Capturing the spirit of a city is a challenge that is as broad as it is interesting. We meet some of the people journaling the capital’s past and present. 

Hobbies, by their very nature, go in and out of fashion. The word itself immediately conjures up images of trainspotters, stamp collectors, birdwatchers, quilters and scrapbookers, but the gamut runs far and wide.

Much of the media we consume through the glare of our phones today – whether it’s social history bar reviewers, signage documentarians, creative profilers or photography projects –  is down to passionate hobbyists. Behind such platforms are single-minded individuals, eager to spread the word about their consuming interests.

Here we profile some of those driven to capture who and what makes their city of Dublin unique. For John Mahon of the online culture magazine The Locals, his motivation is as simple as “enjoying sharing things I like with other people”.

For the anonymous pintmen on “a modern Irish drinking odyssey”, it’s part of “a concerted effort to visit unchartered boozers”. While for Emma Clark, recording the city’s signage has been a welcome break from a challenging PhD. 

Of course, for a few, documenting the city is more than a part-time passion. At weekly online and monthly print publisher Dublin InQuirer, Lois Kapila and Sam Tranum here discuss how they’re turning their long-form, civically engaging journalism into a thriving business. 

@dublinghostsigns
Emma Clark
Capturing Dublin’s old signage

In recording the city, Emma likes to include a wide variety of signage. However, “I do try to differentiate between traditional ghost signs, which are hand-painted advertisements on brick, and old signs in general, which on my site can range from floor mosaics to stone-carved and fascia signs.” Her rule is that she will include a sign on the site only if it is a remnant of a past business or the past purpose of a building.

“Despite the fact that there is a signage policy in Dublin, it does not appear to be enforced at all,” Emma laments, but she encourages flâneurs to look above street level, particularly around Capel Street, Thomas Street, James’ Street and The Liberties. “Dublin 8 is undergoing so much change at the moment. Every time I go there, I notice something else which has disappeared, been demolished or covered up.”

Emma lauds the preservation of Doran’s on George’s Street and the Morris Wallpaper Stores on Talbot Street, while the Metro Burger sign on the Screen Cinema site on Hawkins Street is a personal favourite. “Down the line, I would love to open or be involved with a Dublin sign museum along the lines of the Neon Museum in Las Vegas or Berlin’s Buchstabenmuseum.”

INSIDER DUBLIN “I love the ‘Well-Known Boot & Shoe Retailer’ ghost sign on Parnell Street. As you come down North Great George’s Street, it’s right in front of you. It’s a really old ghost sign with nice, even lettering. The only thing I’ve been able to find out about this one is that it was called King & Co. I’d love to know more.”

@sarahbowieillustration
Sarah Bowie
Recording daily life on Dublin Bus

When you travel by any means of public transport five or six days a week, your list of bugbears can grow and grow. So you would expect illustrator Sarah Bowie, who started sharing sketches from her bus commute late last year, to have more than one.

“Yes. People putting their feet on seats, which is gross, and people putting their bag beside them when the bus is busy so no one else can sit down: ignorant. As for all the other stuff: noisy conversations, copious scrolling, drunken small talk, bring it on,” she says. “That’s what makes bus journeys interesting.”

Sarah originally started sketching while on the buses, but people soon cottoned on. Now she spends the commute observing, taking down the odd note on her phone. Arriving at work early each day, she pulls out a Moleskine and a Platinum Carbon Ink fountain pen to draw the banal and bizarre.

Sarah is enthusiastic about Dublin Bus as a means of transport. “I love it. The real-time app can be quite misleading and we could do with more cross-suburban connections but, for character and colour, Dublin Bus gets five stars from me,” she says. “I think when we’re all being chauffeured around in driverless cars, we’ll look back on buses with the same quaint appreciation we have now for stage coaches.”

INSIDER DUBLIN “The different routes all have their own particular charm. My current one (which I won’t reveal!) is proving fruitful, with a nice mix of people of all different ages and backgrounds.

@dublinbypub
Anonymous
Documenting the city’s pubs from an ordinary perspective

A carpenter, an animator and a public servant walk into a bar. All come to the incorrect conclusion that, between them, they’d visited the majority of the pubs in the city. Then they start making a list. “We were soon rudely awakened to the fact that there were far more than we had thought, so we set ourselves the task of visiting all the pubs in the city,” says Pintman No. 1 of why they started @dublinbypub.

Currently, they are bound by geography. Each pub must be in their designated catchment area of north to south between the Royal and Grand canals, and west to east from the North and South Circular Roads to the Irish Sea. Though it is Pintman No. 1 who writes the copy, he describes the reviews as a collaborative effort. “We’ve a DublinByPub WhatsApp group that Pintman No. 3 rules with an iron fist whenever any of us stray off-topic.”

Pintman No. 3 (not pictured), a self-described “homesick emigrant” now living in France, notes how many bars on the Continent are not aesthetically nice places to be, while here, they are mostly inviting. “But besides all that, the best thing about Dublin pubs is the characters contained within; you’ll hear people lament the demise of The Dublin Character, but not us – we meet them out there in the pubs of the city every week and they are second to none, and by some distance too.”

INSIDER DUBLIN “In choosing our top five pubs, sleep has been lost, productive work output has been sacrificed and allegiances challenged. In no particular order, the five that we agree on, if only for today, are: The Lord Edward, Kavanagh’s (The Gravediggers), The Oval, Fallon’s (The Capstan Bar) and The Long Hall.”

thelocals.ie
John Mahon
Shining a light on creative Dublin

As founder of online culture magazine The Locals, John Mahon makes it his mission to profile interesting people and independent businesses in the city. Previously, John set up and ran The Bernard Shaw bar in Portobello, which became a sort of creative hub for the city. “My favourite part of the job was giving people an opportunity, who thought they weren’t ready yet or didn’t have an outlet, to do an idea, be it music or food or art, and taking some commercial pressure off them. When I left The Bernard Shaw, I missed that, so The Locals was created to fill that void.”

Personal highlights include a story on the farm at the National College of Art and Design on Thomas Street. “It was just such a surprise that there was this fully functioning vegetable garden going on behind a hoarding. And the one about Hang Dai [bar and restaurant] on Camden Street too, between the music, soundsystem, the concept, the guys and the execution, it is all so interesting.”

All features on the site have a personal story at their centre. John looks at each person’s energy, approach or initiative. “It’s very easy to fall into the trap of ‘that’s great for Dublin, we’re only a small city’ but I think any of the people featured on The Locals would find success in any city, they just happen to be in Dublin.” 

INSIDER DUBLIN “Get out of the city. Get the DART and walk from Sutton around Howth Head. You’ll end up in Howth having a pint. It’s at least a 10-kilometre walk and has amazing scenery.”

@thedoorsofdublin
Eleanor Costello
An Instagram account and hashtag

Art historian Eleanor Costello was studying at Trinity College when she started up her now 29,000 follower-strong Instagram account, which has the simple aim of sharing beautiful doors from the capital.

At the beginning, it was her walk into college, dotted with Georgian doors, that became mainstays on the grid. “Learning about the social history of buildings in college made me even more fascinated by squares like Merrion and Fitzwilliam, but it also encouraged me to wander around places in the city I had never been before.”

Now working at Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge, UK, much of the account is curated through #thedoorsofdublin, while some imagery is captured during Eleanor’s regular trips back home.

“Living away from Ireland has definitely given me a new perspective on the place. I’m ten times more patriotic than I’ve ever been before. I am so proud of anything great that comes out of Dublin and the country,” Eleanor says. “I definitely took a lot of the best things about the city for granted. Being by the sea is something that I will always miss. Many things that I disliked about the city are now positives to me; the fact that everyone knows each other is now endearing and wonderful.”

INSIDER DUBLIN “It seems odd to call Temple Bar an insider tip but it does have some very interesting and colourful doors: The Green Building on Temple Lane South is a favourite. I also love Henrietta Street, the earliest Georgian street in Dublin.” 

Dublin InQuirer
Lois Kapila and Sam Tranum
A weekly online newspaper and monthly print title

The founders of a city newspaper, whose bread and butter are housing, planning and transport, are a surprise to some. “We went to a party recently and some guy goes ‘Oh, I thought you’d be a 60-year-old white man’. I didn’t really know what to say to that,” laughs Lois.

Lois (from the UK) and Sam (from the US) married about eight years ago, after meeting at a party in Kyrgyzstan and due to immigration difficulties, found a middle ground in Dublin. “We meant to be here a few months and, five years later, here we are. We ended up really liking it,” says Sam.

Being non-natives to the city has its advantages. “There is a benefit to being a journalist and being an outsider,” continues Sam. “You don’t have all the connections necessarily, but you don’t have the conflicts either. We don’t have many friends here so we’re not beholden to anyone.”

In addition to Dublin InQuirer’s watchdog stories, there is also a focus on “who we share the city with”, explains Lois. The couple cite a long list of Dublin artists who are exciting them at the moment, from Conor McGarrigle and Francis Matthews to musicians Lankum, Loah and Landless. “In other cities we’ve lived in, everything is about politics and making money. It’s nice to find people here doing things just for the love it,” says Sam. “You see a lot of that in Dublin.” 

INSIDER DUBLIN “Every third Thursday of each month at Marrowbone Books, at the bottom of Meath Street in Dublin 8, we co-host a music event. It’s a cosy night in a brilliant bookshop, and you get to hear a great mix of really talented, really weird people play music.” 

PHOTOGRAPHY Al Higgins
PUBLISHED PUBLISHED Aer Lingus inflight magazine,Cara Magazine July 2018