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Ghost-ly Estates

April 25, 2010 by Ciarán

With the government set to introduce measures to tackle the growing problem of ghost and unfinished estates that have blighted many parts of the country, I’ve been musing over a few pieces that discuss how many vacant or half built estates there are out there. And to be honest, the result is shocking; It does go someway to explaining why the economy has gone arse over tits, when it placed it’s future on a building industry that was obviously over-supplying a demand that was sure to run out; A recent report by the National Institute for Regional and Spatial Planning estimated that there were over 600 “ghost estates” and a figure of 300,000 empty, newly built properties in Ireland. Mainly located in the midlands and west of the country in towns that were heralded as “commuter” and “gateway” towns like Mullingar and Tullamore, they were built to serve a steady stream of workers who, rather than pay the extortionate property prices in Dublin, preferred to pay the slightly less extortionate prices and commute the couple of hours every day. Madness.

What does this have to do with “Dublin Life & Culture” I hear you ask? Well, for while the Irish landscape is littered with ghastly looking ghost estates, we have ghostly looking mansions, castles and buildings of historical importance that are left to the throes of time also. “Abandoned Ireland” is a website I’ve been championing for a while now. The website is a personal project, started in June 2008 by Tarquin Blake. The idea is to document these buildings before age and rot erase them from our landscape forever. The website has the tagline; “Record it. Document it. Before it’s gone; Touch nothing. Take nothing. leave only footsteps.”

Bolands Mill, as Dev left it? Credit: Tarquin Blake, Abandoned Ireland

Phoenix Park Magazine Fort. Credit: Tarquin Blake, Abandoned Ireland.

I’ve spent hours trawling this website, there are some fantastic pictures here, covering everywhere from Bolands Mills and the Magazine Fort in Phoenix Park Magazine Fort (two examples above) to abandned mines in Wicklow. You wonder somehow, in two hundred years, will the ghost estates of Dublins sattelite towns induce the same sense of wonder as the buildings AI is documenting? Somehow I doubt it.

Check out www.abandonedireland.com.

Posted in Dublin History, Miscellaneous, Social History, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment »

The Sweet Life will make your day.

April 25, 2010 by Donal

OMG! etc.

I don’t swing through George’s Street Arcade as much as I should, to be honest.

Some of my favourite records (Yes, records), books, clothes and other odds and ends came from that place. It normally involves having a bit of time to root, and maybe it is a matter of time. Us Arts students are very busy people, you know.

Anyway, there are two things I’ve always got an eye out for in a corner shop. One is Irn Bru (jesus, I love Irn Bru) and the other is Roy of the Rovers bars. Addictive things. Every now and then you stumble across them, or another classic- Dipdabs, Highland Toffee, Animal Bars- all reminders of various things and times. All addictive too. Seems to be the reaccuring feature of things you shouldn’t indulge in, cruel world.

So on my last wander through, I came across The Sweet Life. Having only my busfare and a tenner that was due to go into someone elses hand, a visit was out of the question. Still, even the sight of it blew me away and made me a bit hyper.

In their own words, “We are a sweet shop located in Dublin’s City Centre, specialising in sugar free, gluten free, dairy free, no added sugar and natural chocolates and confectionary”

Bleh, none of that means anything to me really. It’s the retro-stand at the front of the shop I’m captivated by. EVERYTHING is there. Your local shop may have some of them (Palmerstown youths know the goodness of Blackjacks all too well…)but seeing them all there, in their old school glory (and at reasonable enough prices) is a sight to behold. All your teeth, fecked forever.

It’s a bit like one of those rare occasions when one of the ancient buses goes past you on the street,or a culchie relative shows up with a bottle of TK. Go for a look if you’re about town, they’re there Monday to Saturday between 10 and 6.

Posted in Miscellaneous | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment »

A Terrible (Yet Somewhat Compelling) Children’s DIY Film Is Born.

April 24, 2010 by Donal

Ah, Mr. Duignan. What were you at.

Quite the find this.

Using a variety of Windows Movie Maker sound effects, toy guns that make noise and doing their best not to laugh and ruin the whole thing, this effort is crude, historically all over the shop and a bit strange. Still, it is compelling, and I lol’d, as we say on the internet.

I spend a great deal of time flicking through Witness Statements, newspapers and other odds and ends to do with the Rising, but obviously think it’s important to be able to laugh at something that is, by the look of it, a school project. Some don’t agree:

“this is an appaling insult to a greatman”,

“If this was a kind of project the teacher should be made to clean the school´s lavatories and recite Yeats´s “Easter 1916″ a hundred times at least”

and

“they’re probably too stupid to take in any form of criticism against either the movie or their moral as well”

Are among the comments this production has produced from the general public, amazing. In Devs day, they’d be well and truly missing by now. I would have given anything to be sitting in that class when this was shown.

Have a look:

“An action packed satire on the shocking Easter day that James Conolly lead an army of rebels against the British Black and Tans”

Posted in Dublin History, Miscellaneous | 2 Comments »

“Sean Fitzpatrick- Guilty Of Treason”

April 24, 2010 by Donal

“A number of people are occupying the head offices of the Anglo-Irish Bank in central Dublin”
BBC News, 10:54 this morning.

Just a few snaps from today, when Eirigi activists staged a sit in at Anglo Irish Bank, grabbing media attention for most of the day. I was nearby at the National Museum so swung down, and by that stage (1pm) the occupation had been underway for a number of hours. It continued until around 2pm, when protestors left the building, and no arrests were made.

Now, snaps.

Posted in Miscellaneous, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Bit of red.

April 23, 2010 by Donal

Passing the Sean Russell statue in the car, noticed this. A serious glisten of it from the road grabbed my attention. Is it the remains of the last attack, from the ‘day of the swastikas’, or something new? In retrospect,the serious glisten off the statue could be the result of an attempted clean up, for example.

Sean Russell was a veteran of both the 1916 Rising and the War of Independence. He was instrumental in establishing the IRA’s bombing campaign in the United Kingdom around the time of the second World War, a strategy he swore by the merit of. In Adrian Hoar’s wonderful biography of Frank Ryan ‘In Green and Red: The Lives of Frank Ryan’ he states that Russell insisted to a friend that


“I am not a Nazi. I’m not even pro-German. I am an Irishman fighting for the independence of Ireland. The British have been our enemies for hundreds of years. They are the enemy of Germany today. If it suits Germany to give us help to achieve independence, I am willing to accept it, but no more, and there must be no strings attached”

He has remained a controversial figure in Republican history, as he was vehemently opposed to the left-wing break in Republicanism led by men like Peadar O’ Donnell and even Frank Ryan years previously. If anything, he embodied that old hardline (and hard headed) motto that “England’s Difficulty Is Ireland’s Opportunity”

Some more serious ‘blasts from the past’:

Posted in Miscellaneous | Tagged | 1 Comment »

A Sunny Day In Whelans

April 23, 2010 by Donal

Tuesday May 18th 2010
A Sunday Day In Glasgow/ Dum Dum Girls
Whelans- Tickets from tickets.ie

The Best Summer Ever- A Sunny Day In Glasgow

“Album closer “The Best Summer Ever” at last distills the band’s meteorological whorls into a psych-pop sunburst befitting its title” says Pitchfork. Translated,it’s just a bloody good tune, really.

If the blog has the look of a more history focused blog lately, due to the nature of many of my posts in particular, it’s more down to workloads than anything. A big massive pile of essays/assignments and other odds and ends (I know, smallest violin, right?) are keeping me within the walls of this fine West Dublin house. I don’t know if anything is happening in Dublin, it’s a 15 minute bus trip I can’t afford to make. Plenty of procrastination you can do in 15 minutes instead of sitting on a bus anyway.

Saying that, there are positives to spending all day at a computer. Who needs JStor or other academic resources (Like eh, Wikipedia) when you have Last.FM, the Hype Machine, and a never ending world of MP3 blogs. On occasion, I connect a name with a gig. As happened in the case of A Sunny Day In Glasgow.

Poor Glasgow, the ugly sister of Edinburgh really. Not that this band have anything to do with the city, being a Philadelphia project. Turns out I had some of their content sitting pretty in Windows Media Player already, most likely there from a ‘right click/save’ fest over the break, and on playing it went ‘ohhhh! That tune!’

One online account states that about a dozen people were there last time they played upstairs in Whelans, though this time, with the assistance of the much hyped Dum Dum Girls and all their internet popularity badges firmly pinned to their blazers, things should be different. While I never like the “what do they sound like?” question (We’ve already had ‘Robot Rock’ on here, what are people going to think ‘Shoegaze’ means…) I think Last.Fm is on the money with Asobi Seksu, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and their sort up there. Anyway, that’s why we embed music, isn’t it?

Whelans in May seems miles away. Now,If you’ll excuse me there’s a Word file with, quite literally, my name on it.

Posted in Events, Music | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment »

Willie Bermingham,1942-1990.

April 22, 2010 by Donal

“Willie Bermingham described graphically the awful scene he encountered in that chalet on that bitter cold February day. A frail, old man, blind in one eye, lying dead on a wet bed with an old blanket gripped in his left hand, two cold rooms in that timber chalet, no fuel for the fire and no food in the press and he half naked, stiff in his death sentence, alone and in misery”

This piece is taken from the fantastic The Dublin Fire Brigade: A histoy of the Brigade, the Fires and the Emergencies by Tom Geraghty and Trevor Whitehead, recounting the time Willie was sent into a residence in 1977 as a routine part of his job. The residence was located at Charlemont Street.

Below the picture of Willie I have posted a wonderful and quite witty piece he wrote on himself, which always brings a smile to my face when I read that last line. I think it only right to allow characters of such magnitude to speak for themselves.

Don’t just think of him when a fire engine goes roaring past you on the street, but rather when you encounter an elderly neighbour in need of aid of any sort, including company.

Willie will be twenty years gone from us this Friday.
ALONE continues to work on behalf of the elderly people of Dublin.

“Willie Bermingham landed at the Rotunda Hospital, Dublin 29th March, five years before the big snow of 1942.

One of a family of seven with a father -a farmer, merchant, dealer, turf cutter, scrap man or just a hard worker, and a mother- a great woman to milk cows, feed pigs, cut turf or feed the nation.

Educated at Goldenbridge, St Michael’s Inchicore, on the streets, in the bog and at the university of life itself. Married with 5 children from 17-5 years. Hobbies include hoarding junk and curios and foreign travel.

Joined the Dublin Fire Brigade in 1964 and spent a long time pushing for the pension. Favourite food, good old irish stew and lots of fish. For breakfast several mugs of tea at work. Also loves to eat lots of red tape to teach the bureaucrats a little manners.”

Posted in Dublin History, Social History | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments »

Camden Place Letterbox

April 22, 2010 by Sam

Walking through Camden Place last Sunday I spotted this little gem.

A tiny letterbox.

That appears to be working condition (as the flap can still open).

Slotted in the middle of a huge grey wall.

Anyone know anything more about it?

(Apologies for the terrible image) Letterbox, Camden Place. Picture - JayCarax 18/04/10

Letterbox on right. Picture - JayCarax 18/04/10

Posted in Miscellaneous | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment »

A lad of eighteen summers.

April 21, 2010 by Donal

An unusual and very rare one, from Leonard Cohen in Dublin 1972.

Perhaps even more unusual than a recent rendition of the song ‘Kevin Barry’ posted here, by Paul Robeson.

Update: Since this post, we’ve ran a piece on Kevin and his fellow UCD student Frank Flood, both executed during the War of Independence.

Posted in Dublin History, Music | Tagged , , | 3 Comments »

Well it’s more believable than Snakes on a Plane…

April 21, 2010 by Ciarán

Three years ago, rumours surfaced that Samuel L. Jackson, one of the coolest men on the planet (Snakes on a Plane aside) was a lifelong fan of Bohemian FC.
The information initially came from a paragraph on his Wikipedia entry which read:
Jackson is an avid basketball fan, and especially enjoys the Harlem Globetrotters and the Toronto Raptors. Jackson is a lifelong fan of Eircom League soccer side, Bohemian F.C, and he can often be seen at home games at Dalymount Park with his family. He is well-known and respected among the club’s staff and fans.
Within a week, there was a media frenzy; The Biography channel took this information as fact and mentioned it on an hour long special dedicated to the Pulp Fiction actor. Irish radio picked up on it fairly quickly and ran competitions with questions like “Where do Bohemian FC play?” The Sun featured a half page article and a photo-shopped picture of Jackson wearing a Bohs hat and scarf. Even the Teflon Taoiseach got in on the act and piped up that he’d be attending the next Bohs game. A Bohs spokesperson was forced to admit they were unaware of any link at the time. (Rumours abound that Shamrock Rovers were set to announce Danny Glover as a lifelong fan were never confirmed. )

A Scouser? Don't make me laugh...

But others were not so quick to believe. The statement disappeared from Wikipedia, and with Jackson set to appear on The Late Late show, an intrepid Bohs fan made contact with one of the researchers on the show and asked about bringing the subject up. The response was:
” The audience, least of all Samuel L. Jackson, wouldn’t know who or what Bohs is.”
As Johnny Logan has proved several times (see here and here) since then without need of prompting, this statement is complete rubbish. A letter appeared in The Irish Independent saying Jackson could not be a Bohs fan, as he had never been seen in the stands at the home of Irish football, Dalymount Park. One sharp Bohs fan living in Belgium retorted with:
“He can still claim to be a Bohs fan in the same way thousands of Irish people claim to be fans of British clubs like Manchester United, Celtic or Liverpoool, and yet have never set foot in Old Trafford, Parkhead or Anfield. Maybe Samuel watched Bohs in an Irish bar in downtown Washington  decided that makes him a “fan”. “
It’s been a long time coming but maybe heres the proof that the naysayers need; A poster on www.thebohs.com provided us with a picture this week that closes the argument once and for all- Samuel L Jackson is indeed a Bohs man. (Or if he wasn’t, he certainly is now!)

Proof at last that Samuel L. Jackson is a Bohs man. Photo credit LA Bohs.

(A big shout out to all at thebohs.com for the info for this piece!)

Posted in Football Articles, Miscellaneous, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments »

“You can’t buy our History”

April 21, 2010 by Ciarán

Football chants surrounding certain teams histories have been bantered back and forth on this island and elsewhere over the last couple of years given the influx of investment into the game by money grabbing swines. Liverpool chant at Chelsea “You can’t buy our history,” and we all laugh at Shamrock Rovers for swapping theirs for shiny new accomodation in Tallaght.

But there is a little bit of history at least for sale at Whytes Auctioneers this week (viewing in their galleries at at 38 Molesworth Street; auction at the Freemasons’ Hall, Molesworth Street; Viewing is Tuesday to Thursday 20-22 April, 10am-6pm and Friday 23 April (day of sale), 10am-4pm.) On sale is a varied selection of League of Ireland memorabilia including this:

1929-30 Irish Free State Football League Winners gold medal to Bohemians FC

 The above medal is estimated to reach between €5-700 at the auction; And rightly so. The twenties was a “Golden” era for the team; Two years before this, the Bohs team, captained by the great Harry Cannon, had swept the boards and won every trophy available.

Also going at the auction are a wide selection of programmes from both League of Ireland and International games including this gem:

1946 (21 April) Football Association of Ireland Cup Final Drumcondra v. Shamrock Rovers programme

Definitely worth heading along to if you have an interest in all things football related. All details are at the Whytes website linked above. And if anybody feels generous enough to pick up the Bohs medal and pass it onto myself, feel free. It’d be going to a good home.

Posted in Events, Football Articles, Miscellaneous, Social History | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Controversial elephant on Abbey Street.

April 20, 2010 by Sam

Spotted by Jim Scully. Photo taken by hxci, April 20 2010.

Spotted by Jim Scully. Photo taken by hxci, April 20 2010.

Spotted by Jim Scully. Photo taken by hxci, April 20 2010.

Our friend Jim Scully spotted this and sent it on. Hxci reckons that it went up over the weekend as it certainly wasn’t there on Friday. (Edit – It seems it’s been there since at least Thursday)

It seems to be an anti – government street art piece that is making a crude reference to the recent Polish plane crash that killed 96 people including the president

Banksy it ain’t.

Posted in Miscellaneous | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments »

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