all that said, Americans seem to love it.