#takeFive: Dublin’s Top Five Bougie Areas.

In #rabble10, Blog, Humour, Print Editionby rabble9 Comments

malahide

Dublin is being socially cleansed of rabble like us, either through the pressure of emigration or having to hightail it to the ‘burbs over rackrent prices. These days the meeja, politicians and other muppets declare the rise of the Celtic Phoenix, while landlords write letters to santy asking for another bubble.

As the Harboisation of large swathes of the city continues, we’re pinning our hopes on third generation really existing dubs to keep the shit real. Until then, here’s our take on Dublin’s five most bougie spots.


Malahide.

This place is well north, putting lie that old myth that all wealth is south side. It’s full of auld lads in beige yacht wear, looking like second-rung cast members of the Love Boat. Then there’s the Tennis Club with its flocks of dads in dazzling whites, probably bleached in the urine of their enslaved au pairs. There’s even a landmark stretch of protected long grass, that should be renamed the “the social barrier reef” as residents use it to divide the land of Jeeps and Dubes from their poorer cousins in Portmarnock. Malahide has boutiques, not shops – where the soy latte sipping Moms plough down kids named Fuinneóg and Uachtarreoite while parking their range rovers outside. Dress bland but well. The police will be called if you are rocking your latest counterfeit Adidas tracksuit.


D8.

Ah yes, a favourite of the LovinDublin brigade. Cork St truly could be said to sit somewhere between devastation and utter Harboisation. We’d like to think the oul fellas in pubs like Kennedys, The Dean Swift and The Liberty Belle are made of stern stuff though, and judging by the way Irish Water were fucked out of the area it’ll take more than a Weekend Review to transform the Coombe to Kreuzberg. There’s also hope the flocks of madjouvits frequenting District 8’s yoke fests squat the carcass of those bits of St Teresa’s Gardens left abandoned by another failed Public Private Partnership and rave it into the ground scaring the limpsters out.

 


 

 

Stoneybatter.

Who gives a shit if The Joinery, one of Dublin’s most established independent art spaces has closed down when you can go pay €4 for a coffee with hardly any milk in it! Not only that, you can cruise up to the local gastropub and order your meal off a menu that’s, wait for it… hidden in the center of a book, how kooky! Rent is great value too, a two-bed on Arbour Hill went for only €1795 last month! For Dublin’s more aspirant squeezed middle, the only drawback is that you are quite close to those crusty squatters in Grangegorman, but hey, they’ll be all turfed out soon, taking with them some of the only damn spirit left in the area. With that new DIT campus opening soon, we can expect the plague of pretension and rip off rents to spread deep into Phibsboro and Cabra.


Ranelagh.

Wha?! No but seriously, Ranelagh has been “hollowed out”. The old fashioned village atmosphere and traditional small businesses have disappeared as the bedsits synonymous with the Triangle have been gutted for top-dollar homes. The population decreased as much as the average wage skyrocketed. Ranelagh now is more a pissant strip mall of bland cafés than the bustling village outside the canal of old. Yoga mats. Gyms. Go Ranelagh


Camden St.

Fuggedaboutit. Once your area is the eponymous lead in a TV reality show you know it’s time to roll up your copies of Alive and get the fuck out of Dodge. Camden St. has long managed to keep a mixed broth of oul man pubs, rock venues, hipsters, groovers, shakers, fishmongers, chippers and county jerseys on the boil. God knows how but the centre cannot hold. From hipster honey trap festivals like Canalphonic and Camden Crawl to the vodka fucked zombies playing Froggr with taxi drivers and buses at night, you’d be better forsaking your daily kale focaccia for the local greasy spoons of the Northside proper.

Comments

  1. Ok lads, I’m a big fan of rabble. Chill out with the negative attack though. No harm with some of your examples of a bitta culture or odd festival. (Canalphonic was completely free, some quality music, and the only cost was if you wanted a few cans from a shop) There’s a heap of positivity that doesn’t needed to be slated

  2. Shut up Telling Jane to shut up Jeff. Picking on folk iin the comments section of a website seems a bit sad to me.

    This is a tired piece. Get that Malahide is “posh” and Stoneybatter has a streak of tosser in it but this whole piece seems jaded and chippy on the shoulder.

    It’s not as “super cool for the revolution dudes” to point it out but there’s some good things happening in Dublin. Jaded culchie propaganda with prehistoric 90s stereotyping is totes yawnworthy.

    Hipsters are over btw.

  3. Think you are missing the point there Thomas, quite a lot of people in Stoneybatter, for example, who have been renting there for years are facing outrageous rent hikes or are being turfed out. It is not so “jaded” or “chippy on the shoulder” for them.

    Far from being prehistoric and jaded as you say, I think the piece does make some insightful observations which point to the larger issues of the current uneven economic recovery over last number of years here.

    Also anything that takes the piss out of that prick Harbo and lovinDublin’s reduction of this city down to a utilitarian consumerist listicle is a good thing. For example see:

    http://www.broadsheet.ie/2014/06/17/knackered-3/

    1. I got the point. Not happy with the execution or having a go at Canalphonic. I’d hate to think that anything that involves art, BBQ and music is regarded as the strict preserve of an elite few. I didn’t think it was close enough to HumpinDublin to be a parody.

      “Harbo” can’t be blamed for the rising rents. Personally I’m convinced that problem is the result of a conspiracy that will allow the government to ditch their bank shares and NAMA assets a few quid ahead just in time for the next election.

      I haven’t read LovinDublin recently – has the soapbox editorial not been deprecated yet?

  4. But Thomas, it’s important to seek out things to moan about, even if the moaning is completely facile.

    How else are we to maintain a depressive grand narrative that reinforces the perception that Dublin isn’t a great place to live?

    We need the hip/pie media constantly telling young people that Dublin is a shite place to live so that they piss off to Australia or wherever.

    1. I’ll take that as tongue in cheek. 😉

      Dublin is an amazing place to live. We’re all struggling on the usual fronts (jobs, rent, hipster BBQ restaurant prices) but we’re more than that and that “grand narrative” can fuck off to Oz and die.

      I’m getting fatigued here. If I hop on FB, Irish Times, Journal et al and something positive is in the news the comments are the same “government should die, thieving government, country is in the jacks”. You’d swear that the government and the economy were the sum total of our entire existence as citizens.

      I’ll probably stop posting on blogs in the acerbic pre-coffee part of the morning.

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