We use the phrase ‘come for the crack’ in England on occasion, often in association with a trip to an Irish-themed pub.
I assumed that the term was known in Philadephian Irish bars too; is this not correct? It does at least make sense as a ‘joke’, while the cocaine reference does not seem funny at all. (I used the faux-Irish spelling to distinguish it from the cocaine-linked slang term).
Then there’s “Jimmy Crack Corn.” Get it? Get it?
Someone should forward a link to this thread to the writers, to see if they can work the argument into the show. This sounds like a bar argument.
That would be awesome.
It’s not hilarious but it plays on the “Come to New Orleans For The Seafood”/“Come To Boston For The History” type of tourism slogans. It’s a crass allusion but I’ve seen t-shirts in fishing shops with “Master Baiter” type slogans and it is ever so slightly higher brow than that.
So, as someone who knows the show fairly well, would you say that they have dozens of small, subtle jokes, like a show like “The Venture Brothers” might contain? In my own limited exposure to this (very funny) show, I would say that they do not.
There is absolutely no doubt that the Liberty Bell/crack cocaine connection is the primary one, and possibly the only intended one. That’s all the pun means to 99% of Americans. Now, the craic/Liberty Bell pun has been made before (“craic that puts the Bell to shame!”), and given that “for the crack/craic” is an established phrase, although not so much in US English (although it does appear in some dialects in at least Chicago, it seems), I personally don’t think that the phrase being the genesis of the pun is so far-fetched, especially if the original designer is a Philadelphian Irish-American.
There’s a quiz on Buzzfeed from today about Australian movies and one of them is titled The Craic. If I hadn’t have read this thread I wouldn’t have known what it meant or how to pronounce it 
Well, the joke they were going for there is the Liberty Bell/crack cocaine one. I’ve said repeatedly this is the case. I just personally think there is a reasonable chance that the inspiration for it came from the phrase “for the crack” and that means with the original creator of that slogan, as it seems it may predate the show.
I’m in Boston, a city with a large Irish population. We have lots of Irish pubs and I go to them frequently. I don’t think the phrase “for the craic” has anything at all to do with the t-shirt. It’s not commonly used here, and it’s not a phrase that registers with many people.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Mac doesn’t wear t-shirts that have anything to do with the fact that they own an Irish pub, he just wears various jokey shirts, usually with a different location/tourist trap type place involved, like the kind you’d get at a gift shop or a local novelty shirt shop.
Here’s a pic of him wearing a Detroit shirt.
The “craic” idea MIGHT have been thought of by the shirt designer. MAYBE. Even that I doubt. But regardless, nobody on the staff at Sunny thought of it. No way.
From the Always Sunny wiki:
“Mac usually wears sleeveless shirts or tight tees to draw attention to his glamour muscles and to exhibit his “tribal” tattoos. (“Charlie Wants An Abortion”) Mac’s T-shirts usually have an ironic slogan on the front.”
And Paddy’s Irish Pub isn’t an Irish pub, in any meaningful sense of the word. It’s a shithole where drunks go to die. Literally. You’d have to be a Jabroni to believe they’d make a subtle play on words based on an Irish expression.
I think the OP is just trying to sell T-shirts.
Hahaha oh god, you might be right. Some crack we had in this thread even if it was a spam post.
I can buy that, although not with that level of certainty. At any rate, the tertiary meaning has not been lost on everyone.
And as stated before, there was an where Dennis and Dee get addicted to crack, and an episode where the gang cracks the Liberty Bell. No episode where the gang visits some mythical Irish town.
Not sure what point is being made here. It seems the t-shirt/slogan predates the show. My contention is that it’s not far-fetched to think the originator of the slogan was inspired by the phrase “for the crack” in the Irish or UK English sense. You seem to think it is. Unfortunately, unless we can track down the originator, we have no way of knowing, but it’s a bet I’d take at even odds.
Ok, but there’s no way Mac wore it on the show as some kind of craic/crack pun, even though Paddy’s is theoretically an “Irish” pub. And Philadelphia, especially North Philly, was notorious during the crack scare of the 80s.
Appropriate screen cap from the show.
Yes, I’ll agree with that.
I’m getting some “B.U.T.T.” cartoon thing when I click on that.
ETA: Weird, now it’s the original joke in context. Before, when I clicked on it, I got this. And you haven’t edited your post, from what I see, so I have no idea what’s going on.
