Saturday night live [ City Visuals/ imagery/reality]
If a student ever asks me to explain contrast in the future I won't throw out some twee text-book answer. I'll tell them about tonight in Dublin city centre. I'll talk him through a shopping list of visuals.
I'll talk about the sheer energy and atmosphere on the streets. Of the money lavished by generic beautiful people in super pubs. Of (by my count) hundreds of homeless waiting to bed down in doorways with their possessions and fears in a small rucksack.
I'll recount the joy of so many languages and foreign faces adding life to every street. Of the little gangs of kids cycling the same streets in search of a hand bag or phone to snatch. And there's the bin men drinking beer in the truck between pick ups.
Too many barbers, too much diddley-aye music for the Hen-do's and Stag-nights betraying our real culture. What of the brilliant people rapping on O'Connell bridge carrying their instruments in a shopping trolley? Or a murder of couriers gathered outside the park to drink and be real. Of course there's the sweet and unmistakable smell of joints everywhere, masking the perfume of piss in every alley. Parties explode like a night at Gatsby's. Rooftops, balconies, steps and streets are alive with the bustle of life being lived and drinks being chinked.
And on the cobbled North Lotts, one hundred feet from O'Connell bridge and a thousand tourists, two old and wizened junkies behind a parked car shine a light on a younger fella's crotch as he tries to find a vein. Temple bar is ALIVE. Bursting at the seams with money, alcohol and colour. Buskers are making money, punters are parting with cash like they are the Wolf of Wall Street to a man. A junkie on Saint Stephen's green takes a square of tinfoil into a telephone box to cook up in full view of the top-hatted doorman of the Shelbourne Hotel.
Starbucks and McDonald's are full of customers nursing cold food and coffee to avail of the free wi-Fi. And it's safe to walk the canal. And fun to watch the crowds on corners. And exhausting to think of the chemical equation that mixes such a cocktail of monster energy, hedonism and ignorance in one small glass.
I'll talk about the sheer energy and atmosphere on the streets. Of the money lavished by generic beautiful people in super pubs. Of (by my count) hundreds of homeless waiting to bed down in doorways with their possessions and fears in a small rucksack.
I'll recount the joy of so many languages and foreign faces adding life to every street. Of the little gangs of kids cycling the same streets in search of a hand bag or phone to snatch. And there's the bin men drinking beer in the truck between pick ups.
Too many barbers, too much diddley-aye music for the Hen-do's and Stag-nights betraying our real culture. What of the brilliant people rapping on O'Connell bridge carrying their instruments in a shopping trolley? Or a murder of couriers gathered outside the park to drink and be real. Of course there's the sweet and unmistakable smell of joints everywhere, masking the perfume of piss in every alley. Parties explode like a night at Gatsby's. Rooftops, balconies, steps and streets are alive with the bustle of life being lived and drinks being chinked.
And on the cobbled North Lotts, one hundred feet from O'Connell bridge and a thousand tourists, two old and wizened junkies behind a parked car shine a light on a younger fella's crotch as he tries to find a vein. Temple bar is ALIVE. Bursting at the seams with money, alcohol and colour. Buskers are making money, punters are parting with cash like they are the Wolf of Wall Street to a man. A junkie on Saint Stephen's green takes a square of tinfoil into a telephone box to cook up in full view of the top-hatted doorman of the Shelbourne Hotel.
Starbucks and McDonald's are full of customers nursing cold food and coffee to avail of the free wi-Fi. And it's safe to walk the canal. And fun to watch the crowds on corners. And exhausting to think of the chemical equation that mixes such a cocktail of monster energy, hedonism and ignorance in one small glass.
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