At a protest outside the Dáil one day we found ourselves taking shelter from the rain in that sad-looking square next door. Taking a look about us we saw some extraordinary sculptures that have a certain totalitarian feel and topped off by some kind of Ironman-Michael O’Leary character spewing aircraft across the balcony. We gave Lisa Cassidy a bell, she’s behind the award-winning BuiltDublin.com blog, and asked does she know … Read More
The greatest player you never saw
When Dunphy goes off on his next hyperbolic rant about the true greats, Brady, Giles, Puskas and Aidan O’Brien, remember this name… Vassilis Hatzipanagis. Born to Greek political refugees in Tashkent, Uzbekistan in 1954, Hatzipanagis’ story is probably the greatest story of modern sport denied by the machinations of politics. Regarded now as a player to match Maradona and Pelé, Hatzipanagis made his early career with Pakhtakor of Tashkent – taking up … Read More
A Bmore Chronicle
Heads involved in the Baltimore club music scene respond to charges it’s dead. They launched this Kickstarter last month, which didn’t succeed in its goal – that probably says something in and of itself but who knows the local politics involved. So, that video while appearing exciting proved a bit of a dead end. But it does look like there’s a real attempt to chronicle the scene at a grassroots level. … Read More
#rabbleReels: Creatures Of Their Own Creation.
A quick look at NYC’s gay ballroom dance scene… “My dad said you have three strikes against you in this world. Every black man has two, that you are black and you are male. But you are black, you are male and you are gay – you are going to have a hard fucking time. He said if you are going to do this, you are going to have to … Read More
Sunday Screen: Charles Haughey Parading
Here’s an old documentary of Charles Haughey parading around Ireland like the top notch prick he was. It’s a sure fire way to ruin that Sunday morning. We’d advise watching with extreme care. This video nasty came to us via Conor McCabe. He had this to say on it. “Charles Haughey’s documentary on how fabulously wealthy he was. Made in the 1980s it has Haughey flaunting his wealth while telling … Read More
New History Group For The Batter
Just came across this over on Facebook. A new people’s history group being established for Smithfield and Stoneybatter. Some of us rabblers get all wet with any mention of people’s history. Who we are…. The aim of the Stoneybatter & Smithfield People’s History Project is to foster an interest in the local history of our area. We believe that history is a cultural resource that grows in the sharing. … Read More
An Interview With Come Here To Me.
We started CHTM! at a perfect time when blogging, social media and the idea of User Generated Content (UGC), I think, really exploded in popularity. Blogs began to be taken more seriously, Facebook offered the chance for websites to set up their own ‘pages’ for their fans to engage with and people working in history and archives began to see the benefits of utilising social media for crowdsourcing etc. We also appeared at a time when more and more older people, whether Dubliners or ex pats, started to use the web and digitize their old photos and vinyl records. At the start of 2009, there were 400k Facebook users in Ireland. It’s close to 2.5m now.
[Street Art] Paint The Town.
Irish originality is an issue. Generally the work that clogs our local walls tends to over-reference past styles and overseas artists. Irish-directed stand-out work, outside of contained spaces such as the Drogheda Bridge Jam, is rarely acknowledged. This is unusual for a small country, or it would be if we had an Irish-managed version of the form to offer.
CERN wasn’t the first
We like a bit of underground here at the rabble dungeon but we’d no idea about this until we slid across it this morning on t’internet. It seems the yanks abandoned a CERN-like super collider only after pumping $2bn into the ground in Texas. After building 14 miles of tunnels the projected expenditure was topping out at $12bn and the govt. pulled the plug, deciding instead to invest in … Read More
rabble Reels: Larry Levan
Okay, so this starts fairly slow and wanky. But let it go and you are in for a deadly history of some of the highs and lows of disco.