Move over Temple Bar - word on the street has it that there's a new focus for Dublin's nightlife. The mile-plus stretch of streets from South Great George's Street to Portobello Bridge is now probably the hottest, most "happening" strip in the capital. From Wednesday to Saturday nights every week many thousands of revellers throng the thoroughfare, which is throbbing with late bars, restaurants, nightclubs, a few casinos and some other establishments that engage in less reputable nocturnal activities.
Last Christmas Dublin Bus's late-night services took to naming the Camden Street-Wexford Street-Harcourt Street end of the stretch as "The Village Quarter", clearly with the Greenwich Village area of New York in mind. Some business people have also been talking about creating a brand name for the entire stretch that comprises South Great George's Street, Aungier Street, Wexford Street, Camden Street and Richmond Street. The idea, it seems, is to give the strip an attractive collective name that tourists will immediately identify with Dublin's heaving nightlife.
Hotspots
Down the years, there have been a number of hotspots that have been, for a while, the centre of the city's social life, from "the Strip" (Baggot Street and Merrion Row) to Leeson Street, to Grafton Street and on to the present - with Dublin's own version of Magaluf, Temple Bar. But the fickle finger of fate has moved and the centre of gravity has shifted again.
There is one reason for the shift this time: demographics. The tens of thousands of young upwardly mobile tiger cubs from the sprawling flatlands of Ranelagh, Rathmines and the South Circular Road all pass through these streets on their way into town. In the earlier part of the last century the area was notorious for violent political unrest and the contrast with the present could hardly be more stark. Then the area was dubbed "Bomb Alley" and "the Dardanelles" because of the attacks on British army vehicles on their way from the city centre to Portobello barracks. Indeed, the grandfathers of some of today's visitors from across the water may very well have even taken some "incoming" back then while they were here "having a crack at the Mick", as the Tommies used to call service in Ireland. Now, their grandsons and daughters are having crack with the Mick.
One of the first people to spot the area's attractions was Ballykissangel actor Gary Whelan, who, some 10 years ago, transformed Burke's traditional Dublin bar in Wexford Street into the popular haunt that is Whelan's music venue. Many other establishments have followed suit, culminating in my old boyhood dream factory, the Theatre De Luxe cinema, being turned into a gargantuan emporium called Planet Murphy which can take up to 3,000 souls at a time.
Loud music
Hotels, too, have not been slow to identify the market for drinkers and they have sprung up all along the stretch (you may be interested to know that they still do a little sideline in rented rooms). One strong criticism I would make is that all new late-night venues on the strip seem to believe that loud music should drown out conversation, the aspect of Dublin culture that made the city's pubs so attractive in the first place. Another drawback is compulsory closing-time, which means that thousands of loud and liquored-up revellers are disgorged onto the streets at the same time. Gentle souls should avoid the area at all costs between 1:30 a.m. and 3:30 a.m from Wednesdays to Saturdays.
New apartments have also proliferated, adding to the already huge demand for entertainment. Promotion of the strip carries the risk of replicating the Temple Bar factor, whereby the image of Dublin abroad has become that of a tourism one-stop-shop - for weekend drinking tourists only. Many revellers from our neighbouring island in particular have taken to coming over to Temple Bar to engage in this cultural pursuit. Now, British media celebrities have bought into this image of Dublin, helping to foster an image of the city as a place to go only to get smashed. Care should be taken that other aspects of Dublin life are highlighted in the promotion of other parts of the city.
St Valentine
If the are does need a new collective name, I suggest the sweetsounding Portobello, perhaps "the Portobello Road". It is, after all, the route from the city centre to the place of that name. Or maybe it would be better to draw on the attraction of the patron saint of lovers, St Valentine, whose remains are supposedly secreted in the crypt of the White Friars' church in Aungier Street. I'm sure we could entice lovers from all over the world with the charms of "St Valentine's Way".