The Dublin Community Blog

As written about in the previous post, last night saw Dublin’s participation in Earth Hour. I was at the Customs House to watch the lights  go off and the pics below show before and afterwards. A video of the lights going out is available here.

According to news reports today there was a drop of 50 megawatts nationwide in energy demand last night in comparison with last week. You can read more on Ireland.com, on the Earth Hour blog and the official Earth Hour website.

If you can’t be in Dublin for the St Patrick’s festival parade and would like to be then don’t worry because RTE is going to stream all the fun live here. They will also, when available, stream other parades around the world live at this link. The largest St Patrick’s Day parade in the world has already taken place in Savannah with some 250k participants. Other parades will take place between now and Monday so if you want to check out the parade in other cities just make sure you check when it is happening (roll your mouse over the city to find out when).

You will also be able to check out parades from all over Ireland too including the Skyfest fireworks spectacular taking place in Cashel in Tipperary. Nice one RTE.

Meanwhile here’s a couple of different You Tube videos from last year’s parade.

EDIT: putting up the videos is making the whole site go mad, so I will just link to them instead GGRGRRRR. The first is from Balcony TV and the other isn’t   If anyone of the Dublin Blog people know where I am going wrong and can fix this, please do.

With St Patrick’s Day (March 17th) coming closer and closer, the question is what on earth are you going to do over the five-day festival?

Whether you are from Dublin, living in Dublin or just coming for the craic there is bound to be something for everyone. Now an annual feature the funfair in Merrion Sq will run from Friday March 14th until Monday March 17th, there is a Babyrave in Temple Bar running from Friday till Sunday and the Ceili Mor will be held in Earlsfort Terrace on St Patrick’s Day itself.

But there is more, Kila play the Olympia on St Patrick’s Day, Mary Black is in the National Concert Hall. There are various Irish language and culture workshops and Irish language tours as well as speed dating As Gaeilge so brush up on your coupla focal.

You can find out lots lots more on the Festival website. You can book tickets for different events on the website though some things are already sold out. However don’t worry about not getting tickets for something you wanted, there will be something else to take its place. And let us not forget the stalwart of every St Patrick’s Day, the parade, two hours of fun and frolics and a long way away from the parade that used to happen when I first moved to Dublin 17 years ago. Then it was just groups of tourists with shamrock hats walking in formation waving, marching bands and being very very cold looking at the back of the people in front. Trust me it is a lot more fun now The festival map is located on the website at this link.

All of this is of course only a fraction of things that are taking place, different things will be happening all over the city and they will be hard to miss, just follow your nose.

Last year some of the Dublin Blog contributors were out and about taking pics and here is what we had to say last year. No doubt you can expect more of the same and probably even better this year. You can also see lots of images of St Patrick’s Day from all around the world on Flickr and don’t forget to keep an eye out over the festival on photographs as they are uploaded to our own Dublin Blog group on Flickr.

Dublin has had a Lord Mayor as its first citizen, only surpassed in authority by the President, since Sir Daniel Bellingham in 1665. However the first citizen of the city has been in place since 1229, just without the Lord part of the title. The Lord Mayor is elected at Dublin City Council once a year though there is a campaign for the term to be lengthened. The current Lord Mayor is Cllr Paddy Bourke. I imagine there are many highlights being Lord Mayor, one being getting to ride in the City’s coach for the St Patrick Day Parade.

The official residence of the Dublin Lord Mayor is the Mansion House which is located on Dawson Street and was built in 1710 by property developer Joshua Dawson. While Joshua lived in the house the powers that be decided to purchase the house for the city at a cost of £3,500 and a yearly rent of 40 shillings and a loaf of double-refined sugar weighing 6lbs each Christmas.

Joshua Dawson also agreed to build another room, the Oak room, to be used for civic receptions. The Oak Room is to this day still used for civic functions and is decorated with the crests of all the Lord Mayors. The bottom photograph shows the crest of Daniel O’Connell who was Lord Mayor between 1841 and 1842.

Most of this information was cogged together from the Dublin City Council website and you can find out lots more about Dublin’s history at the council website.

Photos: 1. Inside the Lord Mayor’s office, the chain. 2. Inside the Oak Room. 3. The front of the Mansion House. 4. The Oak Room crests showing Daniel O’Connell’s crest (top left). 5. Portraits of previous Lord Mayors including the current Taoiseach Bertie Ahern who can be seen in the image.

A year ago, almost to the day, I wrote about blogging Cllr Eric Byrne’s campaign to have Dublin made a Fairtrade City. The official launch was held yesterday in the Mansion House, which is the official residence of the Dublin Lord Mayor who this year is Cllr Paddy Bourke.

You can read more about the launch here and visit the website here.

Many many thanks to those of you who nominated us and those who judged us in the Irish Blog Awards, the Dublin Community Blog has made it through to the shortlist of the group blog category.

I know I speak for everyone here at Dublin Blog when I say we are thrilled and delighted to have reached this far. So once again thank you all.

There are all sorts of things happening for Chinese New Year, you can find out more at Dublin.ie. Meanwhile here’s some pics from yesterday’s fun on Georges Street. There are more pics on Flickr.

Over the weekend I met up with some of the members of the Meet Dublin group on Flickr. Flickr meets are where a group of people (mostly members of Flickr) go around and take photographs and my idea of bliss. This month (January) the group is exploring Dublin 7 with different events each weekend, last weekend was the turn of the Horse Fair in Smithfield.

The Smithfield Horse Fair meets once a month in Smithfield, on the first Sunday of the month. There were nearly as many photographers as horses last weekend as well as the presence of Gardai and the DSPCA. Dublin City Council would like to move the fair out of Smithfield but so far it remains in Dublin 7.

Flickr meets are an excellent opportunity to meet up with people whose work you have been admiring on Flickr. Not only are they are a great social outing but you can also learn lots from others. It is fascinating to see how different people approach the same shot.

So if you fancy some photography projects and a bit of craic too, check out Meet Dublin on Flickr as well as their Facebook group.

Anyway here’s some of my favourite shots of the day, you can check out more here and more in the Meet Dublin photo pool here.

Happy New Year 2008 – I thought I would post some of the images I captured from around Dublin during Christmas as a way of easing myself back into the Dublin Blog after a ridiculous absence, no excuse just busy and sorry about that So here’s to a great year, Sláinte everyone.

In case you are not already aware, but there are gonna be some serious disruptions to Dublin Bus services in the morning. I am copying the notice that was posted on Dublin Bus’s webpage earlier. So check and make sure if your bus service is affected that you have other means to get to work.

Due to industrial action by bus drivers in Harristown Bus Garage, services operating from this garage will be disrupted on Monday 12th November 2007.

Dublin Bus wish to apologise for this disruption.