Mrs C
I would point out that insults rudeness and aggression have flown from all directions, as have misrepresentations - your last possting being full of these.
We do not have hang-ups with visitors; we thrive on them, they come, and are welcomed throughout the year, mainly for the music. This town plays host to one of the leading traditional music events in Ireland which has made a tremendous contribution to traditional music in this country and pretty well assured its flourishing for at least another generation.
We get visitors here throughout the year, they are very much a part of the pleasure of living here.
I don't ask how to deal with the onslaught of visitors - not a term I would dream of using - I ask how we deal with the insensitivity and crassness of the badly behaved ones who have in the past, and no doubt will in the future, wreck sessions with their bad behaviour.
Nobody here is ever treated rudely, no matter how badly they behave, but the worse ones are not encouraged to return and we handle them in the best way possible while they are here.
Why didn't anybody contact Raggy privately - because these forums are ideal mediums for discussing openly problems such as these.
Nobody has suggested Raggy and his friends are badly behaved - we don't know him - we have suggested that for a group of that size travelling and wishing to play music, the venues here are not suitable - not exclusivity, nor judgemental, just a practical suggestion, made at first in a friendly manner until somebody threw their rattle out of the pram.
I really don't understand much of your posting - certainly not the sexist 'Alpha-male' bit.
"well why do you keep going on about all the bad....."
Because it happens and we don't reserve the right to comment on it only for musicians, it nauses up the listeners evenings as well - no musician/non-musician exclusivity here.
And we don't 'prefer' to confine out music to small bars, that is an accident of history - the town only has two large bars, both pop-music venues for youngsters.
Nobody is pre-judging anybody, on the contrary, we are all post-responding to each others bad behaviour - well - badly, and we are still no nearer finding a solution to bad session behaviour.
Jim Carroll