People & Community

I blame my father. His Super 8 film projector got me where I am today. That, and his collection of one-reel highlights from all the great Disney movies. Since Cabra didn’t have a cinema anymore, I was forced to migrate... to Phibsborough. The building was once home to the Silver Skate Ice Rink, but to me it will always be the State Cinema - the jumping off point for a life-long addiction. The place where I saw Grease, Empire Of The Ants, The Cat From Outer Space and so many others. And then there was Star Wars, from which, I gather, none of us have ever fully recovered. There were times Phibsborough just wasn’t big enough. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s Arnotts’ car park... sorry, formerly the Adelphi Cinema, on Abbey Street! In 1978, Superman: The Movie was a watershed. Outside of mass, I’d never been in such a huge building, filled with so many people. As John Williams’ music buckled my ears, I finally realised I was part of something far greater than myself.

After living in Jersey City for the first decade of my life, we moved to my mother's hometown, Dublin. My parents had divorced and the neighbourhood we were living in was starting to deteriorate rapidly. My father stayed on in his native city and we hopped on a plane to Ireland. It took a long time for me to find my peace with this place. The food here in the 80's was brutal and I quickly realised why. There was nobody here of any skin colour that wasn't lily white and freckled. Consequently, no proper New Jersey pizzas, bagels and barbecued chicken. These had been my dietary staples. And although I was well used to tough city kids, on my own I was no match for the lads from Charlemount street and Swan Grove, who on my first day of school beat me up because I asked the teacher if I could please use the "bathroom."

I believed up until relatively recently that I was a mixed-race Dubliner. ‘My dad is a North Sider, and my mother is a South Sider!’ I would declare, explaining away my propensity for Chipstix-and-cheese bread rolls washed down with a carafe of Amerone. My brothers and I have always joked that my Coolock-born dad must have nicked our Dun Laoghaire-born mother’s handbag, led the chase north of the Liffey and eventually coerced mam into staying there.

Dubliners… Think you’ve seen it all? Cast your eyes skyward. As charming as Dublin’s skyline is, it’s never exactly been noted for its towering buildings. Quite the opposite, in fact, with the highest towers in Dublin reaching an average of 60 metres. Although this may be changing. ‘The Exo’, a 73 metre high structure in Dublin’s Docklands, was recently built and permission has been granted for other high rise developments. For now though, Dublin is low-rise in nature. And it is perhaps because of this that neither inhabitants nor visitors t

The other night, driving through the Phoenix Park, I remembered. Remembered what it is I love most about Dublin. Sometimes, it’s tough to retrieve all the good things about your native city – particularly when you’re surrounded by the aftermath of a general election, the consciousness of all those things that the city gets wrong, the awareness that so much about Dublin can be challenging. But on a lovely spring evening – the first, after a dismal, murky winter – the Phoenix Park unrolled itself in all its green, luscious glory.

You’ve probably heard that Stoneybatter has been gentrified. They wrote about us in The Guardian, so it must be true. As the fourth generation of my family living in the neighbourhood, the notion of gentrification sits uncomfortably with me. Certainly, we have seen changes in recent years, and some of my neighbours have been given the short end of the stick since “boomtime” passed. The people still living in the O’Devaney Gardens flats were abandoned without the new homes and services that they’d been promised. Like anywhere in Dublin, rents are soaring and building companies are buying up property by the handful, which has priced some people out of the neighbourhood.

Let's be honest; the internet can be mildly intimidating (if not positively terrifying) at the best of times. What to do, then, if you're of a generation unacquainted with the World Wide Web? Recent statistics suggest that just over 50% of people aged over 60 in Ireland have never used the internet. The problem, ultimately, is that seniors can feel a type of 'digital isolation'. The solution may lie in good old-fashioned human interaction: people together, in a room, exchanging knowledge. Call it a digital dig out.

When I was a kid we would drive to Dublin once or twice a year from County Limerick and get excited as we passed under the flyovers on the dual carriageway somewhere near Naas. The Ilac Centre had glass elevators back then, and we would ride them repeatedly before going for ice-cream sundaes on a terrace near the library. I won some anti-litter art competition when I was very young with a picture colored in with markers of St Stephen’s Green covered in apple cores and cigarette butts.

Since 1996, historian Lorcan Collins has brought visitors around Dublin’s most significant sights to tell them the story of the 1916 Easter Rising and its role in Ireland’s struggle for independence from Britain. He also has a podcast called Revolutionary Ireland and has written The 1916 Handbook for O’Brien Press. Derek O’Connor sat down with Lorcan for a chat to find out more. He discusses what to expect from his walking tour, the true blue Dublin and how he came to land his dream jo

Wanton quirkiness, perennial liveliness and an endearing touch of shabbiness have always been part of Phibsboro's innate appeal. It was where I wanted to live as a DCU student in the late nineties, instead of the gentler, more refined environs of Drumcondra where I was instead. Phibsborough was where the cool kids hung out, with an ice rink, a surfeit of charity shops and good pubs like The Hut, where the Johnny Cash Appreciation Society were in situ on a Sunday night. And then there was McGowan's, where young love was almost certainly guaranteed to bloom, especially after a few drinks.

Any day in axis Ballymun is filled with potential. That's what makes working in the arts and in a community as vibrant as Ballymun so special. For me arts, culture and creativity is about people, about ideas, about synergies and most importantly about listening - really listening. axis is all about this, about creating a space where people can be entertained, try out new ideas in a safe environment, meet, discuss, and come to the heart of the northside to make magic. I have had the pleasure of working in Ballymun, with a great staff, community, artists, and a multitude of stakeholders for nearly 12 years now, and I can safely say that no two days in all that time has ever been the same.

If you’ve wandered in the direction of South William Street (or South Williamsburg Street, as local wags are wont to call it these days) anytime of late, specifically past Busyfeet & Coco cafe, you may have come across your first sight of the new Dublin.ie identity. Truth be told, it’s kind of hard to miss. We’re talking about this rather impressive – and altogether massive, in every sense of the word – piece of wall art especially created by acclaimed Dublin street artist Shane Sutton.