#Liffey Street

[streetsofdublin]

(via THE UPPER LIFFEY STREET PLAZA -229593-1)

The idea for a Northside plaza emerged after the refusal of the College Green plaza project by An Bord Pleanála in 2018.

[35canister]

Teens

Every summer in Dublin you can see the teens jumping on Liffey.

Dublin, Ireland 2018

[weewildhaggis]

Dublin, 2022

[onecameraamillionstories]

Dublin at dusk

The River Liffey is Dublin's main river that flows right through the center of the city, measuring at a distance of 82 miles. Endless coffee outlets and souvenir shops surround the river alongside numerous landmarks including the historic Custom House and Samuel Beckett Bridge. In a nutshell, the Liffey is the River Thames of Ireland.

Whether it's heading for a pint of Guinness at one of the many pubs, rooftop bus rides or a spot of retail therapy, we often go for these types of attractions on offer. While travelling, it's often the only chance to do so. However, once sunset arrives and the crowds die down, a new level of riverside beauty emerges. The combination of dusky evening sun and sharp reflections on the Liffey's surface makes not only a great addition to any photo album but also memories that last a lifetime- You can't put a price on that!

[dduane]

...While getting ready to re-cover the short work "Herself" (as St. Patrick's Day is approaching...), and looking for a particular image of the tutelary Goddess of the River Liffey... came across this, entitled:

Anna Livia Has Got Herself A Fascinator

And plainly, so she had. :) ...NO idea who arranged that for her. It's gone now, which is a pity: it was a good look for her.

...This is the same piece of civic statuary that, when installed in a sort of granite bathtub in the middle of O'Connell Street, with water flowing down her, was routinely referred to as "The Floozie in he Jacuzzi."* Later she was removed and stored on North Quay for a while (...on a heap of wooden pallets, most undignified...) until moved again to her present position, in the Croppies' Acre Memorial Park near Heuston Station. There she lies on top of the water—more or less—in what looks like a really uncomfortable position for goddess or mortal...

*NB that this is the the politer of the two sobriquets routinely applied. (But then, as it says in the story, Dubliners have a fairly complex and routinely sardonic relationship with their civic statuary and art installations, and pretty much all of them have rude names. Usually several.)

[garaks-padded-bra]

might be a little unhinged that i'm here from the boba ask but i'm going to ireland soon, do you have any boba recs for dublin or elsewhere? will happily take other asian food recs as well or any recs at all really, it'll be my first time in europe haha. thank you!!

Im Dublin based - Ive said it like five times now but Charap bubble tea in temple bar is lovely, and Filipino Bakery and Café on Liffey street is gorgeous too (i have a weakness for filipino desserts and im not sorry) very nice stuff and its cool to broaden your horizons if u havent had filipino food before cuz it smacks

[callsigns-haze]

Loves Revolution

Chapter 1

Pairing: Bradley Bradshaw (as Micheal Collins) x Jake Seresin (as Harry Boland) x OC! Madison Cassidy

Word count: 3.2K

A/n: This is the first post to my new series so please be nice! I'm going to try to make this into a series so please show this story a bit of love and reblog!

Summary: Bradley, Jake and Maddie have been friends for many years ongoing. Bradley from Cork and Jake and Madison from the troubled Dublin, have been close for life. Now fighting in the 1916 Easter rising and the ongoing history to the Treaty and the independence of Ireland their story lives on...

History: Bradley (represents) :Michael Collins (October 16, 1890 – August 22, 1922) was an Irish revolutionary, soldier, and politician who was a key role in the early twentieth-century campaign for Irish independence. During the Irish Civil War, he served as Director of Intelligence for the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and as a government minister in the self-proclaimed Irish Republic. From January 1922, he was Chairman of the Provisional Government of the Irish Free State, and from July till his death in an ambush in August 1922, he was Commander-in-Chief of the National Army.

Jake (represents) :Harry Boland (April 27, 1887 – August 1, 1922) was an Irish republican politician who led the Irish Republican Brotherhood from 1919 to 1920. From 1918 until 1922, he was a Teachta Dála (TD).He was elected as the MP for Roscommon South in the 1918 general election, but, like other Sinn Féin candidates, he did not serve in the British House of Commons, instead sitting as a TD in the First Dáil. Boland was elected to the second Dáil as a TD for Mayo South-Roscommon South in the 1921 general election. He was re-elected as an anti-Treaty candidate in 1922, but he perished two months later during the Irish Civil War.

History :The Easter Rising (Irish: Éir Amach na Cásca), often known as the Easter Rebellion, was an armed insurgency in Ireland in April 1916 during Easter Week. While the United Kingdom was waging the First World War, Irish republicans started the Rising against British control in Ireland with the goal of establishing an independent Irish Republic. It was Ireland's greatest important insurrection since the 1798 rebellion and the first armed battle of the Irish revolutionary period. Beginning in May 1916, sixteen of the Rising's leaders were executed. The executions' nature, as well as following political developments, eventually contributed to an upsurge in popular support for Irish independence.

Warning: Mentions of gun use, ptsd, mentions of death, mentions of shooting, flirting, mentions of abuse, description of dead body, death, blood

Year 1916, Easter

"Sir, we got the General Post Office surrounded, Sir! We believe that inside are De Valera, Macdonagh, Clark, Connolly and a lot of other rebellions, sir!" One of the funny dressed British soldiers replies to their head commander, with hand at forehead, ready for a salute. This is how the English planned it all along, for the most important rebellions to be stuck at one place, surrounded with no escape.

"So we have the G.P.O, good, very good, but what about O'Connells street, Stevens green, The Liffey and the four courts?" The head commander asked the young man who still held his hand above his head, not moving an inch. "The areas are empty, sir! Either captured or escaped but the rest are at the G.P.O, sir!"

They're all where they were supposed to be, all in one place, no room to escape and they'll give in to this nonsense, they had no way to continue fighting against the British or loyal Irish. The undertakers or loyal Irish were against the rebellions, fighting against them at this very moment, all they had to do now is give themselves up to the English.

"Are there any women inside, lieutenant?" Any innocent woman that had been stuck inside the G.P.O that had been inside the building for the past five days, did not deserve the faith they may face in several minutes from now. The soldiers aligned outside of the building will not hesitate to kill anyone on the inside but the women didn't deserve it.

"There's women of aid and very little volunteers, sir! We believe that one of the fellow female friends of De Valera's help is inside the building. Her parents put her off name Madison Cassidy, but to the public she's known as 'Maddie', sir!" A woman so apparently known to the public but how? No woman that the commander has heard of went by that name or was 'known to the public', no woman has ever had the might or power to be so known in the streets of Dublin or the county of Leinster. "What do you mean 'known to the public', lieutenant?" "She's a public speaker, sir!"

A female public speaker? And that was apparently known to people. Absurd. An absolute absurdity. Some young girl, that he has never heard of decided to become a public speaker. What a joke! She should be scrubbing the dishes, washing the linen, taking care of the kids or cooking and not wasting her time over public speeches. And who would even listen to her? Some sort of female, trying to put her thought into a speech that is apparently supposed to motivate people to do something.

And she believes that's gonna work, but like the lieutenant mentioned, she did work with De Valera. "Bring her to me, nobody lay a finger upon her, understood?" "Yes sir!"

---------------

The gun shots echoed in your ears. It was a sensation as if your ears were violently and rapidly ringing, due to the awful noises that have been haunting your brain for the past five days. You've been in the G.P.O for so long and at this point, it felt like you haven't left in centuries.

You're hiding behind a big, destructed pillar at the moment, leaning your back against it, catching your breath. There was no way out, there was English all around the grand building and mostly everything inside was burning and what didn't make it better is the roof, it's too weak to hold more racket. Even if the English didn't manage to get you guys out, the roof looked like it was only gonna last two more days before swallowing all of you.

"Maddie!" Bradley's voice, called out as the rebel has been looking for you. Him and Jake have been shooting from further up front of the building and now you were unsure if to answer. You couldn't fight more, even though it was written in your blood to fight for the right of being an independent country. But now Leinster, Munster, Connaught and Ulster should forgive you but you've had enough.

"I'm here!" You call out from behind the pillar, Bradley immediately runs over to you, diving behind the pillar like you did as a shelter from not getting shot.

"We're giving up," he told you, those baby cow eyes never dropping your gaze, not even for a second. "What?" You couldn't believe it. You guys destroyed Dublin. The streets of your hometown were in ruins from this rebellion, just so you could give up. That was bloody nonsense.

"They got us surrounded, we have no choice but to give in." "Bradle-" He cut you off, he knew you'd argue or do some sort of disagreement but there was no other way. "I know Maddie, but we had a meeting upstairs and there's nothing we can do they have the four courts and Stevens green and the rest. We have to make it out alive and this is not a step towards that."

You look over the pillar to see men on your side fighting, tired wrecked and most likely depressed. They're not going to make it out alive if we don't give up but if we do they'll probably be shot, either way.

"BRADSHAW!" De Valera calls out, with his old, crispy sharp voice. Sounds like a snob but is the chief, the man everyone listens to and who is leading your group forward. He had to go, you wonder how or when they're going to give up but he lays a soft, delicate, quick kiss on your cheek and gets up and runs towards Jake to help. Jake looks like he had enough.

The building's broken architecture, dust has covered his body and he looks wrecked. He looked over at Bradley running and quickly yanked him behind to a standing pillar up front of the G.P.O. The military has brought in machine guns, full loads and everyone crouches down with full might trying not to get shot. You all were going to die, you knew it. Either shot now or shot later is how you're all going to end, just each had to decide what's best for themselves.

For a full ten minutes of nonstop shooting, the military guns stopped, waiting for a reaction out of the rebellion group. They were going to give up now, you knew it. Dev and the rest ran over to a soldier and wrapped a white flag around his shotgun and told him to head up front.

This is the sign of the rebellions giving up. This was the sign to signify that you guys had enough. One by one they leave the building and you get up from behind the fallen pillar and run to the exit. The second you reach behind De Valera, Bradshaw and Seresin you could tell they were going to give up and this was the end for them.

You stand behind them as the English General calls out orders, "FOUR STEPS FORWARD!" You all do as told. "DROP YOUR WEAPONS!" Anyone who held a gun or anything of that sort does as they're told. "NOW, TWO STEPS BACK!" And that was the last order till the round up.

---------------

An English General was calling out English rebellion names, one by one, dragging them out of the crowd by his ugly cane. "McDonagh. Thomas Clark." Both were dragged out of the crowd by the bloody officer. Each name was dragged out in his tongue and then the actionist was dragged out of the group, except one injured man, Connolly, who was lying down due to a leg wound and instead he was just kicked and carried away on the cloth stretcher.

"Get up, you Fenian swine. Now who else am I missing?" The general murmurs are loud enough for you to hear. He looks up and down the crowd and lays his gaze upon you. "Cassidy!" He calls out your second name and dragged you with his cane forward. Beside you stood the rest of your friends just like before and called out one more name before leaving. "De Valera!"

At that Bradley grunted and pulled a bit forward but Jake got a grip of him and pulled him back. "Brad, if we wanna make out of this shit hole alive, I'm sorry to say but we can't do anything about this," Jake says as he watches the officers drag you and Dev away. And murmurs lowly below his breath, "We can't do anything now."

---------------

They dragged you out of your cell. Death by the firing squad, you can see it so clearly now. Your own fellow friends, the 'Loyal Irish' are about to shoot you and cost you your life in just minutes.

As they drag you through the halls that are dim with no light, you expect happy memories to come but your mind stays dark and blank. You were dragged up as far as the outside where on the floor all you saw was blood from the last corpse that was shot and too heavy and invaluable to carry so just dragged like a worthless shit.

You were lined up against the wooden wall and you looked over to the soldier that was supposed to put a bag over your head but instead said, "Pray." That simple four letter word was a suggestion, a way that god would forgive you but the soldiers were gonna be pissed off more because you were catholic not some prodestant like the English tried, but you still say your prayers as a command. You do the sign of the holy cross and pray.

"I confess to almighty God and to you my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do.

Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault; therefore I ask blessed Mary ever- Virgin, all the Angels and Saints, and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God.

Amen."

And at that the same male officer who just two minutes back, barked at you to pray, gets handed a sack. The sack that was about to be thrown over your head, before one of the fellow Irish citizens on behalf of the English shoots you.

You wanted to scream but nobody would listen. You wanted to run but you wouldn't get far. You wanted to tell Jake and Bradley that you cared about them. You wanted Dublin and all of Ireland to be free again. At that thought the sack was thrown over your head and the big bang of the guns stopped your thinking for all….

----------------

'The fact that l was born in America might save my hide. Either way, I am ready for what comes. The Irish Republic is a dream no longer. It is daily sealed by the lifeblood of those who proclaimed it. And every one of us they shoot brings more people to our side.They cannot imprison us forever. And from the day of our release, Bradley, we must act as if the Republic is a fact. We defeat the British Empire by ignoring it. Now I hear the payers of our beloved friends, Macdonagh, Clark, Cassidy, each of them ended their last speech with Amen and to us that will stand for peace, yet so we shall still try to make it our peace and remember the men and woman in a way that no one ever has.'

That was the first and last letter from Dev and the way that your second name stood out to Bradley was significant. He loved the way you cringed when he said your full name and you crinkled your nose, which caused him to laugh uncontreablly, but now that's all gone.

"She's dead, Jake, they shot her," Bradley, tries not to break apart on the prison steps as he lets those words leave his mouth. The young woman that he admired, fought with was now easily put six feet underground due to a bullet. Such a short, beautiful life of a lady, wasted due to a firing squad.

"She died like she wished, Brad, she wanted to fight for her country and die trying," Jake lets out as he can't stop thinking about you just standing there, waiting for the bullet to pierce your skin. He wanted to cry, scream but he couldn't, not here or now. Bradley was the same he wanted to choke the next guard he saw because there's a chance that it was their bullet that hit you.

"She didn't deserve it, Jake. Not her. She fought but we dragged her into this." "We may have involved her into this, but nobody deserves this faith, Brad. Absolutely nobody."

Year 1918, May

"They let us out of jail so we can do our best to be put inside again," Bradley smirked as the two got of the train that has brought them out of prison sights into town. Shirt drive but freedom for the first time in two years. Final peace with no officers at your back or stupid cells and jail uniforms.

"Don't you see a certain paradox in that?" Jake looked over at his companion in a short shock and repeated. "Paradox." At that Bradley crumbles the piece of paper that he was reading and states like some dictionary. "A contradiction. An immovable force meets an immovable object kind of thing."

The two of them continue walking forward and see a young bride and groom saying their goodbyes to their family as the town was too small for them and they wished to see the world, explore. It brought sadness in both of the men's hearts thinking both about the lovely lady in their past. And sadly the main word of that sentence was past, because whatever hopes they had for her were over now.

"Look, isn't that a lovely picture?" It truly was. It's the kind of picture everyone wishes for and desires at heart. "Maybe we should settle down." Probably a smart thing. To find love in this hopeless place may have made it easier the get through in life and focus on the main goals in a different perspective. In a love kind of way. "Just the two of us?" The other friend joked causing the two to laugh.

"And him." Says Bradley while Jake looks to him in pure confusion. "Who?" Jake had no clue who his fellow friend was referring to and you could easily tell that by the expression on Jake's face. Bradley simply points at the car with two men standing outside. Tom and Sean the men they've fought the Easter Rising with. The two, were friends with Jake and Bradley and somehow we're still not chickened out to help them.

"How are you?" Bradley asks giving Tom a hug as the two have not seen each other since the line up. Tom smiles up at him, since he falls rather short in height and pats Bradley shoulders. "Well, as best as a rebel can be." With those words leaving his mouth, Tom turns to Jake giving him an equal hug as Sean quickly hugs Bradley. "Get in you two, we got a show to attend!"

"How did they know we we're here already?" Bradley wonders looking over his shoulder to find two of the loyal Irish that have been following him and Jake even since the two of them have left jail and entered the not so free freedom. They were gonna get chased down on every step they make every. Any plan will be tracked and this is not what freedom is supposed to be about.

"They know what we eat for breakfast Bradley. This is the bare minimum of their poxy power," answered Sean while driving on a country side road, filled with branches everywhere and no actual pathways for pedestrians. It was a quite Irish road; nothing close to being straight, it was filled by potholes and indents and it wouldn't even be defined as a road, it was just a bunch of loose gravel.

"Well there's only one answer to that. We find out what they eat for breakfast!" Bradley exclaims as Jake looked at his friend in pure confusion and a bit of terror. The terror of how had he managed to survive with the lad for so long. The two years in prison together and many years of friendship before that. People would call him mad if they seen that he survived that long with the crazy brunette. "You're a mad fucker, Bradley," Jake said shaking his head side to side.

"Yeah, but I'm the mad fuck you hang out with," said the brunette, laying his baby cow eyes upon his friends, spring green ones. The two of them are close. They've always been that way but some bond that they have will never be broken. No such thing on this world can interrupt their friendship.

"So are the two of you looking for anyone out the old leading squad?" Asked Sean, with a hint of suspense in his voice. Was there really anyone from the old leading squad left that wasn't shot, hung or killed in any kind of way. Bradley looked over his shoulder to see that the loyal Irish were still behind them, hunting them down like hawks for their pray, right on their heals, step by step behind them. "Well, who can we look for? Either shot or some other cruel way of getting put down into the poxy earth!" Said Jake as he was sitting down, in a kind of slouch, hand behind his head, leaning back with his old fashion cap over his eyes to block out the Irish sun that was barely ever showing at times.

"Ah, Maddie made a big fit out of it a whole while back. Pissed her off, it did! Several speeches and annoying the British that they bloody had to have a full law talk with her but she won!"

Maddie? As in their Maddie? Madison Cassidy? The woman that the two grew up with and who sadly lost her life to the firing squad in 1916? That can't be right. She gott shot, just like the rest. Full prayer ending and mad shit like tha'. This didn't make sense. It didn't add up. "As in our Maddie?" Exclaimed Bradley, thinking he's mistaken, he saw his dear friend get dragged out the line up and heard about her shooting. "Yeah. Don't you guys know Maddie? Madison Cassidy? She worked with De Valera, yeah she still does all the speech things." Answered Tom , expecting the two men to have met the young, independent, confident woman.

This shook the two men inside. They've heard and believed for the last two years the woman that the two of them shared interest for had died, cruelly, due to the firing squad. "We thought she died!" Jake said, he's still shocked. Once he heard that she is alive, he quickly sat up from his slouched position, rubbed his hands down his face and fixed his flat hat. "Nah, they wouldn't manage to put her down that easily!"

"We heard she got shot by the firing squad after the G.P.O!" This is what they have believed and hearing the news that she's been alive the whole time doesn't quite add up to the two men. "Nah, she's alive mate!"

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[ziasann]

star-crossed streets (first draft)

AU where Neuvillette is a running Presidential Candidate for the Court of Fontaine in the upcoming elections. Furina is a rising actress from the Opera Epiclese on her way to receive her own prestigious Teyvat Star Award. 

Neuvillette only ever knew her name uttered by the mouths of other gentlemen.

“Miss Furina!” 

The backdoor of the reserved VIP club splayed open, gorging out two figures of a man and a woman. They weren’t a couple, but it was obvious with how the inebriated man leered after the gorgeous lady that she was the object of his drunken infatuation for the night. 

The silver and blue-haired woman called Furina, however, did not seem as enthusiastic as the lad. Her face was painted with a forced smile and crossed eyebrows towards her admirer.

Furina…

She was the soloist earlier at the beginning of the party, wasn’t she? Neuvillette recognized those striking indigo eyes and her gentle voice when she introduced herself after her splendid performance. 

“Alas, sir, I am not very much interested in dating or so…” Furina politely refused as the man encroached further to her small form.

His fellow politicians were excited when they heard the Lady Furina would sing for their party. Navia, his running mate, had a friend who had another friend acquainted with the famous songstress Furina. She was able to pull some strings and invite her to their celebration tonight. 

According to the latest polls, Neuvillette was the leading candidate in the Liffey Region. The entire campaign deserved some drinks and reveling after weeks of persevering work. A boost to their morale for the harshest weeks were yet to come.

Neuvillette, after finishing his rounds of greeting friends and colleagues, had enough socialization. He stayed in the shadows of the smoking area at the back alley, a lit cigarette between his fingers, unseen as he watched the singer and her pursuer before him.

When the stranger grabbed Furina’s gloved wrist, Neuvillette dropped his stick and stepped in. His boot squashing the half-smoked cigarette under his heel. 

“Lady Furina had clearly explained her disinterest towards your affections, sir.” His presence was not welcomed as he spoke over them, the minimal light shining over his features as Neuvillette emerged out of his hiding place. “If you still decide to pursue her, we can take this matter easily to the Court.”

“M-Monsieur Neuvillette!” The man stammered, eyes as wide as saucers at the sight of him. “There is no need to raise this tiny issue at Court, I was merely hoping that Lady Furina would grant me some time of her day.”

“And she had refused you already,” Neuvillette retorted. The way Furina settled her riveting gaze towards him almost had Neuvillette shuddering. “Either you apologize to her right now, or the judges will grant you some time of their day soon.”

“My sincerest apologies, Miss Furina,” the bloke humbly bowed to the singer. “I could not help myself with such beauty and voice of yours.”

A woman worthy enough to commit a crime for, Neuvillette mused. How dangerous.

“It is fine,” Furina dismissed, but her eyes never averted from meeting Neuvillette’s stare head-on. “Please leave me alone now.”

The rejected man scampered away from them, his hurried steps toppling over the silence between Neuvillette and Furina. 

Her brows were still slanted, and there was no smile of relief on her lips after thwarting her nuisance away. Her unusual reaction befuddled Neuvillette.

“Is there any other problem, Miss Furina?” Neuvillette asked. Maybe this wasn’t also the best place for a conversation, the road reeking of smoke and alcohol, the cold air buzzing with club music from the speakers indoors. 

“I can handle it,” Furina glared, the softness on her tone was replaced with haughtiness. In a blink, the angelic atmosphere she exuded inside the club had dissipated in a wisp. “It’s not the first time.”

Gone was her pleasing personality, she was rough all around the edges. Her drastic change in behavior astounded him, he swore she was charming the people inside earlier with her meek smiles and amiable exchanges. 

He couldn’t imagine Furina biting back, but here she was. 

Neuvillette couldn’t stifle a chuckle or two in the desolate vicinity, no wonder the man moments prior was fascinated by her. He doubted that the man had caught a glimpse of Furina like this. 

“W…What’s wrong with you?!” Furina accused, crimson blooming on her cheeks. The fierceness fading in her skin. “Never have I ever seen a Presidential Candidate making fun of his constituents like this!”

“I find it amusing, your act of a fine, proper lady during the party,” Neuvillette confessed. “You had me fooled into thinking that you needed help, when it is obvious you could have handled your persistent admirer anytime.”

“I was only saving his face,” Furina huffed. “If I reject him in front of his friends, he will never recover.”

“Which would not bode well for your popularity as a rising actress, would it?” Neuvillette observed.

“It would not,” Furina affirmed, then glanced at the pavement behind him where his shadow was drawn. The flat cigarette sticking to the ground. “In the same manner that your smoking habits would have a negative impact on your approval ratings as a future President of Fontaine.”

For a second, Neuvillette impulsively thought he could quit the nicotine if Furina asked. Maybe the wine they clinked their glasses with at the party was stronger than it seemed. 

“Well,” Neuvillette admitted, a bit too honest even though he shouldn’t. Not when the elections were nearing, and every weakness of his could be exploited. 

“It’s better than the people.”

A statement that could be taken out of context by the journalists, or the citizens. Every sentence he declared, every comment he stated since his filing of candidacy for presidency had to undergo the scrutiny of his advisors. A single approval or denial could destroy the entire career he had carefully built over the years. 

Neuvillette expected the worst, one less vote since Furina found out he was not perfect. Maybe she’d tattle to the news outlets tomorrow and his team would battle a scandal early in the morning with a hangover. But she only smirked beguilingly, her cerulean eyes teasing under the moonlight.

“I agree, anything is better than the people around sometimes,” Furina seconded. “Now we know each other’s secrets.”

“That, we do,” Neuvillette nodded, and the longer he talked with her, the more he was in peril. “I bid you luck in your nomination for this year’s Teyvat Star Award.”

He sauntered towards the backdoor, ready to enter the bar again and return to his campaign managers. Wriothesley and Sigewinne would worry too much if he wasn’t in their sights for more than an hour. 

“Thank you, Mister President,” Furina leaned by the bricked wall. As much as Neuvillette would like to, they could not barge into the club without attracting the attention of the tabloids both in the politics and entertainment sectors. Furina would either wait a few minutes more before going in or leave the night altogether. 

“Congratulations again for your win in the Liffey Region, and I wish you the best in the upcoming elections.”

They wordlessly bid their farewells to each other, their masks and persona donned again in order to achieve their respective dreams. A sacrifice but a necessary one. Neuvillette couldn’t remember the last time he was this transparent and honest to another person, maybe during his time in the university. 

He was glad he was witness to a side of Furina the world could never see. She was destined for far greater things, as he was also trudging on the path less traveled by the common folk. 

Neuvillette wished they’d never meet again.

Or else, he would hopelessly fall in love with her.

[mariacallous]

The young rioter surveyed the scene. A bus and a car blazed on O’Connell Bridge while masked groups marauded across the city centre looting shops, attacking police and shooting fireworks, turning the air acrid.

A police helicopter hovered and officers with shields and batons were assembling at the far end of O’Connell Street but the heart of Dublin, for now, belonged to the young man in a black hoodie who started to dance in the glow of the flames.

Comrades cheered as he punched the air and jigged to a soundtrack of breaking glass, shouts and sirens. He held his arms aloft like Rocky and paused, mesmerised by the mayhem. “Beautiful,” he said. “Fuck-ing beautiful.”

For other people in Ireland and elsewhere who saw images of Thursday’s anarchy it was the night Dublin went mad. For participants it was the night the city came to its senses – that here was an overdue venting of rage, a reckoning.

Ireland, according to this narrative, has opened the floodgates to foreigners with no controls or checks, leaving rapists and murderers to prowl the streets, and no one – not the government, not opposition parties, not the media, not the police – is taking it seriously.

So when social media rumours attributed a horrific stabbing attack on three children and a creche worker to a foreigner – Algerian, Moroccan, Romanian, versions varied – groups descended on Parnell Square, the scene of the crime, and decided to unleash chaos.

“People need to fight for this country,” said Samantha, a 27-year-old mother, as masked youths clashed with police attempting to retake Eden Quay along the River Liffey. “I’m not racist; I don’t mind people coming in if they respect Irish people. But the likes of the toerags coming into this country – they’re not vetted and are causing havoc.”

The unfolding scenes, in contrast, were legitimate havoc, a corrective to a political establishment impervious to previous protests over rising numbers of asylum seekers, said Samantha. “When we do things peacefully we get ignored.” She had left her five-year-old at home without dinner in order to join the revolt, she said. “I’m out here fighting for my country. We shouldn’t have to do this.”

Others echoed the refrain: to make Ireland safe, wreck the capital.

“It’s not right but it had to be done. The government is not listening,” said one man in his 20s, a bystander rather than a looter. “This isn’t against foreigners. We were the first emigrants. Immigrants are driving our buses, cleaning our hospitals – we need them. But they need to be vetted.”

Ireland’s demography has been transformed in recent decades as a booming economy reversed the historical flow of emigration. A fifth of the 5 million people now living in Ireland were born elsewhere. A recent increase in refugees from Ukraine and other countries fuelled a backlash amid concern over a housing shortage and straining public services. The number housed by the state jumped from 7,500 in 2021 to 73,000 in 2022.

Amid the destruction on Thursday night there was some linguistic nuance, with “non-national” usually preferred to “foreigner”, and “unvetted” or “unregulated” preferred to “illegal”, and an aversion to the label “far right”.

There was nothing subtle about the targeting of police. Bottles, bricks, fireworks and other missiles rained down on officers, many of whom lacked helmets and shields. The crowd cornered and attacked isolated officers, leaving several injured. Eleven police vehicles were damaged.

Journalists too were unwelcome and photographers had to conceal cameras. “He’s with the Guardian,” a man in his 60s, holding a tricolour, shouted. Younger, hooded men formed an intimidating cluster. The worst sin was to be with RTÉ, the national broadcaster, or the liberal Irish Times, which were accused of cheering the “replacement” of Irish people by new arrivals.

Many onlookers were appalled. “It’s heartbreaking for Dublin, for Ireland, for Europe,” said Matthew Butler, 28. A 53-year-old postman who gave his name only as John expressed fury. “Just a bunch of scumbags out to wreck Dublin city. The gardaí [police] should have free rein to beat the shit out of them.”

On Friday, Leo Varadkar, the taoiseach, said the rioters had shamed themselves and Ireland. “I want to say to a nation that is unsettled and afraid: this is not who we are – this is not who we want to be – and this is not who we will ever be.” The Garda commissioner, Drew Harris, blamed the disturbances on a “lunatic, hooligan faction driven by far-right ideology”.

The mob had diverse motives. Some belonged to fringe political groups and were veterans of protests against refugee centres. Some were opportunistic gangs that seized the chance to loot sportswear and alcohol. Others came for the spectacle and the chance to post dramatic footage on social media.

All, however, scorned the idea that Ireland is a safe, stable society. The economy is at full employment and the state is flush with tax revenue but their social media feeds depict a country overrun with “non-native” predators such as Jozef Puska, a Slovak man convicted earlier this month of murdering a teacher, Ashling Murphy, in 2022. As the night wore on, an unfounded rumour spread that one of the children in the Parnell Square attack had died.

It did not seem to matter that one of the people who stopped that attack was a Brazilian Deliveroo rider, Caio Benicio, and that Dublin gangs have assaulted numerous South American couriers in recent years.

Chilling threats of assaults against immigrants were made on a WhatsApp group titled “enough is enough”. “Everyone bally [balaclava] up, tool up,” said one man. “Let’s show the fucking media that we’re not a fucking pushover, that no more fucking foreigners are allowed into this poxy country.”

However, the mob targeted property and police rather than foreign and non-white bystanders, who watched in bewilderment.

As police gradually regained control James, a 33-year-old labourer, confronted a phalanx of shields on Burgh Quay, drawing cheers from others who hurled missiles. After being sprayed in the face, James staggered back to Butt Bridge where a Brazilian man, who had experience of being teargassed in his home country, offered recovery tips.

James thanked him but in an interview said “unregulated” arrivals were ruining Ireland. “We’re rammed to the gills with foreigners doing mad shit. You can’t do this to Irish people. I’m getting out of this country, I’m burning rubber. It’s not safe to walk around here.”

Mohammed Gaber, 27, an accountant who moved to Ireland from Sudan and is now an Irish citizen, came into the city centre to check on his sister, Ebba. He lauded his adopted home but worried about what the riot might augur. “Irish people are so welcoming. I’ve never experienced any discrimination. But this is crazy. This is the first time that I feel that there is something big.”

With roads sealed off and smoke pluming over Dublin, Ebba, 33, was blunter. “This is terrifying.” She was not sure of reaching her job as an emergency doctor at a police station.

[hannahssimblr]

Chapter Thirteen

Jude slides into the seat across from me at the table of this brightly lit Turkish kebab place on Liffey Street. He’s only bought a bottle of Pepsi, while I’ve piled the table high with taco chips, lamb kebab, chicken goujons and a giant strawberry milkshake. I eye him as he twists open the cap of his drink. 

“Wow, greedy.” I say.

He laughs. “Yeah you’re going to have to have me airlifted out of here. Can I’ve a chip?” He reaches out but I smack his hand away. “You’re doing that thing that boys always complain about, when girls don’t order enough food so they steal theirs.” 

“Come on.” He says. “Just one, for God’s sake.” I relent and let him, but only one. I eye him suspiciously as he plucks it out of the box.

“Did you want to count it?” He teases. “To make sure I’ve not hidden another one in my hand?”

“Okay just shush for a minute.” I urge him. “I just really want to eat.” He signs and leans back in the seat, taking slow, leisurely sips of his pepsi while I tear at my food like some kind of feral beast. Nothing has ever tasted as delicious as this particular kebab, in this particular restaurant, even though the floors are sticky and there’s a drunk man snoring in the booth across from us thus creating an interesting ambience. 

“Skipped dinner?” He queries after a few minutes of silence where he allows me to satiate myself.

“Mmm.” I say. “Didn’t have time to eat.” I grab a napkin and swipe it across my mouth, afraid that it’s as coated in sauce as my hands are. I try to get some small talk going to distract from what is probably an abominable sight for him. “So you ate at some Mexican restaurant earlier?”

“Yeah, we did.”

“Risky move, I’d say, bringing an American to a Mexican restaurant.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because everyone knows we can’t ever compete with the way they do it over there. Everyone’s always like ‘Oh you don’t know Mexican food until you go to the states’. Or whatever.”

“Or Mexico.” He supplies, and I grin.

“In case your memory has been lost to the sands of time, I did actually live my entire teenage life in Dublin. I was here for the inception of the burrito craze, but still, you’re right. It’s not the same.” He drums his fingers on the side of the plastic bottle. He’s still got some of that zippy, restless energy that he used to have, but not as intensely as before. I no longer get the sense that he might rocket out of his seat at any moment. “It was nice to see Shane and Claire again, they both look good.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah! Shane looks so much fitter than he ever did, he’s in great shape.”

“He’s been training a lot. He has to drive back home twice a week to train with the team, and even outside of that he’s in the gym the whole time.”

“Good for him.”

“Bit miserable though, you don’t think?”

He smirks. “Clearly you think so.”

“Well.” I begin, swallowing a huge mouthful of kebab. “He doesn’t really ever do anything fun. He gets barely any free time, and even at that his coach has all these strict rules about how much he’s allowed to drink and whatnot.”

“Alright Evie.” He says in a mock-condescending voice, but it makes me feel a little ashamed all the same. I never realised how easily unkind words spilled out of my mouth before, and it’s not even like I have a particular problem with Shane. But Jude is being nice, he goes on speaking before I start flailing around looking for an excuse for myself.

“I remember having to do that back when I was on my school rugby team.” He reminisces. “Funnily enough, another rule was abstinence.”

I glance up from my food. “Really?”

“They said that sex’d diminish our energy and testosterone and we’d end up playing a weak game, but…” He shrugs. “I don’t think it ever made a real difference. It was probably another one of those weird Catholic rules that your country is obsessed with.” I bristle a little bit against the way he says ‘your country’ like he’s divorced from it, like he hasn’t got our weird Catholic blood in his veins. 

“So come on, Evie.” He says, leaning his elbows onto the table. “What’s been going on with you? I can’t believe it’s been so long since we spoke.”

“I know.” I say. “I guess we lost touch at one point there.” I slide my eyes up to meet his, not feeling as jovial as I had a minute ago, and his smile falters to become a little rueful. “Yeah, I regret that. Life got so busy for me so quickly after I moved, I guess it was kind of a whirlwind situation.” He touches his hair self consciously. “But I thought of you often, I always imagined that we might see each other again.”

“Ah well, here we are.” I say. “A year and a half later.” I watch his hand reach out to touch my arm but I swiftly move it out of the way to grab my milkshake so that his palm hits the table instead. He curls it slowly into a fist and pulls it back onto his lap. “You look really different.” He says. “You know, I always think of you with that really long hair.”

“Yeah I cut it all off.”

“ And are you still running? And swimming? Do you still do all of that?”

“No, actually, I don’t.” I say. “I suppose I fell out of the habit of it when I moved here, I don’t really do many of the things I used to do.” I’m different now, I’ve changed so much since we last spoke. I look different, I do different things, and I feel differently about him now than I did when I was seventeen. I have to keep repeating this in my head as he gives me the kind of familiar smile that threatens to wipe out the last nineteen months. 

I stare at him unsmiling. “How’s things in Berlin? Better than they were here after all?”

“Really good. Hey.” A frown comes between his eyebrows and the corners of his pretty mouth turn downwards with concern. “Are you angry with me over losing touch?”

“Why’d you ask?”

“You’ve just gone so chilly all of a sudden, I don’t know.”

I pause for a moment. “It’d be a bit intense if I was still angry over something like that, wouldn’t it?”

He doesn’t say anything.

“Well, good to know you got my email. It’s a pity it wasn’t worth responding to.”

He laughs with surprise, as though he was expecting me to act the way I used to act. Docile. “Oh, come on, don’t be like that. I could have dealt with it better, but I was in a new city, and there were all of these new people. I left it sitting there too long and then, well, it felt like it’d be weird to respond after so much time.”

“Well, you know if you really wanted to you could have emailed me in a new thread.”

He arches his eyebrow “And equally, you could have sent the first message.”

I snap my mouth shut and pick through my food again, knowing that he’s right, but also knowing that I wouldn’t have been capable of doing something like that, double emailing him, like some kind of pathetic, desperate fool. The kind of pitiful low that I’d never have stooped to, not in front of him. 

“You have a new piercing in your ear.” I say quietly after a few moments of silence, grasping at anything that will stop this conversation heading down a too-vulnerable path. He reaches up to fiddle with the third tiny hoop in his ear, this one on the left side, looped around his anti-helix. 

“Yeah I figured that I already have a girl’s name and my dad thinks the other two piercings mean I’m gay so I might as well double down.” He grins. “I got it done when I went to Slovenia, actually. It was painful.”

“Little baby.” I tease. “I don’t remember mine being that bad, I got it done when I was like sixteen.”

His eyes go wide as he suddenly recalls. “I remember your piercings, you used to have four on one ear. Let me see.”

I turn my head to show him that they’re all gone now, nothing dangling from them but a simple set of gold hoops in my lobes. “I took them all out.” I admit. “They just didn’t feel like me anymore.”

“Damn, I always thought they were cool.” I almost remind him that nothing about me back then was cool, but then stop myself because I know now that language like that is a trap and he’ll only feel obligated to deny it. 

“Any other surprises up your sleeve?” I ask him, and he quickly steals another chip. I don’t stop him, finally starting to feel human again. 

“Funny you should ask.” He says as he chews on it. “I got this in Thailand.” He rolls up the left sleeve of his sweatshirt to show me the tattoo on the smooth inner skin of his forearm. It’s a mango on a stem with two leaves, done in simple black ink with this appealing, sketchy style. It looks a bit like something he might have drawn.

“Oh, nice.” I say. “Did you design it?”

“No, the woman in the tattoo parlour did. We were just passing by and I knew I had to get something done by her, like, I knew it was a kind of a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”

“Does it mean something special?”

He grins. “Nope, it’s just a nice drawing.”

“Fair enough.” I wonder what it’s like to be so nonchalant about something that’s going to be on your body for the rest of your life. It’s exactly the kind of free spirited thing that I wish I was capable of doing, but sometimes I have anxiety dreams that I’ve gotten a tattoo that I regret in a really prominent place like my face and for some reason nobody will laser it off for me. I take them as a sign that I’m not ready for anything so permanent. He picks at my chips again and I slide them towards him so he can tuck in with fervent enthusiasm, and while he eats I ask him about Thailand. 

“I went May last year.” He says. “I always wanted to visit. So my friend Jonas and I decided to take off for a month while we had the chance and it was incredible. Seriously. I think everyone should go and experience it if they can.”

“Really? What was it like?”

“I can’t even do it justice by trying to describe it to you. C’mere.” He pats the seat next to him and pulls out his phone. “I’ll show you some pictures.”

I slide out of my seat and move in next to him, being very careful to leave enough room for Jesus between us in case our legs touch and sand of those dangerous feelings I used to have come flying back. 

“No Blockia.” I comment. 

“Hm?”

“Your old phone. It’s gone.”

“Yes.” He grins. “I couldn’t fight the future anymore, it just wasn’t practical, I needed Google Maps to get around.”

“They have torches built in now, did you know.”

He exhales a laugh and shakes his head. “Alright, well, let’s look at my holiday to Thailand, when you’re ready.” And he starts scrolling through photographs of the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen, his phone screen becoming like a travel brochure with almost unrealistically spectacular vistas. Thailand looks like paradise, crystal blue waters and white sand, these huge rocks covered in lush vegetation jutting out of the sea and the sky awash with gold as the sun sets over a bay. “That was Railay Beach.” He narrates. “Jonas got food poisoning from a street vendor and was holed up in the hotel for two days so I just wandered around on my own.” Next he shows me photos of beach bars with thatch roofs, of intertwining roots of mangrove trees and of people selling shell necklaces under colourful tents. He’s taken a snap of a hand painted sign that says, in English: Beach This Way.

“You know, in a funny way, it kind of reminds me of the beach we stayed on.” I tell him. “Just something about the way those signs are painted, it’s like how it was at the Surf Shack.”

“Actually, I thought the same thing.” He says, and flicks to the next picture, which is him and a big, blonde German looking guy, presumably Jonas, standing in a little wooden boat holding a pair of oars. “Oh, this is when Jonas was better.” 

“I like your hair band.” I say, snickering. 

“Ha. Yeah, well, my hair was longer, I needed to keep it out of my eyes somehow.”

“Did you keep it?”

“The hairband? Why? Do you want it?”

“Oh yeah for sure, gimme. It’s so stylish.” 

He laughs and flips through more, and tells me about them all, Phuket, Ko Samui, Phi Phi islands, and even Bangkok for a few days before they flew home again. In all of the photos he’s got that golden tan that I remember he used to have, summer coloured skin lost now to the winter, and he looks so free and easy and so happy, riding on a motorbike, lying in a canoe, shirtless on the beach and stretched out doing a goofy pose on a sun lounger, I find myself mesmerised by this depiction of his life, like he’s only ever having good days, only ever in gorgeous places, smiling, happy, and I let myself get sucked into the fantasy that a life like this is possible for me too until he scrolls too far and I have to look at a picture of him kissing his girlfriend. My stomach drops instantly. 

“Oops. “ He says. “Went too far.”

I laugh awkwardly. “Oh, don’t worry, it’s okay.”

“That’s my girlfriend, Astrid.” 

“She looks pretty.” 

He nods in agreement. “She’s, yeah… she’s absolutely beautiful.” He quickly flips to another photo of her where she’s not locking lips with him and makes me look at her smiling face so that I can pretend I didn’t spend months cyber stalking her. I don’t really know what to say. “Yeah, wow, she’s something else.”

He stares down at the phone with this adoring expression on his face as though he’s the luckiest man alive and this feeling comes over me that I haven’t felt in a very long time. It’s the same way I felt when he rejected my misguided teenage attempts at seduction, and the same way I felt when I saw his face when he spoke to Michelle. It’s the feeling that I’m not what he wants. I’ll never be what he wants. The memory of it is too much and all over again I feel the stinging pain of knowing that I offered my love to someone who saw no worth in it. 

I start gathering my empty milkshake cup and the greasy papers onto a tray to dump them into a nearby bin. “We should get going now.” I tell him. “I’m sure everyone else is waiting for us at the bar, and they’ll be closing soon.”

“Right.” He says, pushing himself upright and swiping salt from his black jeans. “Thank you for the chips, by the way. I wasn’t even that hungry but those things are like crack to me.”

“No problem. And I appreciate you coming with me to get food.”

Prev // Next

[streetsofdublin]

AN INTERESTING PROPERTY FOR SALE IN STONEYBATTER

When I was young one would would not haven chosen to live in the Arbour Hill area of Dublin but by the 1970s it started to become a very desirable location and over time houses there became expensive

[fatehbaz]

[I]n the period of eerie suspension before the explosion [...], those who registered the [...] uncanny [...] experience[d] a condition that [...] would become familiar to everyone living in a targeted city during the Cold War: the sense that the present survival and flourishing of the city were simultaneously underwritten and radically threatened by its identity as a nuclear target. [...] [I]nhabitants of Cold War cities [...] became accustomed to a more overt and permanent variant of the uncanny frisson [...]. Lobbing incendiaries and explosives through the roofs and windows […], the British gunners gutted portions of the Dublin city center; during the week of the Rising, 500 people died […]. The more frequent and extreme outbreaks of traumatic violence in everyday urban life […], in the early-twentieth-century imaginary, the city had begun to host new forms of sudden mass death and severe physical destruction.

Cities had, of course, been sites of mass death before 1916.

But the Easter Rising differed from nineteenth-century urban barricade fighting in the use, principally by British soldiers, of more precise and destructive weapons; fired from the ground, from rooftops, and from gunships in the Liffey, the new cannons, incendiaries, and machine guns rapidly reduced whole blocks of the city center to ruins. These emerging military technologies and strategies link the Rising to the Great War then raging in England and on the Continent, whose fields and cities had become proving grounds for new weaponry and modes of warfare. In Ireland and the Great War, [...] “Like the Western Front [the Easter Rising] became a war of attrition, and the lessons of the Western Front were taught again in the streets of Dublin.” […]

---

Though the shelling of Dublin in 1916 reminded observers of Ypres, Louvain, and other European cities ruined in the Great War, it might as credibly have called to mind a different list: Canton, Kagoshima, and Alexandria. During the second half of the nineteenth century, British naval bombardments made rubble of these coastal cities […].

The naval bombardment of undefended cities and civilians, particularly those in colonial territories, paved the way for the first airplane bombardments, in which the imperial powers of Europe dropped bombs on nonwhite, non-European adversaries and anticolonial forces.

Italy pioneered airplane bombardment in 1911 by bombing Arab oases outside Tripoli; British planes bombed Pathans in India in 1915, Egyptian revolutionaries and the Sultan of Farfur in 1916, a Mashud uprising on the Indian-Afghanistan border in 1917, and Somaliland and the Afghan cities of Dacca, Jalalabad, and Kabul in 1919.

---

Several years before the inhabitants of European cities experienced it, aerial bombardment had been established as a uniquely colonial nightmare. [...] [T]he initial use of airplane bombs against colonies was foreseen and even fed by a racist fantasy pervading early-twentieth-century European science fiction, a fantasy of bombing subject races either into submission or out of existence. The willingness of several signatory nations to ignore Article 25 when bombing nonwhite soldiers and civilians made colonial towns and cities the first civilian spaces secured by the implied threat of bombardment from above.

In the world war […] the brief tenure of aerial bombardment as an exclusively colonial technique ended when imperial powers launched the first bombing campaigns against the cities of other imperial powers, initiating a change that would later find its apogee in the nuclear condition: the reconfiguration of the major metropolis as target.

---

Text by: Paul K. Saint-Amour. “Bombing and the Symptom: Traumatic Earliness and the Nuclear Uncanny.” Diacritics Volume 30 Number 4. Winter 2000. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[dailyanarchistposts]

24-hour party people-RTS and Indymedia

Before discussing the planning of Mayday in more detail it is worth mentioning two other important factors in the run up to the first of May 2004 — RTS and Indymedia especially as many of the people who ended up in DGN were or are also involved in RTS and/or Indymedia.

The first couple of RTS street parties in Dublin were fairly small affairs but over a couple years these events started to attract more people. In 2002 there was a Mayday RTS along the banks of the Liffey. Hundreds of people came to dance, chat and drink in the holiday sunshine. As the RTS was finishing the partygoers were viciously batonned off the street. The cops were quick to claim that these unprovoked assaults was their response to a completely fictional anti-capitalist Mayday riot akin, they said, to events in London the previous year. The media ran with this until Indymedia footage of the boys in blue in action radically changed the way the story was covered. In general the role of Indymedia Ireland in promoting non-authoritarian radical politics cannot be underestimated but the work done by Indymedia correspondents and editors at this time was invaluable both for vindicating the assaulted protestors and for raising the profile of libertarian dissent. Mayday 2002 put Indymedia and anti-capitalist protest on the front pages and the event remains firmly lodged in the minds of most Irish people as symptomatic of increasingly aggressive and untrustworthy policing policies and the emergence of a new type of protest.

The following year there was another well-attended Mayday RTS in the city centre that passed off without any police violence. This further established Mayday in the public mind as, at least partially, a day of libertarian protest and these chaotic, joyful and defiant street parties had a marked influence on the type and nature of events organised over the Mayday weekend in 2004.

[poems-from-around-the-world]

Ireland, Summer 1994 - Batsheva Dori-Carlier - Israel

Translator: Lisa Katz (Hebrew)

Through the window of the Aer Lingus plane, a green fan of fields embroidered with brown furrows. “The weather is fine in Dublin, no sign of clouds”. (Did the pilot sound surprised.) In the arrivals hall of Shannon airport you wrapped me in your gray raincoat: “How was the flight?”

You opened the door to the apartment on Drumcondra Street with a royal sweep of your arm. We shared yellow butter and whole grain bread, Leonard Cohen songs and insights we’d gathered (sanctimonious, unquestioning). I looked through the kitchen window, charmed by the red brick wall in the back yard, half-covered by greenery, an unkempt beard.

In the evening in the pub on Grafton Street, joy flowed thickly, simply, like foam. Our coats clung to each other on the polished wooden hanger, soaking up poetry, pipe smoke and melting steam. We drank from mugs of thin glass decorated with golden harps: a pint of black Guinness poured into the evening’s talk. Your bachelor bed gazed in envy as we slept entwined.

“There are some dead certainties and some lively doubts” claimed the sign on the church wall. I copied snide quotes on a postcard to my sister. In the afternoon we rested on the banks of the Liffey, fumes from the brewery wafted through the air like drunken sheep. Tomorrow we’ll set out for our trip to the Dingle Peninsula, three days at an inn.

We stood at the edge of an overhang: clear salt water swirled over purple sea weed and foamed, rough as a fist, on Ireland’s coarse skin. We were silent, careful not to be swept away into the constant quarrel between land and water.

Your old car led us faithfully, navigating roads covered with the leaves of trees and shrubs. I was twenty-four and complicated, Yeats and Maud Gonne on the horizon through the windshield.

[hollywoodfamerp]

PUB CRAWL LOCATION #4: THE BRAZEN HEAD

Established in 1198, the gastrobar has been thoughtfully refurbished to retain the original features that tell the story of their deep history within Dublin city. As the oldest pub in Ireland, they have a colorful history that spans many years. The Brazen Head is located on Bridge Street. This is the area from where the original settlement that was to become Dublin got its name. Beside the pub is the Father Matthew Bridge crosses the river Liffey. It was at this very spot that the original crossing of the river was located. Here reed matting was positioned on the river bed which enabled travelers to cross safely at low tide. Enjoy endless drinks and mocktails while the live music plays! A band will be there as classic Irish songs that tells a story plays while you have a jameson and ginger ale by the fireside!

[alchemisland]

SubDublin

A wild hunt rides out tonight

Hate is sallied forth

Troubles now are here again

What did we learn up North?

Send them all underground like the Poddle

“Send them all back” its backing breaking bottles

The ill-thought glow of a public bus in flames

Tear chairs out and carry them up the Gaol

Execute the Gael, upon them seat James.

Ana Livia I live here and could more make

Of breaks spent refusing requests for change

The Green goes red, the red is green, easter egg 1916

Skyline laws and peeling frontages, Blessing basins by ton, and Burgesses

Dublin’s not one for change

The change is never spare.

To do for Dublin, to be its Blake

Garda bike the Liffey takes

Clandestine as a married man’s Fetlife username

Print it all, Ashley Madison, immortalised on Traitor’s Gate

Leon jumped into the Liffey, on its bridge the youth getting lippy

In Garda’s face, he returns the lean projecting strength 

Hoping comrades will invade the scene.

The sound of Irish rebellion is a wailed air from a keening woman

The anguished wail of a beauty-leched crone

A blood-bloated battle God whose icon is a crow

The Dwarven rhythm of iron working stone

Rebellion here has a distinctive air

A smell you’d know, an old one, a vintage rare

Wolfe Tones escaping the stout-stripped cheeks of the men who’re there.

Liars light the beacon fires inciting false rebellion

Aren't your countrymen frightened inside? You are, all of you, Trevelyan

No foreign man on Irish shores will loot thy corn for thy family’s stores

Meanwhile on every wall a pale-eyed Eastern gentleman crowned in thorns

Forgiver of forgivers, Enoch that Cain built, Enoch that spoke of rivers, Gods with horns

Riots relish, the city hellish again recalling old destructions; upriver, approaching forms

Drakeprowed viking vessels and direct invited Norman settlers

Arnott’s gutted and cameras culprits spy, what you’d imagine: spides, idlers and should-be-spayeds

We have taken up our hod and spade and ensured that public transport is yonks delayed

We left behind our God and said ‘sure, let’s have something that’s worse instead’

We have always been a mongrel breed, loam bed that rejects no seed.

A country of tall tales, tale tellers talking their tones tuning and tales talling transcendentally

Tall men up north, not quite hyperborean or Pictish but a breed apart, Giant seed

At war their well whetted bodies in violent supremacy the battle ballet, at sport their breathstealing speed

An island of ancient sports and good humoured rough stuff, Tailteann games which bring earthly fames

Men who drain drams and etch out dire dreams, Doirbh agus Draiocht and Craic agus Ceoil

Men who express disbelief through their anuses: “it is in me hole.”

Out with hatemongers down Winetavern street

Into the Liffey, we’ll observe ye all sink

The river that stinks with your blood flows sweet

The soul of the nation is suffering now, I think.

A wild hunt rides out tonight

Hate is sallied forth

Troubles now are here again

What did we learn up North?