le cool Dublin Walking Experience #5: 9th July 2011
One of the challenges we decided to set ourselves with the le cool experience is to keep exploring new areas of the city and attempt wherever possible not to confine ourselves to 'regular haunts'. This time Dublin 8 was in our sights.
We met at Portobello Bridge, did a head count, and made our way down South Richmond Street towards Wall and Keogh. Tea and sushi for starters. But not just any old Barry's Tea, the proprieter Oliver T Cunningham introduced us to his fantastically exotic selection of organic teas which he's amassed. An old wallpaper shop used to exist here. Now there's a real slice of transporting yourself to a hang-out you'd be raving about if you found it in Berlin. The secret is to sniff the lids of the jar.
We briefly reminisced about Gig's Place - one of those you'd have to end up there at 5am to truly appreciate joints. It's shambling outside. One memory is of their most memorable art on the walls of the likes of Tina Turner, Michsel Jackson and Stevie Wonder. The flashback was hillarity at the time posing beside these. The hangover from the putrid wine was also remembered.
Across the road we went to The Crypt to meet Stephen 'Bird' Flanagan. We descended down the stairs into this wonderous hide-out for all things religious. Tabernacles, pews, chalices - you name it, Stephen has it. He told us of the characters that have come calling in to him (fax from Jesus in hand on one occasion), the spin-off business from providing props to productions such as The Tudors and he showed us the encased the slipper of Saint Oliver Plunkett. Quite the find.
From here, we admittedly slightly veered off path in our enthusiasm to show all assembled the scintillating fashion and food combo that is Dolls Botique and Bibis on Emorville Avenue. Heading town bound we dropped in on Barbara Nolan + Jennie Flynn, the duo behind the wonderful Designist store on George's Street. We'd featured them in le cool back in May so wanted to finally take the chance to hear some more of their story. Both these places illustrate the passion and risk-taking in the city we've been witnessing and the wonderful offshoots for us all when people are prepared to be passionate about what they love.
An intriguing contrast to this was our finale at the NamaLab. Ronan Murray introduced us to a number of the participants and ideas emanating from a postgraduate architectural initiative in DIT. le cool writer Kevin Breathnach had penned an article in le cool that week about it and we decided what better way to end this experience by embracing some of the wonderful and fanciful ways in which we can misfortune into hope.
Eclectic to say the least.
Photos with thanks to Nadia Gativa