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Busking under threat! City Councillors are determined to make Dublin boring

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Busking under threat! City Councillors are determined to make Dublin boring

For a number of years, the Dublin City Councillors are trying to re-organise the busking in the city and they are making a mess of it.

The problem is that the shops in the areas where busking makes sense don’t like buskers. They make noise and block the street, Busking at night also disturbs people’s sleep (more in Temple Bar than in Grafton Street where nobody lives). And then there are some really really bad buskers who shouldn’t be on the street at all.

So, it is totally accepted that a bit of structure needs to be injected. But the Councillors went over the top. They introduced the requirement for buskers to have a license that they need to buy from Dublin City and they defined the amount of noise buskers are allowed to make (but that is difficult to measure) and they created busking free zones and defined how far buskers should be from each other and for how long they are allowed to sing and how often they are allowed to repeat their songs. They even considered introducing the requirement of auditions for buskers!!! Mad!!

There was a bit of a light at the end of the tunnel! The previous busking laws were time limited to be reviewed some while later. This some while later has come now and with a LOT of delays finally the councillors discussed busking again and…made things worse again.

Because the noise measurement doesn’t work, now they have forbidden the use of backing tracks!!

Not too long ago, I saw a busker who played something like a pan flute. He wasn’t one of the Mexican flute player that can be found all over the world who mainly sell their CDs, but it was a guy whose hand was severely disabled. He could hold the pan flute but wouldn’t have been able to play any other instrument. With the new rules, he is out! Because pan flute without any backing track just doesn’t work.

A few years ago I heard two guys in Grafton Street who were amazing. They were the type of power or pop violinists that you see sometimes. Extremely talented, playing the violin like gods but they couldn’t do their gig without an orchestra. Obviously they didn’t bring their orchestra but had a backing track. You won’t see anything like that in Dublin anymore! …thanks to our City Councillors!

But it gets worse! Some of them even want to forbid the use of amplifiers. I am totally ok with a limitation of the amplifier use. Otherwise we will have huge PAs at some stage in Grafton Street and Temple Bar, but there are small 5-15W amps that help a bass player (for example) just to be heard without having to buy a new instrument. They don’t really make noise, they just allow the use of a normally amplified instrument in a more acoustic environment.

Dublin has a great musical tradition and a huge musical talent in our midst, but we (at least _I_) also like hearing “travelling musicians” and there HAS to be a way to use soft and careful limitations to improve the situation for ALL sides instead of forbidding everything!! City Councillors are meant to improve things in our City not destroy culture and variety.

Dublin, Dublin City Council, Events, Tourism, ,

EPIC Ireland – The Journey of the People – New Visitor Attraction

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
EPIC Ireland – The Journey of the People – New Visitor Attraction

EPIC Ireland is Dublin’s newest visitor attraction. It is based in the beautiful basement of the CHQ Building at George’s Dock (IFSC) and only opened last week. The exhibition is telling the story of the people of Ireland and you can “travel” with them. Thanks to @DarraghDoyle and the EPIC Ireland management, I got a chance to “travel” through the whole exhibition nearly 3 weeks ago and here are my impressions.

When you arrive you get a passport that shows you the stations on your travels through the exhibition and you can get a stamp in every room. But then it starts quite gloomy, because the Irish history wasn’t a happy story for long stretches. Emigration, unemployment, poverty and even death were everywhere. But luckily the fog lifts soon and EPIC Ireland celebrates the successes, the Irish people that made it, for example the scientists that had an impact on the world. It also celebrates Irish culture (Music, Sport and Pubs, but also literature, film, TV etc) and there are rooms for every aspect of culture. One of the most impressive one is a library, where you can move some books in the shelves and you hear then a reading of a section of that book.

The whole exhibition is heavily built around multi-media presentations. Many of them are interactive, which means that you are not only a passive viewer, but can experience the exhibition to a degree. There are very few panels that you have to read as you find them in traditional museums, but there are also quite few real exhibits. So you wouldn’t call EPIC Ireland a museum, instead it is a show. A multimedia show that uses more (touch) screens than you have ever seen before in one place.

After 1.5 hours travelling with the Irish people I came to the “finish line” (I rushed it a bit and could have spent at least another 30-45 minutes there) and at that point I had to think about my opinion of the overall experience. Not easy because it is so different.

EPIC Ireland was built by the same people that are behind the Titanic Experience in Belfast, but I have never been there. So for me this was the first FULL ON multimedia (not-)museum show and it was TOO much multimedia for me. I like slowing down sometimes and reading something or looking at exhibits, at EPIC Ireland one show element was immediately followed by the next as you walked through the rooms and at times I couldn’t keep up. However, this is just my preference, so what should I tell you?

After thinking a bit about it, I came to a definite conclusion: If you are Irish or have some Irish roots, you should definitely go to EPIC Ireland. It won’t cover all, there are many gaps in the story, but you should go nevertheless. You will probably only go once, but when you go, give yourself at least 1.5 hours, better 2 hours.

So should everybody go? I think, that if you are not Irish or have no Irish roots, but are just in Ireland because you like the landscape or Irish music or you just work here and don’t care too much about the history of Ireland, then this show is not for you. Foreign tourists should definitely go to the National Museum, but unless they feel (partially) Irish, EPIC Ireland might not be for them. In other words: American tourists with Irish roots HAVE to go :-) , but Spanish, French, German etc etc tourists can live without it.

The show elements and the work behind it is absolutely impressive and while I missed a few elements about today’s Ireland (Music, TV, Film and Politics and Science & Technology) I am ok with the fact that even the historical parts are in many areas only skimming the surface. EPIC Ireland is not a comprehensive historic treatment of Ireland, but it is an EXPERIENCE of Ireland.

So, go when you can get a chance and if you can afford it and build your own opinion! I mentioned it here and in general left it until last: EPIC Ireland is, together with the Guinness Storehouse, the Wax Museum and also the 1916 Experience in the GPO part of the newer and costly visitor attractions. In the past Ireland was the country where the museums are free, but these good times are behind us. EPIC Ireland costs EUR 16 for an adult and EUR 8 for a child, but unlike in the Guinness Storehouse, there is no pint of beer waiting for you at the exit. ;-) So at that price, it is not something that many would go to without thinking. With the amount of work to create this show and the vast amount of flat screens (I am still not over that! ;-) ) I can see how the price is justified, but I also have to admit that I still find it very high.

Should you still go? Yes! Save for a little if you have to and then go. Spend all the time there that you need, because you will most likely not come back, but do it once!

Opening times are 7 days a week from 09:00-19:00. Tickets can be bought and more information can be found on www.epicirelandchq.com/

Dublin, Events, Society, Tourism,

Together we are strong? Not the touristic sites in Dublin!!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Together we are strong? Not the touristic sites in Dublin!!

At some point in life we learned that if we form strong alliances and work in a team, we are stronger than if we fight against each other. And we also should have learned by now that hostility against people that grew up or live somewhere else than we do, is not cool at all.

So, who was the smart cookie, that came up with this amazingly clever idea to create “Dublin Northside Attractions” as a separate tourist entity with their own website at www.dublindna.ie? As tiny as Dublin is and as close as Northside and Southside are, it is totally nonsensical, bordering on idiotic, to artificially create further a divide than we need to. I am not convinced that Failte Ireland or Dublin Tourism had that idea, but they are certainly endorsing it according to the website.

So, the Northside Attractions seem to think they are something better OR they think they are inferior. (These are typically the drivers for the creation of gangs! And there is no organisation or website for “Dublin Southside Attractions” at the moment.) We don’t know why, though.

But if you start your own gang, there is one important element to consider: You have to be ruthless and rigorous in the application of the rules, otherwise your inverse-discrimination doesn’t work.

And that is where the next idiocy comes in: One outsider attraction that was accepted in the “Dublin Northside Attractions” gang is the Guinness Storehouse in the Liberties! Northside? Not at all!

So why did they break their own rules and accept a Southside attraction in their midst? Well, because it is the most popular attraction in Dublin and gangs always want the popular kid in their own gang, not in the enemy gang.

Narrow-minded nonsense!

 

Dublin, Events, Tourism, , , ,

St. Patrick’s Parade – Lies and Statistics – Round 2

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
St. Patrick’s Parade – Lies and Statistics – Round 2

Irish journalism largely consists of re-printing press releases or even copying from each other and just re-printing what another newspaper already had said. Last week I wrote about the incorrect numbers about parade attendees that every year are spread. 500,000 is the claim, which is actually impossible because the streets of Dublin are not wide enough. And again the same lies were repeated this year: www.rte.ie/news/2012/0317/stpatricksday_ireland.html
www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/thousands-enjoy-inclusive-st-patricks-day-parades-543938.html
www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0317/breaking3.html
This year, I checked myself and found a few interesting facts:
+ Even if you are tall, you can hardly see any pedestrian parade participants if you are further back than 7 people from the parade route boundary.
+ People at the front arrived at 08:00. That is 4 hours before the parade started!
+ While there are LOTS of people in O’Connell Street, the crowds are not more than 5 deep between Christ Church and St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
+ On average there is a depth of significantly less than 30 people (15 on each side of the street) along the parade route. And only about a third of them can see the parade.

And the result? If you can fit a generous 2.5 people per metre and with a depth of 15 people on each side. The 2.7km parade route was lined by a max of 202,500 people and less than half of them (approx. 94500) actually SAW the parade! This is a lot lower than I generously calculated last week: www.joergsteegmueller.com/2012/03/15/st-patricks-parade-lies-and-statistics/
500,000 is impressive, but the realistic 94,500 is not so much!! By the way, there were certainly another thousands of people searching for a suitable viewing position, but they never saw anything, so something should be done! Or is it maybe not a high priority to get people to SEE the parade? Maybe luring thousands into the City Centre and claiming that lots were there is more important?

Dublin, Events, Other, Tourism, , , , ,
 
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