The Friday View 22/04
STCs, books galore, photo of the week, a marathon reading session and there will be digging. Welcome to the Friday View on T+D.
One of the things that separates Cork from Dublin is that we don’t have a 3Arena. Or an Aviva Stadium. Or a Barry’s Tea Arena. Or a Tanora Park. Or a Beamish Bowl. No, then: we have Páirc Uí Chaoimh, Turner’s Cross, Musgrave Park, the Tinny Shed, and Callanan’s when they finally peel open those dark coloured doors again and let the air awash with the river and the tide come in the doors.
For a while there though we nearly had a Victorian Quarter, and it looks like we might still have a Brewery Quarter. What brewery? Please.
The building that was the Beamish&Crawford brewery will be turned into office space. On one side of the old brewery building is a student accommodation complex with the threat/promise of a big hall for concerts and conferences on the other side of the former brewery. The Beamish&Crawford brewery is with O’Leary in the grave.
But this rush to “quarterise” everywhere is nauseating. For instance, we also have in the city a City Quarter. (Long hours were spent brainstorming on that one). How many people know about this city quarter? Exactly. Thankfully, most of these quarters haven’t moved beyond press releases, slideshows and marketing material.
I am not without sympathy for the quarter backers, and those involved probably enter in good faith and high hopes of making their “quarter” stand out, but not everything needs to be branded. Let MacCurtain Street be MacCurtain Street. Cork city centre is small. Let the character of the different parts of it live on by looking after its heritage, not by some slick marketing campaign that fools no one except those paying for it.
-JJ
News in brief
STCs please: Here’s an acronym you’ll be hearing a lot more of since the latest publication this week of the new €600m public transport plan for Cork city. The 12 new Sustainable Transport Corridors (STCs), are integral to getting a lot more people in Cork to use public transport. The top line is that by 2040, there will be a fourfold increase in the number of people using bus and rail, and the figures for cyclists and walkers will be up by 33%.
There’ll be new routes, new buses, new cycle corridors and the National Transport Authority is spending more than half a billion euros to get all this up and running.
Officials from the City Council and the NTA praised the plan. However, the devil is in the detail.
On that figure of 33%, Conn Donovan, chair of Cork Cycling Campaign, told Tripe + Drisheen that, “it's important to point out that any plan that takes a 2011 baseline (1-2%) and triples it to 4% by 2040 is not fit for purpose.”
“Cycling is a low carbon, non polluting form of transport that enables people to unlock significant health benefits. BusConnects should seek to get 15-20% of all trips in Cork by bike by the end of this decade,” Donovan added.
Donovan called on elected officials in Cork as well as the Council Executive to grasp this once-in-a generation transport plan, saying it’s not the time “to hide behind the curtains and see what the public mood is. There will be opposition, there will be complaining, and there will be criticism. What we need however is leadership, vision, and courage to take the right steps to make Cork a safer, healthier, and more environmentally friendly city.”
That criticism will come from the culture shift and clash of prioritising public transport over car use which will in some places result in removing on street parking. The car is still king in Cork - it would be great to know the share of all staff say in UCC, MTU, City Hall and County Hall that use car vs public transport and/or cycle walk to work. Or combine both with park and ride.
Ciarán Meers, who has previously written for T+D on transport in Cork and heads up Cork Commuter Coalition thinks that new bus corridors will ensure that buses don’t get stuck in “ever increasing congestion, cutting almost half an hour off travel time on some routes.”
“There’s undoubtedly going to be tension over the actual geographical layout of these routes,” Meers said.
“However the scheme as a whole is too important to let fall to NIMBYism and death-by-consultation; so it’s up to the NTA to win the support of residents and politicians wherever possible, but also to put the foot down if it comes to it.
“There’s still some questions over usage of bus priority signalling that will hopefully become clear when the technical details are published in June,” he added.
Ahead of the all important June publication you can read what has been published so far on the BusConnects website here.
Also this week
Daley’s Bridge, better known as The Shakey Bridge, got a fair bit of global exposure when Tom Scott, a prolific YouTuber, showed up by the Lee to show the world the bridge that shakes and wobbles. Councillor Kieran McCarthy was on hand to fill in with the historical detail. Spoiler: the original bridge which was recently refurbished at a cost of €1.7m was ordered off a catalogue, and yes it still shakes.
Photo of the week
Photographer Dave Cremin writes: “This was taken in August 2020 when we had a minor break in Covid-19 restrictions. I went to the city on a Friday night (the shot was taken around 8 p.m.) to just document what I saw, and I was looking for something positive and it didn't take me long to find this, I love the complexity in the photo, along with the layers and colour harmony.”
You can find more of Dave’s street photography of Cork over on his Instagram.
Out + About
📚To celebrate Cork World Book Festival Nano Nagle Place are holding an Antiquarian Book Market this weekend. You can browse out of print, local interest and specialist books along with coins and other ephemera over at the centre on Douglas Street.
Time, date, place: 11 a.m. - 5 p.m. April 23 & 24, Nano Nagle Place, Douglas Street.
📙Cork World Book Fest: The city’s celebration of Irish and world literature returns in real life, as they say, after a two-year hiatus. There’s lots of events scheduled for the remaining three days and we’ve picked out a handful if you’re in the city over the weekend.
A celebration of new fiction: Passage-West based novelist Danny Denton and poet James Harpur will be in conversation with writer Alison Driscoll at the City Library tonight (April 22) at 8 p.m. discussing their debut novels. Denton’s second novel, All Along The Echo, is hot off the press having just been published this month.
For budding writers, or those who have started into their book and are wondering how to get it out into the world pencil in Saturday at the City Library.
From 9.30 a.m. – 10.30 a.m. in the Thomas Davis room you can meet publishing agents Sallyanne Sweeney and Polly Nolan. Both agents are based in Ireland and to the free attend you’ll need to book on Eventbrite first.
At 11 a.m., still in the City Library, there will be an exciting and daunting experience: ten writers will read their pitches to the agents, and they’ll get feedback. Best of luck and best food forward.
The delightfully titled Anyone Can Make Comics: A Beginner’s Workshop for Teens is being led by Colin O’Mahoney a writer and freelance editor. The free event takes place from 11 a.m. in the Children’s Library, but you’ll need to book first here.
Sticking with the visual element another worthwhile session is with Spanish cartoonist José María Gallego, who will deliver a workshop for YA and adults on characters and caricature drawing on Saturday 23 at 5 p.m. in the City Library. You’ll be drawing so bring pencils and book first here.
And last but not least, over at The Crane Lane from early until late (ANGELUS TO ANGELUS) on Saturday 23 features Cónal Creedon with SMALL BIRDS and a mammoth six-hour reading of Pancho and Lefty Ride Again. Drop by for all some of it/all of it. And get a flavour of what’s in store from Ellie’s Arts+Culture podcast recorded with SMALL BIRDS earlier this month. Starts at 12 p.m.
A full list of all the events for Cork World Book Fest can be found here.
🍅Togher Community Garden are back at it this Saturday tearing it up and…sowing. This weekend they’ll be planting beetroot, chard and a variety of tomatoes. Regulars and new volunteers are welcome to come along - all ages too. And a cup of tea to round the morning off.
Time, date, place: 10 a.m. - 1 p.m., Saturday 23, Togher Community Garden, Clashduv Rd, Togher.
🖼The Crawford Art Gallery has opened its doors once again after a four week closure ahead of the builders coming in, but that won’t be for a while yet. Ongoing exhibitions include: SATURATION: The everyday transformed, Botanica, Zurich Portrait Prize 2021, Zurich Young Portrait Prize 2021. Free guided tours on Sundays and Bank Holiday Mondays at 2 p.m.
Time, date, place: Monday–Saturday 10 a.m–5 p.m. (until 8 p.m. on Thursday), Emmet Place.
🍷Welcome to the neigbhourhood: MacCurtain Street has a new shop, aptly called MacCurtain Wine Cellar and it opened earlier this month in one of the Victorian-era buildings adorning the street. Best of luck to the proprietors Trudy Ahern and Sean Gargano.
That’s it for this week’s Friday View. Watch out for tomorrow’s instalment of our Arts+ Culture podcast from Ellie. Definitely one you’ll want to listen in on.
Any tips, news or events you’d like to share with Tripe+Drisheen, you can contact either of us at jj.odonoghue@gmail.com or emailellieobyrne@gmail.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.
