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Project Arts Centre: Get two cans of paint and achieve a BIG impact!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Project Arts Centre: Get two cans of paint and achieve a BIG impact!

Some people are skilled in using minimalist means to get max. effect and the Project Arts Centre is definitely good at that!

They tried it in 2016 and were very successful with it and they just copied the same recipe again and seemingly will get a similar maximised effect. Others would have to pay THOUSANDS for it, the Project Arts Centre just had to pay for two cans of paint.

So what is this clever recipe? Here it goes: Get a recognised artist, give him a can of white paint and a can of red paint and get him to paint a controversial message on the wall of your building. The artist can get help to speed up the process by the way. And don’t worry about the fact that not tooo many people will actually see the painted on message. Just make sure that the “authorities” will find out about it. (In 2016 it was Dublin City who had a problem with the missing planning permission for the “advertisement message”, this time it is the Charities’ Regulator.)

Hope and pray that the authorities have a big problem with that controversial message on the wall and tell you off and DEMAND that it will be removed. Now you get the press involved and tell them about it. Because it is a “sensational” thing that you are told off, they will hopefully write about it. And bingo! You didn’t have to hang a single poster of pay for expensive ad space online or on lamp posts and you reach more people than anyone else.

When you are told off, don’t fight it, but declare immediately that you will be happy to remove the international respected artists’ piece of art work. Then turn the removal of the message into an event by giving a date and time when you will remove it and with a bit of luck you might get the press to queue up to get a cool picture of the destroying of public art and if that goes into the newspapers and TV news, you get a second BIG exposure.

And if EVER again there is another message you feel passionate about, just rinse and repeat! The recipe works as long as there are authorities that complain. And in case there is no complaining authorities anymore. don’t worry, the message just stays where it is and that way still has some effect.

Sooo smart! :-) The controversial message was “Repeal the 8th!” and the Charities’ Regulator says it breaks the rule that forbids charities to engage in political activities. The artist is Maser and the removal will happen on Monday morning at 11:00.

 

Dublin, Media, Politics, , , , ,

Topaz filling stations undergoing an odd re-branding

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Topaz filling stations undergoing an odd re-branding

All 420 Topaz filling stations in Ireland will be re-branded to “Circle K” at a cost of a mad EUR 20mio. There is absolutely no need to move away from the well established “Topaz” brand in Ireland and in my opinion the new “Circle K” brand looks much cheaper than the Topaz brand, which makes the move even more odd.

Here is a picture of a Topaz station and here is one of a Circle K filling station in the USA.

But a LOT has happened with Topaz recently. Topaz was owned by Denis O’Brien and in 2015 he sold it to the Canadian company Couche-Tard, which has something like 6500 filling stations in North America and 1500 other stores and also is operating convenience stores and/or filling stations in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Japan, Hong Kong, China, Indonesia and Mexico.

The global Circle K stores and filling stations is the reason why it was decided to bring the Irish brand in line with the global branding. But remember that Topaz only recently re-branded all Esso filling stations to Topaz and now another rebrand is happening. 20mio to make your brand look cheaper than before. Mad! You might also remember that Topaz was some while back Statoil and Shell, so a lot of rebrands and changes. :-O

Dublin, , , , ,

Dublin Airport and Aer Lingus are having a laugh!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Dublin Airport and Aer Lingus are having a laugh!

Last Friday I flew to Germany with Aer Lingus. It was an early start with a departure time of 07:00, so most people are not too keen to go for a healthy walk or jog at around 06:00 when you are on your way to the boarding gate. But Aer Lingus is considering our health and must have assumed that I was indulging the night before, because they were determined to get me to walk the calories off.

You check in Terminal 2 and you already know that for a tiny island, the airport in Dublin forces you to walk mad distances, but when you find out that your plane is not at Terminal 2 at all, but instead is parked at the Terminal that Aer Lingus is allegedly NOT using anymore, i.e. Terminal 1, then you feel that someone is having a laugh.

So you check in at Terminal 2 and then walk alllllll the way to Terminal 1 to board your flight. :-O

If that is not odd then wait for the return flight story:

On Tuesday we flew back to Dublin and arrived around 22:00. Usually you can leave the plane through the front and back door, but we were told that we will only be able to leave through the front door and that a bus will bring us to the terminal. But when we got out, there was no bus. Instead we were directed to a (new) walk way that brought us to a building that I had never seen before. I thought this is an extension of Terminal 2, but not so fast! We entered the building through the door on the right and were told to queue at the door OUT of the building in the left. :-O What for? To wait for the bus!

So you walk from the plane to this isolated new building, enter the building just to queue again to get out. Then you take the bus and it brings you to Terminal 2 where you have another loooooong walk to passport control and exit.

Are Dublin Airport and Aer Lingus that incompetent? Have they ever seen any other airports where buses bring passengers to the terminals? The bus normally waits next to the plane and then brings you to the airport. Why do we have to walk to a terminal to enter a bus that will bring us to a terminal. The new isolated building is called “South Gates” as I found out later. It was opened in December 2017 after being built for EUR22 mio (!?) and is only used by Aer Lingus for flights to Britain and Europe. Connection to and from the terminal is only via bus.

Can anyone tell me why Terminal 2 was built? Are any flights departing from and arriving at Terminal 2? Or do we have a situation where Terminal 1 and (mostly empty) Terminal 2 are already not big enough anymore? If that is the case then the future is not looking good.

Dublin, Tourism, , ,

Cyclists seeing red & Cyclists vs motorists

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Cyclists seeing red & Cyclists vs motorists

The newspaper journalists LOVE to stir sh*t and create confrontation! It sells the paper and that’s what their job depends on, so we fully understand that. ;-) However if you brought the wrong two sides up against each other you could get squashed in the middle, so you have to pick wisely! A good target to pick are cyclists and motorists. There is a natural dislike for each other it seems and also you steer far away from any racial or gender issues and accusations of discrimination.

Last week the Irish Times reported that “More fines issued to cyclists but not to drivers parking in cycle lanes”. I get the link BUT this is just sh*t stirring! The journalist didn’t write about “More fines issued to speeding motorists than to drunk motorists” or something like that.

Cars in cycling lanes is against the law (during the hours a cycling lane is active or if there is a full white line) and there is no justification for parking there. And in the same way, crossing a red traffic light is against the law and there is no justification for doing it, but comparing the number of tickets is nonsensical.

It is interesting though that there were 571 (!) fines given to cyclists who crossed red lights in the Dublin region. Considering that you can hardly ever be at a red light as a pedestrian or in a car WITHOUT seeing a cyclists crossing a red light, this is just a tiny tip of a HUGE iceberg and but it did already amount to a sizeable number of 571.

It is a totally stupid and very dangerous thing to do at best of time! So I hope that the Gardai will continue stopping cars and bikes who cross red lights!

Dublin, Traffic, , , ,

MetroNorth is now MetroLink, but it won’t happen!?

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
MetroNorth is now MetroLink, but it won’t happen!?

On Thursday the National Transport Authority has announced that they will build an underground rail service from Sandyford to the Airport for EUR 3bn and that the 26km long train line will be operational by 2027. It will be called MetroLink (not Metro North anymore) and will go overground from Sandyford until Charlemont (that’s near Portobello) and will then go underground to the airport. The travel time will be 50 minutes along the whole route and just 20 minutes from the City Centre to the airport.

Sounds like a great plan! FINALLY an underground train service for Dublin instead of the annoying overground link between St. Stephen’s Green and O’Connell Street and finally a proper public transport link to the airport. But everybody who knows public transport plans in Dublin will probably ask if this is maybe too good to be true? And MANY people seriously question if 2027 will ever come for the MetroLink.

The building of the Dublin’s first subway will only begin in 2021 and a LOT can happen until then. In 2002 the MetroNorth was announced and it was meant to go into service in 2007. So we are JUST 10 years behind schedule. In the same way, cynics AND realists expect that based on “third time lucky” we might need to have one more announcement, maybe in 2039 before this Metro connection will ever happen! :-O

Dublin, Traffic, , ,
 
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