🌤️The Friday View 07/02
February is here in full and it's spring time in the city. A new book explores Cork's architecture, City Council undergoes more changes, and soon, a place to enjoy lunch without your phone.
Good morning and welcome to the first Friday View in February. Let’s get to it!
Sewage: Uisce Éireann and engineering outfit Glanua Ireland were both fined €4,000 by Macroom District Court for pumping sewage into the River Sullane in two separate incidents in 2024 in a case brought by Inland Fisheries Ireland. Both were ordered to pay €2,354 in legal costs and expenses.
Per The Examiner, Judge Andrew Cody, said “This was a national authority pumping sewage into a river, why did it happen?” Cody said that the explanation of the temporary fix for the aeration tank sounded like it “was done on the cheap”.
Slowing down: From today, February 7, the speed limit on many rural local roads will change from 80 kilometres per hour to 60 kilometres per hour. Speed limits will reduce in the wider Blarney, Glanmire, Ballincollig and Douglas areas of the city. According to the City Council, new signage is in place. A full list of roads with maps for the city-wide area of the new speed limits is available here.
Council corner: Former Labour Councillor Laura Harmon was elected to the Industrial and Commercial Panel in the Seanad this week, meaning she’ll be vacating her role in Cork City Council (you can’t be elected to the Oireachtas and in the Council at the same time, Harmon told us, adding that she’ll be working for Cork in the Seanad). That means a new councillor will be co-opted to the City Council in Harmon’s place. We shall know soon who that is.
Ward funds: Each councillor in Cork city has €13,500 to disperse in Ward Funds over the course of a calendar year. Typically, the money makes its way to organisations in developing and /or providing services or facilities that benefit the community. Cllr Niamh O’Connor (SocDems) is inviting groups in Cork City South West to contact her in relation to proposals about how they might use the funds to better their areas and communities. She can be contacted at niamh_oconnor@corkcity.ie.
Likewise, if you have an idea that could better your community, you can also contact your local councillors to see if there is funding available for it. The full list of councillors is available here. T+D will look into finding out how ward funds are distributed.
Lunch sans phone: Beginning next month O’sho on the bottom of Barrack Street will introduce phone-less lunches. The pub, well known for its trad sessions and a place to enjoy a pint and take out from Miyazaki, will have boxes where you can lock away your phone and enjoy lunch as it was in 1992. They’ll be opening from 12pm-4pm if you fancy seeing what can happen when you disconnect for a while.
Have bike, will travel: Readers will recall that Ellie O’Byrne put down many a word on T+D about cycling, the pleasure and pain of it. Now she’s in for a lot more of that as together with Mark Graham, the pair have has set off on February 1 on a round the world adventure armed only with their rothars and whatever they can carry on their back. Currently they are making their way down through France. You can stay up to date with Ellie and Mark on their Instagram page, or sign up for the Substack suitably called Spokey Yokes. God speed!
Book corner: Local historian Tom Spalding has linked up with Cork University Press to publish Designed for Life: Architecture and Design in Cork City, 1900–90. As the CUP blurb notes, Cork does not lack for want of inspection on its political and military history, but Spalding’s new book take a different tack, looking instead at the “houses, pubs, factories and other quotidian buildings where its people spent their lives.”
Spalding’s new book also looks at the rebuilding of Cork after a decade of turmoil in the 1920s, the social housing revolution and Murphy’s Brewery and its influence on design and pubs amongst other topics. Available to buy here.
Also, hot off the presses is Larder from Cork-based cook Orla McAndrew featuring 13 key larder staples such as eggs, tinned fish, pulses, and coconut milk along with 100 recipes that you should be able to tackle, even if you don’t have a larder. Available from Blasta books, it’s beautifully illustrated by Nicky Hooper.
Trees, yes please: Put this in your calendar. Trees Please are back in Rebel Reads in the Marina on Sunday, February 16 with a great line-up of native Irish trees including hawthorn, Silver Birch, Elder, Dog Tose, Oak, Rowan, Alder and much else. They’ll be offering the bare-root trees (suggested donation €1 per tree) from 11am, and ahead of your visit they’re asking you do some research to see which trees will suit the land you’re planning to plant. You can download a copy of Our Trees for a guide on growing trees from seed and cuttings, and Trees Please has a short video guide to planting Bare Root Native Irish Tree here. Contact details for Trees Please here.
Out + About
The UCC Trad Fest takes place this weekend after beginning last night at O’Sho. Tonight, the UCC TradSoc host a session in Mr. Bradley’s on Barrack Street, while tomorrow, there are sessions in Cissie Young’s with Maynooth TradSoc and The Abbey Tavern hosts Oran Kelly and Simon Grehan, while University of Galway students have a set dancing session in Mr. Bradley’s. Tomorrow, in The Gallows on Bandon Road, Eoin Burke and Máiréad Carey have a session.
Time, date, place: 9pm, Friday February 7, Mr. Bradley’s, Barrack Street; 1pm, Saturday February 8, Cissie Young’s, Bandon Road; 2pm, Saturday February 8, Mr. Bradley’s, 3pm, Saturday February 8, The Abbey Tavern, Gillabbey Street; 5pm, Sunday February 9, The Gallows, Bandon Road, Cork.
inter_site is a collective of artists Pádraic Barrett, Deirdre Breen, Aoife Claffey and Kate McElroy. Their upcoming exhibition, ⌥ertigo, A Crescendo, takes place at the top of County Hall this weekend. It features a once off celebration of sound and light, with installation, film, sculpture and sound elements that respond to the County Hall building. Tickets are necessary to visit the exhibition and are available here.
Time, date, place: 5pm-8pm, Friday February 7-Sunday February 9, County Hall, Carrigrohane Road, Cork.
Lau Noah is a self-taught singer-songwriter, composer and multi-instrumentalist from Catalonia with a global following, recently releasing her first LP, A Dos. Amongst the venues she played are the Royal Albert Hall, the NPR Tiny Desk, and on Saturday, Levis’ in Ballydehob. Tickets for that are available here.
Time, date, place: 8pm, Saturday February 8, Levis’ Corner House, Ballydehob.
Cork Textile Networks will hold Botanica, an exhibition by its members, at Bishopstown Library this month. The exhibition features members’ work that showcase the vast array of textile mediums used to create their art. The exhibition runs until the 28th, during library opening hours. More information here.
Time, date, place: Thursday February 6-Friday February 28, Bishopstown Library, Wilton Shopping Centre, Sarsfield Road, Cork.
Trawled is a one-man biographical drama written, produced, and acted by Eoin Ryan at the Cork Arts Theatre. Set on a prawn trawler in the Coral Sea in Australia, it is raw distillation of life set around a ‘perfect storm’ of despair for the protagonist. More information and tickets here.
Time, date, place: 8pm, Friday February 7 & Saturday February 8, Cork Arts Theatre, Carroll’s Quay, Cork.
The Blackwater Fit-Up Theatre Festival, which brings theatre to Fermoy, Bartlemy, Youghal and Ballynoe, opens this Sunday with Sugar. Presented by Blood in the Alley Theatre, it presents the last days of an employee at Irish Sugar before the factory’s closure at the Palace Theatre in Fermoy. Sugar is also performed at Inch Community Hall, near Mount Uniacke and Killeagh, on Tuesday. Footnote, a one-woman comedy told from the point of view a long struggling writer, is performed in Bartlemy on Wednesday and Saint George’s Arts Centre in Mitchelstown on Thursday. Tickets available on the door for each performance.
Time, date, place: 8pm, Sunday February 9, Palace Theatre, Ashe Quay, Fermoy; 8pm, Tuesday February 11, Inch Community Hall, near Mount Uniacke; 8pm, Wednesday February 12, Bartlemy Community Hall, near Rathcormac; 8pm, Thursday February 13, Saint George’s Arts and Heritage Centre, George Street, Mitchelstown.
Viktoria Kondratieva is a Ukrainian artist who is a member of the Young Print Collective, and a participant of Sample-Studios’ Studios of Sanctuary programme. As part of her current residency at the Triskel Sample Project Space, she’s building a new body of portraiture of traditional ragdolls, with each piece a different portrait of a woman from Ukraine in traditional clothes from different regions. More information here.
Time, date, place: Friday February 7-Sunday March 2, Triskel Sample Project Space, Tobin Street, Cork.
Local stoner-punk band Dankenstoned’s Bongster recently released a video game, DANKENSTONED'S BONGSTER'S GRAM SMOKER'S STANKULA, with New Zealand’s Finnsoft Games. Link to it on steam here. They celebrate the release of the game in Dali on Saturday night, with Dublin’s Onion Boys and a DJ set by another Dublin band, girlfriend. Tickets are available for the madness that will ensue here.
Time, date, place: 8pm, Saturday February 8, Dali, Lavitt’s Quay, Cork.
Cork Decorative and Fine Arts Society are back this weekend with Dr Matthew Whyte of UCC holding court on ‘Siena in the Middle Ages: Tradition & Innovation in the Arts’. This comes ahead of a major exhibition at the National Gallery in London opening next month which will explore the breadth and wealth of visual art in fourteenth-century Siena.
Time, date, place: 11:30am, Saturday, February 8, Nano Nagle Place, Douglas St.
Also, we’ve started a gig guide for the month over on Instagram which you can check out here. We’ll still keep posting our culture line-up every week on the Friday View:)
This week on T+D:
Padraig caught up with Chris O’Leary, the driving force behind Comedy Cavern.
Have a tip for T+D or want to get in contact? Drop us a line on tripeanddrisheen@substack.com. Also feel free to share comments, news or events with us for inclusion in the Friday View. 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. Have a lovely weekend.
Afaik Garrett Kelleher (FG) is also now a senator. That's two co-ops for City Council coming up for the South West Ward.