Grattan Bridge kiosks gone

AROUND THE BLOCK:THEY'VE GONE! The bunker-like kiosks that were supposed to give Grattan Bridge a touch of the Left Bank have been quietly taken away, having never really worked as bookstalls.

The kiosks, which were built in 2004 as part of a €2 million project aimed at turning the bridge linking Capel Street with Parliament Street into a European-style book market, had been unoccupied for almost a year.

At one stage they were used by two performance artists to showcase their talents as DJs to rush hour motorists.

The idea was terrific, but the reality was grim, grey blocks sitting on a desolate site which the late artist and Dublin wit Gerry Davis described as "visual vandalism". The kiosks were ordered in from Barcelona - but they never looked quite right. And just as the Liffey's water proved too obscure for the Chime in the Slime, the kiosks were victims of the river's wind-tunnel effect. While the Boardwalk coffee shops enjoy a south-facing aspect and sit sideways to gales, the Grattan kiosks took the wind head on, so tourists weren't wont to linger.

The brainchild of former city architect Jim Barrett, once he left office, they were quietly ignored and have presumably now been sent off to a designer graveyard somewhere in the city where the Liffey clock, Floozy in the Jacuzzi and the grim, grey Grattans all reside?

And who's counting them - the electronic voting machines perhaps?