The Dublin Community Blog

Recently there has been many column inches (see NY Times) dedicated to the launch of an eco-friendly canvas bag by designer Anya Hindmarch. This canvas bag was made popular by a combination of celebrity endorsement (such as Keira Knightly), unavailability and the fact that Anya Hindmarch bags usually start at several hundred pounds. This bag retails around GB£5 but some lucky buyers have been selling theirs for up to GB£200 on ebay. So popular is this bag that long queues formed at its release in the UK, US and Hong Kong and several people were hospitalised after a stampede in Taiwan!

Yours truly is lucky enough to have secured one in a lottery from the website We Are What We Do. I’ll post a pic when I get it into my paws.

Tomorrow the bag goes on sale in Brown Thomas at 9am. Purchases are limited to one per person.

Start queueing now ladies

Karen, RedMum and myself met on Friday evening for the release of the last Harry Potter novel. During the evening we wandered around several of the book shops in town and took photos of what was going on. I was most surprised by the number of adults at the event. Sure there were lots of kids, but most of those standing in queues outside shops at 12:30am were adults in their mid to late 20s.

Red Mum has an excellent write up on the evening, so I’ll point you there for full details. For my part I’ve added photographs of the night to this blogs group on flickr.

Some of us here met up the other evening for the midnight launch of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I wrote about it on my own blog which you can read here, but I thought I’d post some photographs from the other night here. I’m sure Decs will add more at some stage and you can see more on my Flickr account here.

 

   

Recently my wife and I heard about “secret� performances that David O’Doherty has been giving this week for free at The International Bar. So we invited a few friends to meet us for some good craic at “The DOD Show.� Unfortunately, the comedy theatre above the International Bar is quite small, so it filled up really quick and only one of our friends was early enough to be able to join us before they stopped letting people in.

Even though David was just rehearsing some new material in preparation for Edinburgh’s Fringe Festival, he was in good form last night. Even when he stumbled around a bit on stage to put things together, you got the sense that he didn’t actually have to put that much into it to be funny. He’s just naturally a hilarious bloke. David’s act usually includes his signature use of cheap Casio keyboards to perform songs such as the one in the YouTube clip below.

Here in Ireland, you can catch David on RTE2 for “The Modest Adventures of David O’Doherty.� Also, CLICK HERE to go to David’s MySpace page.

As you meander between umbrellas on Grafton St, stop for a moment at BT2 and have a look at the art in the window. ArtDublin07 is an exhibition of 300 works of art in aid of Focus Ireland. Each work of art is 400mm x 400mm and the cost is €350. The exhibition runs from July 16th to the 30th and more art can be found inside the store. Hurry though, there are lots of red dots

More info can be found on on the following sites:
Artdublin
BT2
Focus Ireland

I’m hearing ads on the radio talking about water shortages and the amount of water thats wasted watering your garden etc. And I’m thinking, its been raining for weeks, why would anyone need to water their garden? Infact according to the Met Office, total rainfall measured in Dublin Airport for June was 126.4 mm – officially the wettest June since 1958. Then yesterday I spotted a few of these signs on the Liffey walls. Yes I know water is life and we should conserve as much as possible, but I think theres a better way of spending advertising money than reminding us all not to water our gardens when we can’t even sit in them! And I can safely say, with todays torrential rain, no-one is going to notice those banners in the Liffey.

Further information on water conservation can be found here.

From September (possibly 2008) people in Ballyfermot and Ballymum will be able to access the internet for free under a new Dublin City Council WiFi scheme. The scheme will also cover a section of the city stretching from the Digital Hub to Trinity. (There are conflicting reports this will happen this September and also September 2008 – I imagine it is the latter.)

There had been talk of creating a city-wide WiFi service but so far only Ballyer, Ballymun and the Liberties will benefit.

You can read more here at the Irish Times (subs required).

Soon to be blogging on the bus in Ballyer 

Aside from this last Thursday being an interesting day in the news for Dublin (falling staircases at the Dead Zoo, a Dun Laoghaire harbour full of frightened teens swimming for their lives, etc., etc.), it was also a brilliant date night for my wife and I at the Gaiety Theatre. You don’t have to be a big fan of dance to be truly awestruck by Riverdance. The live musicianship, the theatrics, the lighting and effects, and of course the phenomenally rigorous dance routines combined to create an absolutely stunning theatre experience.

Starting out with a Celtic flavour, the show did an amazing job of capturing the earthy, mythological feel of ancient Irish culture. Late in the first act, a Spanish/Flamenco-flavoured theme was introduced into the mix, followed by a Russian dance routine – both of which were visually pulsating and brimming with aesthetic brilliance. The second act took on more of an 18th/19th century theme and collided with a more modern jazz tap routine that was very entertaining. Whatever one may think of the art of dance before seeing this show, one leaves with a sense of wonder at the raw talent, athleticism, and artistic genius of these world-class performers.

Riverdance is in Dublin until the end of August and then begins a world tour through Europe and North America. Though seeing the show in Ireland is something a little extra special, audiences around the globe have been enjoying it since 1994.

The following pic illustrates what I love about Dublin, theres always something around the corner.

On top of the major incident in Dun Laoghaire there has also been an unrelated incident at the Natural History Museum where a staircase has collapsed injuring up to 21 people this morning with 10 being taken to hospital. The granite staircase is not usually used by the public.

The incident occurred during a private training course for primary-school teachers in an area at the rear of the museum that is not normally used by the public.

A fleet of 10 ambulances and several units of the Fire Brigade were at the museum and traffic restrictions were in place between the museum and nearby hospitals. The museum is now closed and could take 3 weeks to reopen. A health and safety investigation is taking place.

Update: There were 21 primary school teachers at the event, it appears only 10 or 11 were injured.