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Archive for 2010

Strollin’ round Dublin town…

Posted in Miscellaneous, Uncategorized, tagged , , , on July 8, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Anyone who’s been following the Blog for a while might remember this post from JayCarax about a great piece of street art done just off the Luas tracks. I’m actually suprised it stayed there that long, but eventually someone realised it’s existence and did a hack job in covering it up…

Controversial Elephant replaced by existential nothingness...

And a couple more snaps of some Dublin graffiti taken on the same day…..

Brings to mind a certain Scary Éire track..!

Located around the back of the historic Smithfield Fruit and Vegetable Markets  is this piece:

This is not a photo oppurtunity...

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Penguin Kidnapping

Posted in Miscellaneous, tagged , , , , on July 8, 2010| 2 Comments »

A man drives to a gas station and has his tank filled up. While doing this
the clerk spots two penguins sitting on the back seat of the car. He asks
the driver, “What’s up with the penguins in the back seat?”

The man in the car says, “I found them. I asked myself what to do with
them but, I haven’t a clue.”

The clerk ponders a bit then says, “You should take them to the zoo.”

“Yeah, that’s a good idea,” says the man in the car and drives away.

The next day the man with the car is back at the same gas station. The
clerk sees the penguins are still in the back seat of the car.

“Hey, they’re still here! I thought you were going to take them to the zoo!”

“Oh, I did,” says the driver, “and we had a great time. Today I’m taking
them to the beach.”

Kelli, a 10-year-old female penguin, was kidnapped from Dublin Zoo this morning by three men. She was found several hours later on Rutland Street and was taken back to the Zoo by gardaí from Store Street. Gardaí are now hunting for the men involved.

Motive? Off – season college prankers? Criminals hoping to hold her for ransom? North Dublin brigade of the Animal Liberation Front (ALF)?

Media reports: BBC, RTE and Irish Independent.

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In The Garden with the Green Party.

Posted in Miscellaneous, Politics, tagged , , on July 7, 2010| Leave a Comment »

A real gem this, spotted on the wonderful Irish Election Literature Blog. It’s Trevor Sargent. Of course, one of the only Green TD’s who might still have a job after the next election following a Grade A piece of theatre that made sure he came away looking like the last Green who hadn’t turned yellow. Here he is performing ‘The Garden Song’ for an audience of children.

Of my local TD’s, it’s either Mary Harney or No-Go Gogarty I’d pay the most to see whip out the guitar.

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Where’s the jacks?

Posted in Uncategorized on July 6, 2010| 5 Comments »

What’s he yelling about?

Oh, he’s yelling at me. It’s the McDonald’s security man. I’m to come down those steps right away, and so is the old man behind me, and the young lad in front of me. We’ve not bought a €1 burger between us, and the blue-shirted man is a wise one, with eyes in the back of his head. ‘Buy something or get out’

So, I get out.

It dawns on me then that Dublin, a major capital city, has pretty much no public toilet facilities.

A quick look online reveals this problem is a longstanding one, with a number of issues present even when Dublin had a number of public toilets available to the public. In 1956 The Irish Times reported that the Irish Housewives Association complained that, even in light of the outbreak of polio, one had to pay 2d to clean their hands in one of the capitals public toilets. How very Irish. Still, at least they had public toilets.

The one people pass all the time (and don’t even realise they’re doing so in many cases), is the public toilet facility beside the Thomas Moore statue at College Green, opposite the Bank of Ireland. Still used as a jacks by many drunken Dubliners at the weekend (from the wrong side of a chained gate), it is one of the great ironies in the city that the man who wrote ‘The Meeting of the Waters’ would find a public toilet right next to his statue.

In Dublin, it seems we’re left with three options.

1) Museums. Of course, any visit will also involve a walk around.

2) Hotels. They say few toilets match The Weston.

3) That really, really horrible walk in the Jervis Street Shopping Centre to the jacks there. You know the walk. Feels a bit ‘Terminal 2.’

A recent visit to the Moore Street Mall revealed that the Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre mentality has crossed the Liffey, with a bloke employed to charge you 25c to use a substandard bathroom. In a city with no public toilets, can Dubliners really be expected to have to enter a commercial premises and fork out money for a product they don’t want to be allowed up the stairs to use the toilets? In fairness, it’s more than fair McDonald’s don’t want Joe Bloggs using their bathroom if he’s not a customer, but who can blame Joe for trying to sneak up the stairs past the ever vigilant security man?

For a capital city, it’s pretty shameful.

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The HSBC-ITGWU Branch Secretary.

Posted in Dublin History, Politics on July 5, 2010| 3 Comments »

One of the worst thought-out advertisements I’ve ever seen, I nearly choked on my Corn Flakes when I spotted this yesterday.

I’m sure Larkin would be delighted. Bankers are workers too.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic

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Joanna Newsom

Posted in Music on July 4, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I really should go to more gigs, as I remarked to a friend post Ted Leo at Whelan’s. Granted, I’ve a ticket to see Leonard Cohen in the back garden of a certain Countess’ Sligo home, but beyond that there isn’t much on the radar for me. Joanna Newsom in Dublin come September is now added to the list. The fact the gig is at the Grand Canal Theatre is just another incentive, owing to the fact I’ve not seen the place yet. All reviews of her sold out Olympia performance suggested I was a moron for spending the money on anything else at the time.

My main interest in the music of Joanna Newsom no doubt comes from the folk influences present, and the sound of the harp is something that one occasionally encounters in Irish traditional music, though nothing like here. I purchased The Milk Eyed Mender on a hunch a few years back, and completely fell for her music from there. Ys, a themed album of songs ranging from around 8 to 12 minutes,was mind-blowing, with the harpist joined by the sounds of an orchestra. The album was well received, even breaking into the Irish Top 50. We’ve great taste, we do.


Above: The Roots feat. Joanna Newsom, didn’t see that coming either.

Folkies like myself will no doubt mingle with the hipest of the hip for the night, and I’m personally hoping for a set that leans more towards her earlier material, though her latest effort is still most worthy of praise, an impressive triple album.

See you there.

Joanna Newsom at the Grand Canal Theatre, 14th September. Tickets from €33.60 including booking fee from Ticketmaster.ie

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Karma

Posted in Miscellaneous on July 3, 2010| 1 Comment »

Dame Street.A nice one to spot on the way to work.

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Save Wood Quay (1979)

Posted in Dublin History, Social History, tagged , , on July 3, 2010| 4 Comments »

I recently did a wonderful module in college which took in early Dublin life, and the walled viking town. After any degree of research into Viking Dublin, one can’t help but see the Civic Offces at Wood Quay as perhaps the greatest defeat of Irish historians and archaeologists.

Today, I stumbled across this gem on YouTube from 1979.

Excellent, and a YouTube gem providing interesting insight into long and hard fought political campaign.
For anyone interested in this period of history, you could do worse than to check out the Irish History Podcast homepage, where you’ll find a series of podcasts on the Vikings.

Outline of a viking plot today, beside Christchurch at Wood Quay.

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‘Back of the bank’

Posted in Dublin History, tagged , , , , , , , , , on July 1, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Writing a piece on the modern disappearance of Liberty Lane, got me thinking about other streets and alleys in Dublin that have since changed beyond recognition.

For hundreds of years, it was possible for Dubliners to cross from College Green to Fleet Street via Turnstile Lane and Alley.

The map below, kindly reproduced with Pat Liddy’s permission, shows in the bottom left side how this was possible.

Temple Bar, 1760s. 'Temple Bar - Dublin. An Illustrated History', Pat Liddy, (Dublin, 1992), p. 32

In the 1780s, Turnstile Lane was widened considerably and renamed Fosters Place after John Foster (1740 – 1828), the last speaker of the Irish House of Commons. Turnstile Alley was renamed Parliament Row c. 1775. A narrow alleyway still linked the two but this was finally closed in 1928 due to the construction of the Bank Armoury.

Parliament Row today. Nothing more than a Car Park entrance and a bottle bank.

The Irishman’s Diary in The Irish Times on May 30, 1928 noted that “the closing of the passage at the ‘back of the bank’ … is causing much inconvenience to the many busy people who found it a short cut”.

Another view of the modern Parliament Row.

The modern map of Temple Bar below illustrates just how much has changed not least the blocking off of Turnstile Lane and Alley.  The cobbled Fosters Place is now most familiar to Dubliners for its Starbucks, taxi rank and new Wax Museum while Parliament Row has nothing much to boast for except a Car Park entrance and bottle bank.

Temple Bar, 1990s. 'Temple Bar - Dublin. An Illustrated History', Pat Liddy, (Dublin, 1992), p. 67

Fosters Place today. The road that swings right used to once lead to Fleet Street.


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The Bridges of Dublin City

Posted in Dublin History, Miscellaneous, Social History, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on June 30, 2010| 8 Comments »

It’s a good question for a pub quiz- How many bridges span the Liffey from Heuston Station to where Dublin meets the sea? No doubt you’ll get a plethora of answers, but you’ll rarely get the right one. You can guarantee people will forget that two bridges traverse the water at Heuston, they’ll forget about the little Rory O’Moore Bridge that has more history than most of them, or the DART Loopline at Butt Bridge. They might even forget the ugly abomination that is the East Link, the last connection between Northside and Southside before Dublin Bay separates the two…

Perhaps Dublin's best known bridge, The Ha'Penny Bridge.

The correct answer, if you want to know, is seventeen, starting at Sean Heuston Bridge and working all the way along the river to the Eastlink Bridge at Dublin Port. I’m not going to cover them all in this piece; I won’t be covering the bridges we all know, like O’Connell Bridge or the Ha’penny Bridge for that matter. What I will do is take a look at some of the ones to the west of O’Connell Bridge; ones I find interesting mainly due to who they’re named after or because of their historical importance.

-Sean Heuston Bridge (ex-King’s Bridge, Sarsfield Bridge) 1829

The first incarnation of the bridge was built in 1828/ 9 and named Kings Bridge to commemorate a visit by George IV to Dublin in 1821.  After the declaration of the Free State  in 1922, it was renamed Sarsfield Bridge, in memory of Patrick Sarsfield, leader of the Jacobite Rebellion of 1641. (I’ll talk about the 1641 Rebellion later.) In 1941 the bridge was again re-named, this time after Sean Heuston, a member of Na Fianna h-Éireann who played a prominent role in the Easter Rising of 1916.

At 19 years of age, Seán Heuston was Captain of a twenty three strong company of men, mostly Fianna h-Éireann members around his own age, who were directed by James Connolly to take “The  Mendicity (Institute on Ushers Island) at all costs”. Their goal was to prevent British re-inforcements coming into the city from The Curragh Camp and the West. They held out until Wednesday afternoon, until they were scattered by the 10th Battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers. One of the more striking stories of the Rebellion (or one of countless stories to tell of that week) is that of the Liutenant of the 10th Battalion, Lieutenant Gerald Aloysius Neilan who was shot and killed by a sniper from the Mendicity, while his brother Anthony Neilan took part in the Rising on the Rebel side. He was one of two Liutenants killed in Dublin that day, with another nine members of the 10th Batt. killed at the Mendicity,  as per a report to Prime Minister Asquith by General Sir John Maxwell.  Seán Houston was captured with 22 other men and executed by firing squad on May 8, 1916 in Kilmainham Jail on the charge that he “… did take part in an armed rebellion and in the waging of wars against His Majesty the king such act of being of such a nature as to be calculated to be prejudicial to the defence of the Realm and being done with the intention and for the purpose of assisting the enemy.”

 Kingsbridge Station was later renamed Heuston Station in his honour.

Nothing like this anymore of course, theres more silt than water under it, and the LUAS runs across it!

The Bridge itself was reconstructed in 2003 and now carries the LUAS from Tallaght to the Point.

– Rory O’Moore Bridge, (ex- Victoria & Albert Bridge, Queen Victoria Bridge) Watling Street to Ellis Street, 1859 (Previous structures: 1670, 1704)

“Oh lives there the traitor who’d shrink from the strife, who would add to the length of his forfeited life. And his country, his kindred, his faith would abjure; No we’ll strike for old Ireland and Rory O’Moore.” (more…)

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A Random Drop Inn: Kennedy’s, Westland Row

Posted in Pubs, tagged , , , on June 30, 2010| 3 Comments »

Two very different Kennedy's, one premises.

It’s like a song by the Beach Boys out here today, we’re melting.

It’s all Topshop girls and Choc Ice’s up in Merrion Square, and it’s very hard work altogether. We’re into the inevitable waiting game now, when two people want to hit the pub but both know it might be slightly too early in the day to do so. I give in.

“Shall we go for a….
Brilliant idea

Great, that was easy. From here, we either move towards Foley’s, Doheny and Nesbitt or Kennedy’s. I call Kennedy’s, purely on the grounds of long time no see.

The bar is lovely and quite old fashioned. The first thing that grabs your eye on entering is a picture of Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde himself, who was born only around the corner. There are a few people around the bar grabbing an early lunch, and we order two pints, over the sound of the vuvuzela. I will always remember this summer as the summer of that irritating object. The telly isn’t too loud, but the vuvuzela is. Come to think of it, did ANYONE know what a vuvuzela was last month?

We grab two seats, and only then notice the ‘Pull your own pint’ set-up at the table. I hate, hate, hate the introduction of these things to Dublin pubs, but even some of the best have succumbed to them. In fairness, I can’t spot any more of them about. The pints from the bar are excellent, and we both comment on the quality of the pint. I don’t know why anyone would go for the vending machine option, but you never know with people I suppose. A map of Dublin from the 1700’s stands out on the walls, which are free of tacky rubbish.

So, all this has the feel of a lovely and quiet-enough-except-when-the-World-Cup-happens-in-Africa city centre pub, no? The place is well known as a Trinity College haunt, and it really does feel a bit like a ‘Sunday with a book’ haunt, and that is no bad thing. There’s more to the place but, much more downstairs.

‘The Underground’, is miles removed from the quiet boozer upstairs. It’s home to a music venue that hosts everything electronic and does things a little bit noisy.The door-tax is normally a fiver, but you can always pop back upstairs. Things move slower there, and the noise is (normally) that of chat alone.

We live a nice barman, two empty pint glasses and that sound behind us, and continue on. To the next pub.

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I spotted Daniel O’ Connell on Sackville Street.

Posted in Dublin History, Social History, tagged , , , on June 29, 2010| 3 Comments »

I’ve always liked this old school advertisement for Elvery Sports, in the laneway opposite The Oval pub. Elvery’s is Ireland’s oldest sports shop, founded in 1847. It’s long been a staple of Dublin and indeed Irish life, with strong links to domestic sports. The Elvery’s at the bottom of O’ Connell Street was one I always had a soft spot for, owing to the reappearing Saint Patrick’s Athletic F.C jersey in the window. Behind enemy lines, looking pretty on the northside.

There is a great story told in the wonderful Forth The Banners Go book, taking in the reminiscences of William O’ Brien, where he retells a tale about James Connolly being arrested outside this Elvery’s for a series of public speeches he had given in Dublin, breaking a proclamation forbidding any meetings being held.

That Elvery’s is gone now, making the above a ‘ghost sign’.

It’s been replaced with this:

A newsagents named after ‘The Liberator’, and former Lord Mayor of Dublin Daniel O’Connell. Directly opposite his statue, it’s sure to do a roaring trade in postcards, miniature busts of the man himself and student bus tickets.

It’s not the first newsagents on the street to tip its hat in the direction of history however. Further down the street, and on the same side, you come to this:

Sackville Street was, of course, the name of O’ Connell Street before the establishment of the Irish Free State.The name ‘Sackville Street’ was in honour of one time Lord Lieutenant of Ireland Lionel Cranfield Sackville, Duke of Dorset.

The ruins of Sackville Street, 1916.

Interesting nods to the past, from the most unlikely of sources.

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