The Friday View 27/05
A visitor's departing comments cause a stir Leeside, Apple gets bigger, and our round-up of cultural events in the city and county.
Richard Quest, a CNN business journalist and a staple of hotel TV content, was in Cork this month and while you probably didn’t know it at the time you most likely were made aware of his visit following an interview he gave to The Sunday Independent in which he delivered a few fairly harmless but accurate home truths about Cork and Dublin. We’ll leave Dublin out of it, but Quest said that some of the places Leeside look tatty. “I thought that in Cork. I loved the [English] market, but the buildings look tired downtown.”
What’s more interesting than his comments were the comments that his comments generated and while this is getting meta, Quest’s comments were a sort of Rorschach test. You either thought that, a la the outgoing Lord Mayor, the CNN man was well wide of the mark and Cork is a city on the precipice of great things, just look at the Docklands!, or you nodded and said, “Era, I’ve said the same thing myself plenty of times and never ended up in the paper.”
Cork is a city of dereliction, as are countless other Irish cities and towns. We’ve wrote often and in-depth on Tripe+Drisheen about this phenomenon and no matter what the mayor might say about the Docklands and how Rome wasn’t built in a day, Cork is still a city of vacancy and dereliction. You don’t need to be a CNN journalist to notice that.
City Council Council has a plan for the city centre - the City Centre Revitalisation Action Plan - which was authored by KPMG and unveiled at City Council a few weeks ago. Broadly speaking, it aims to make the city centre a “magnet city”, greener, more family friendly, develop the night-time economy, and all round it provides the blueprint for a big upgrade. And not to go all Roman, but the Mayor is right, this will take time, significant time, and the results, well they’re not guaranteed to bring success either.
You could argue that the city centre, especially St Patrick’s Street, has an existential problem, or more specifically a retail problem. The Roches Stores building has been empty for two years now, and brick-and-mortar retailers in city centres have a battle on their hands with online retailers and out of town shopping centres. The Roche family are reportedly putting the historic building up for sale and must be betting that a big enough whale will come along and buy the premise. But who wants it and what will become of it? City centres though need to move away from a retail-only focus. Not to get all KPMG, but culture does matter and while it’s a very broad church, it’s one that’s likely to attract more visitors and be more appealing to locals than one that’s defined by department stores with uncertain futures.
It’s not in the revitalisation plan, but it would be worth investigating the idea of fully pedestrianising St. Patrick’s Street from Daunt Square right up to the junction with Merchant’s Quay, essentially turning the street into a giant plaza and breathing life into what is a lovely street in places, and sadly tatty in many others? The Docklands might be great at some stage, but right now St. Patrick’s Street in its entirety isn’t.
-JJ
News in brief
A bigger Apple. As expected, Apple is expanding and investing further in its base in Hollyhill on the Northside, where it first settled in Ireland in the early 1980s. Last month, city councillors approved of the disposal of a nine acre plot of city council land in Hollyhill to the IDA for 1.25 million.
Apple’s planning application was submitted this week to the City Council and you can view it here. Apple plans to construct a four storey office building on the campus capable of accommodating up to 1,300 staff. If planning permission is granted the building should be up and running by 2025, but no news was given about what type of jobs there’ll be.
"We are proud to be part of the community here, and with this new project, we will continue to create new jobs, support local organisations, and drive innovation on behalf of our customers," said Cathy Kearney, Apple's Vice President of European operations in a statement to the media.
The Guardian has an excellent read on Kearney, and while it’s nearly 10 years old it outlines how the east Cork accountant saved the American tech giant billions through Apple Operations International, an Apple holding company based here in Cork (which the Guardian says neither had employees or an office). Apple Operations International is not to be confused with Apple Operations Europe which is the applicant name Apple usually uses in its planning applications to City Council.
Photo of the week
Out + About
🎧 Sounds from Cobh: Tripe + Drisheen journalist Ellie O’Byrne has been working on a new arts podcast that some here may be interested in. SIRIUS Podcasts is a series of conversations with the artists and performers whose work can be seen at the Sirius Arts Centre in Cobh, Co Cork.
Time, date, place: You can listen to the series on all the usual podcasting apps and the podcast webpage is here.
🎸We are, we are, we are…back: The Frank & Walters take to the stage at Blackrock Hurling Club this weekend. They have songs galore and sure you probably know half of them and the guy next to you will know the other half. Tickets and more information here.
Time, date, place: 9:30 pm. Saturday May 28, Blackrock Hurling Club
🍄Permaculture: The Kinsale School of Further Education will be celebrating all things permaculture-related this weekend as they reach a milestone of 21 years of permaculture in Ireland. (Permaculture revolves around an agrilctural system that are both sustainable and self-sufficient). There’s a series of talks and masterclasses on everything from soil improvement, time banking and mushroom growing workshops. My Goodness Food from the English Market will be in attendance and talking about their zero waste mission. More information here.
Time, date, place: Saturday May 28, Kinsale School of Further Education
🎻Gig iontach: Jim Murray, Richard Lucey agus amhránaí Nell Ní Chróinín will perform at the Ionad Cultúrtha in Baile Mhúirne this Friday. You won’t hear a finer trio of trad musicians and singers in all of Cork. More information here.
Time, date, place: 8 pm, 27ú Bealtaine, Ionad Cultúrtha an Dochtúir Ó Loinsigh, Baile Mhúirne
😂Comedian Joe Rooney returns to Cork this weekend for a stand-up gig at City Limits. Rooney appeared as Fr. Damo in Fr. Ted and he was also in Kilnascully, and he’s been on the comedy circuit a good while now. More information here.
Time, date, place: Doors 8 pm, show 9 pm. Saturday May 28, The Comedy Club at City Limits 16 Coburg St.
🖼Kevin Mooney will wrap up ‘Mutators’, his solo exhibition, with a talk with curator Sarah Kelleher in St. Luke’s Crypt this weekend. Kevin’s show finishes on Saturday so it’s a chance to kill two birds with one visit if you’re dropping by that day.
Time, date, place: 2 pm, May 28, St. Luke’s Crypt, St Luke’s
📰Cork in zine. Illustrator Emer Kiely has a new zine fresh off the presses and it’s based on the essay ‘The Raingod’s Green, Dark As Passion’ by Kevin Barry which was first published in Granta. Barry was, for a good few years, a resident of Cork city and he has written much about how just like the damp weather the city enters the bones and settles there. It’s a short but lovely zine from Emer, whose work you might recognise from the cover of the first ever print run of Tripe+Drisheen. You can see more of the Emer’s zine here.
🎥 Fastnet Film Festival: The focus of this year’s Schull-based festival is Scottish cinema and there’s a cracking line-up of screenings, seminars and masterclasses. Virginia Heath and Grant Keir will run a Masterclass on ‘How to Direct and Produce a Feature Documentary’ and Stephen Rea will be in conversation with Greg Dyke. Full programme of events here.
Time, date, place: 25-29 May, Schull, various venues throughout the town.
The English Market in colour
The English Market gets a magical reworking here by illustrator and artist Holly Keating. You can see more of Holly’s work over on her Instagram account below.
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.
