In retrospect, Good Friday might not have been a great day to launch a magazine. On the day itself nothing much moved in the city. The next day was quiet. On Sunday there was no one, as usual, in town. Monday was a bank holiday, and by then we were well into another week.
But such considerations were not on the minds of the people behind In Dublin magazine. We were just keen to get it on the street and, having made – in late February – the decision to publish, we brought out the magazine on April 16th, 1976, 50 years ago this month.
Of course, the planning had been going on for much longer. A number of friends and I, notably the graphic designer Ted Turton, had discussed the need for a magazine about what was on in the city.
At the time, you could find out about rock music in one place, folk in another; there was a magazine which published classical music listings; news of art exhibitions was sparse. The evening newspapers carried ads for the cinemas and some theatres; the dailies were another source. Much information came by word of mouth, or by scanning the posters on walls and hoardings around the city. The idea of In Dublin was to gather all this information in one place.
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The talk about it could have gone on forever but for a chance encounter I had with Ciarán McGinley and his wife Helen. I was driving a van from Galway to Dublin so that the family of a friend of mine could use it while they held a vigil outside the French ambassador’s residence in protest at her father’s imprisonment in Paris.
I stopped for the two near Ballinasloe. They had just returned from living in London and we got talking about this city magazine idea. By the time we got to their place in Dublin, Ciarán had set a date the following week for a meeting of interested parties. This was the push we needed, and at the meeting all agreed on a deadline six weeks away.
Other cities had magazines that served as models: Pariscope in Paris, for example; Time Out in London. The New Yorker’s extensive and urbane Goings On about Town section at the front was the editors’ selection of what was worth going to in any given week, with the proviso in the Night Life section that you should phone ahead before going, as “musicians and nightclub proprietors live complicated lives that are subject to last-minute change”.
Small as Dublin was, the same complicated lives existed here, and extended also to the owners and managers of cinemas. Twenty-two cinemas were listed in the first issue, including eight in the suburbs, from Phibsborough to Terenure, and information had to be extracted from each one – often with difficulty, even though all listings were free.
None of the five of us who put together the first issue – Eivlín Roden and Helen stayed for a few months – had any experience in publishing. With fortunate timing, a book in the yellow-covered Teach Yourself series, called Into Print, had appeared. It explained how with offset litho printing you did not need metal type; with a “golf ball” electric typewriter (for a uniform impression, printed out by a small spherical head) you could type up galleys, to be pasted on boards. These were made up on an A4 grid and reduced photographically by the printer to produce an A5 image.
Many illustrious careers began at In Dublin – in journalism, cartooning, photography, criticism (including a whole swath of writers who ended up in The Irish Times), radio and television, graphic design and the writing of novels.
But all this lay ahead as my mother came down to the warm kitchen one morning in April 1976 and found a bunch of weary ruffians who had spent the night at work on her table, finishing the artwork for issue one, Ted applying the last Indian ink stipple to his beautiful cover logo.
She was extraordinarily understanding, and worked around us to make breakfast for herself and my father.
Off with us then to the printer. A couple of days later we received three bundles of A4 pages which had to be folded and collated to make magazines of 12 A5 pages, each to receive two staples. The print run was 1,000 and the job took forever.
On Good Friday we went our separate ways to sell the magazine. I took Grafton Street, which was nearly empty. At the top I met Olwen Fouéré, whose family’s van, in some ways, had led to the enterprise. As far as I recall, she was the first to hand over money, 10p, and buy a copy.
On Saturday we took to the pubs in search of buyers, a thankless task. “Sure we are in Dublin!” was a common response. On Monday we brought copies to the races in Fairyhouse. Eventually, miraculously, the print run sold out; In Dublin began.
