Reeling in the year 2023 on Tripe + Drisheen
Instead of our usual Friday View this week we take a look back at 2023 on the pages of Tripe + Drisheen.
So this is ‘Corkmas’ as nobody on Leeside ever said, but bless Cork City Council for trying to make the marketing phrase sound as Cork as…tripe and drisheen.
As 2023 winds down and as the winter solstice is behind us, we’ll sign off with a look back over some of the many stories on T+D from this year. As always, a sincere thank you to all our subscribers who help fund this little independent media operation and allow us to keep digging and plugging away, and especially for giving new voices a chance to write and review the goings on in this city and county of ours.
Happy Christmas to one and all, and best wishes for 2024. And as always, send us your news and tips!
Our most read story this year on Tripe + Drisheen, in fact ever?
By a country mile, it’s the story of the (tasteful) bike box that Cork City Council judged to have fallen foul of planning laws. Perhaps it was because T+D was first to this story, or perhaps because, to everyone and their mother—bar that one objector!—it made no sense why, in a climate crisis, a bike box made locally and parked in a private driveway is verboten? That story isn’t over yet, as it’s gone to An Bord Pleanála.
A photo essay for the ages
In August, we published Noel Sweeney’s photo essay from the back lanes and boreens of County Cork, documenting the county’s road bowlers. Noel captured some cracking photos of bowlers in mid-flight, the crowds parting, money being exchanged, and chips and sausages being eaten. Noel will be back on T+D in the New Year with some new projects from the city.
Ye old pubs of Cork
With each passing year, Cork loses pubs. In fact, more than 1,900 pubs have closed their doors since 2005 across Ireland. This year, we started a new series that we aim to continue in 2024, profiling some of the pubs that have been around for generations. For Kilan McCann and Seán O'Mahony, that’s meant a lot of time spent at the bar counter. First up was The Constellation, originally a brewery pub on Watercourse Road. And this week, the pair published their profile of The KLM, another city pub which has been around for generations and plays an important role in the community. If you think of a pub that deserves a deep dive, drop us a line, and we’ll put it on our list for 2024.
Dereliction
Tripe + Drisheen quietly announced itself with a two-part series on dereliction in Cork in February 2021. The issue has garnered a lot more attention nationally, and T+D could, in fact, hire a full-time dereliction reporter just to cover that beat, such is the scale of dereliction and vacancy in the city and county. At least Cork City Council publishes their dereliction figures, unlike Cork County Council, which is hopeless in this regard.
Two of our standout stories on dereliction this year involved a lot of rooting around and trying to get answers from owners and people in the know. Are we any nearer to a resolution? Not really, but I would like to think readers are a bit more informed, and we have a public record.
Let’s get critical
Cork’s creative output is something to behold and critically appraise. Much of the professional criticism across mainstream outlets in Irish journalism generally amounts to thumbs up or down. Furthermore, in Cork, being such a small city, true criticism risks offending, which is why, when a really meaty piece of criticism comes along, it takes off.
That was certainly the case with Pádraig O’Connor’s appraisal of the €670k Urban Sculpture Trail from Fáilte Ireland and Cork City Council. Memorably, he called it “artbolllocks,” and it was one of our most-read pieces on T+D this year. Yes, it’s polemic and possibly a bit harsh in places, but boy did it hit a nerve. Pádraig also reviewed quite a few other productions staged in the CAT Club and The Everyman and even from Callanans. For many of these plays, the only critical reviews they got came from Tripe + Drisheen, such as this little beauty.
Back in a tracksuit
One of my favourite arts pieces of the year was from Ellie O’Byrne who wrote about the Sultans of Ping’s return to Cork and 30 years on from the release of Casual Sex in the Cineplex.
Here’s how it opens:
One night when he was 20, Niall O’Flaherty crept in home after a gig and, too excited to wait to break the news, wrote a note to his mother.
“We’re signing a record deal,” it read. It was the early nineties.
“We were absolutely astonished that we were signed,” the Sultans of Ping frontman, now 52 and talking over Zoom from his London home, tells me.
“Even when I woke up in the morning and read the note again, I thought, ‘God, that’s got to be nonsense.’ But it happened within a couple of weeks, and we were gone. We hit the road.”
Full piece here
The past we don’t see. Why?
One of the aspects of journalism I most enjoy is being afforded the luxury to get into a story, learn from it, and the people you interview along the way. To wit, sculptor Séamus Murphy, one of Cork’s greatest craftsmen, and whose legacy is scattered across the city and county. But the one piece you could spend your whole life walking by and not being aware of its existence is the dog trough commissioned by Knolly Stokes at 124 St. Patrick’s Street. Next time you walk by, look out for it, and as Ian Dempsey used to do, pour a little water in. In the meantime, here’s a chance to learn a little more about it via Colm Murphy, son of Séamus Murphy.
Your voices: Op-eds in T+D
People want to read views and opinions, and T+D wants to publish views and opinions from informative, authoritative, and interesting sources, especially when there is so much uninformed opinion everywhere, (hello social media and morning radio shows). Two pieces that stand out this year are from two UCC faculty members: Dr. Eoin Lettice wrote about why trees matter ahead of the a city council vote that handed over a piece of land in Bishop Lucey Park to the Freemasons.
As Eoin wrote in that guest essay:
”This isn’t just any green space. This is your park and your trees. This is public green space which will be sold to a private organisation for less than the cost of a cup of coffee. No matter how this is packaged, this is not a good look for a city council which values sustainability (and which is making some very good progress in this area elsewhere). It sets a very dangerous precedent for the future.”
Elsewhere, author and lecturer Dr. Aodh Quinlivan wrote about the case for strengthening local government, which makes for interesting reading, especially if we are asked once more to vote for a directly elected mayor.
Both those op-eds are available for everyone to read (ie. not behind a paywall). We’d love to publish more guest essays in 2024 from experts across different fielfs in Cork, so by all means drop us a line.
Grandmaster Myo and other stories
And finally, there are so many other pieces that I could highlight here, such as Kilian’s profile of the Kabin Crew in Holyhill, what drives Chippy to grafitti the city with his tag, how Mike McGrath (re) made tripe and drisheen from his base in Miayazaki, how to read Ulysses (concentrate on the food!), how the new interim boss of Cork County Council wasn’t aware of what was on her Twitter/X account until T+D asked about it (turns out the account was “compromised” according to the County Council), standing under a swift filled summer sky with my two sons and bird expert Noel Linehan and why don’t BAM and Clarendon open those steps to the Lower Glanmire Road?
To sign off, I’ll leave you with a piece I really enjoyed writing: how a cafe owner, a stone carver, a band of apprentices and Cork City Council came together to put two beautiful new chess tables on the banks of the River Lee. That piece here
That’s it for this week and this year. We’re going to take a wee Christmas break but we’ll be back at it in 2024. As always, any tips, news or events you’d like to share with Tripe+Drisheen, you can contact us via at tripeanddrisheen@substack.com.
We are always happy to speak to people off the record in the first instance, and we will treat your information with confidence and sensitivity. Get in touch. Thanks again for all your support and stories in 2023. Best wishes for 2024 and onwards.
Team T+D.