Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for April, 2011

A city of empty buildings and street corner homes.

Posted in Uncategorized on April 4, 2011| 3 Comments »

Gerry Breen, Lord Mayor of Dublin, is enjoying his strolls to work as of late. All has changed utterly on the streets of the capital.

I would have encountered eight beggars on a short walk through the city now I’m seeing just one. Begging is much more random now and it is not as pervasive or aggressive as it was before the new Act came into force.

It costs in the region of €1 million a year to operate the offices of the Dublin Lord Mayor, for those of you who like figures.

The lack of filthy poverty stricken lumpens on the street is the effect of a wonderful new law, which has seen 177 people arrested for begging on the streets of Dublin over the course of just a few weeks. This Irish Times report on the matter makes for interesting reading.

THE GARDA Síochána has arrested 177 people for “aggressive begging” in the two months since new begging legislation was introduced on February 2nd.

The Criminal Justice (Public Order) Act 2011 was enacted by the Government to deal with an increase in incidents of aggressive begging and harassment.

Beggars of course have a habit of getting in the way here, for example this man who disgraced the nation by appearing in the international press when Ajaj Chopra from the IMF was enjoying a leisurely stroll around the Stephens Green area. It is about time these economic criminals were brought to justice.

Gerry, enjoy the view.

Read Full Post »

Metro North (if it ever goes ahead) will apparently look like this.

Posted in Miscellaneous on April 3, 2011| 2 Comments »

I remember having a good go at the Metro North on here before, wondering if the project was now little beyond a pipe-dream.

I noticed the official Facebook page for the project was recently updated with this graphic showing the travel distance involved on the line:

There is plenty of debate around the project of course. Anyone with a keen eye will have noticed that Carroll’s gift shop in particular seem firmly opposed to the Metro project, along with other businesses along Westmoreland Street who have been displaying anti-Metro North posters prominently in recent years.

The graphics below are designed to show what the Metro service will look like. What do you think? Of course, the story of King Dan and Big Jim needing to find new homes for the construction period is an aspect I’m not too crazy about…..

(more…)

Read Full Post »

I declare MylesDay a great success.

Posted in Dublin History, Events, Pubs, Reviews on April 3, 2011| 1 Comment »

From Hunt Emerson- Firkin (1989). Scanned from 'the brothers' collection.

I popped into the inaugural MylesDay on Friday. Flann O’Brien is among my favourite writers to emerge from this country, and The Palace Bar is undoubtedly the most fitting of places to honour him, owing to his frequent custom in times long past.

I arrived at 2:15, a quarter of an hour before kick-off. Alas, there was not a seat to be found in the pub. Journalists, writers, plain people of Ireland like myself and more besides had gathered for a day of readings and performances.

Val O’Donnell got things off to a flying start with bookhandling. It’s all in the delivery of course, and Val was just the man to launch the day:

A visit that I paid to the house of a newly-married friend the other day set me thinking. My friend is a man of great wealth and vulgarity. When he had set about buying bedsteads, tables, chairs and what-not, it occurred to him to buy also a library. Whether he can read or not, I do not know, but some savage faculty for observation told him that most respectable and estimable people usually had a lot of books in their houses. So he bought several book-cases and paid some rascally middleman to stuff them with all manner of new books, some of them very costly volumes on the subject of French landscape painting. I noticed on my visit that not one of them had ever been opened or touched, and remarked the fact.

‘When I get settled down properly,’ said the fool, ‘I’ll have to catch up on my reading.’

This is what set me thinking. Why should a wealthy person like this be put to the trouble of pretending to read at all? Why not a professional book-handler to go in and suitably maul his library for so-much per shelf? Such a person, if properly qualified, could make a fortune.

One by one excellent performers rose to pay tribute to O’Brien and as the clocks ticked away the laughter went on unabated.

I hope MylesDay becomes an annual event. Well done to the organisers, speakers and performers. The brother says he’s raging he missed it.

My thanks to FXR for the photos:

Read Full Post »

Richmond Park on a Friday.

Posted in Uncategorized on April 2, 2011| 2 Comments »

My thanks to Paul Reynolds for linking to these images on our Facebook page, they come from a wonderful set of photos he took at the Dublin Derby last night.

The match was unexciting, though perhaps more exciting for me than most people present owing to a wonderful day spent in The Palace Bar celebrating Flann O’Brien. We’ll leave it there.

Read Full Post »

Obama b2b Queen (May 2011)

Posted in Miscellaneous on April 1, 2011| Leave a Comment »

New t-shirt lolz from Fresh Milk Clothing. Cheers to Chomsky for bringing this to our attention.

Read Full Post »

The first Black Monday

Posted in Dublin History on April 1, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Page 235, The antiquities and history of Ireland (1705).

Dublin has the disreputable honour of given the world the first known Black Monday.

On Easter Monday 1209, the native Irish, primarly the O’Tooles and others from Wicklow, massacred over three hundred Dublin citizens (many who had recently moved over from Bristol) in Cullenswood, close to modern Ranelagh.

The Irish Fireside (Vol. 1, No. 10, Sep 3, 1883) recalls that the native Irish:

… suddenly sprang from their lurking place on the unsuspecting (citizens), of whom they slew three hundred, besides a multitude of women and children who had accompanied their friends to partake in their harmless recreations.

The affair, which was dubbed The Cullenswood Massacre, was commemorated by Dubliners at its very spot every year for up to four centuries after.

It is generally assumed that the actual massacre took place in the area between modern Ranelagh and Rathmines which was afterwards christened Bloody Fields.

The Bloody Fields name was well-earned as in 1649 during the Battle of Rathmines it was the scene of another brutal slaughter, this time over 3,000 of the Marquis of Ormonde’s men.

This area, which now encompasses modern Oakley Road and Palmerston Road, is still known to some older locals as Bloody Fields.

Ranelagh and Cullenswood. c.1842

Read Full Post »

6. Stencil Art; Dublin Graff (’05 – ’07)

Posted in Street Art on April 1, 2011| 4 Comments »

Between 2005 and 2007 I took nearly 450 pictures of street art and graffiti around the Dublin area, primarily in the city centre and the South-Eastern suburbs. At first using a number of throwaway cameras and then an Olympia digital camera. I was hoping to capture a little bit of Dublin graffiti social history with the fanciful idea of putting a book together of all my snaps. I soon lost interest but thought it would be worthwhile to upload the best snaps here so they don’t go to complete waste. Enjoy.

The sixth feature in our series is on Stencil Art both political and non-political.

(c) Jay Carax

(c) Jay Carax

(c) Jay Carax

(c) Jay Carax

(more…)

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts