Photography + Skateboarding

If you are into photography exhibitions in any way and you have an interest, however loose,in skateboarding then this exhibition is for you. Before I go any further I should point out that this is not a run-of-the-mill framed photograph show. It is, as the organisers explain "an exhibition about a book of photographs rather than an exhibition of the photographs found within the book." They have reduced the book down to what is a 'grid of spreads' that span the gallery so that the viewer can see the images as they appear in the book. Uhm, different, and well, clever!


The book of photographs by Richard Gilligan is called DIY and records skate environments in the USA and Europe often made of found materials to make temporary constructions or by adapting abandoned urban areas.
*Let me explain that my own interest as the writer of this article goes way back to the early 80s when my brothers got skateboards and built their first ramp of scrap wood in our driveway, went to a BMX/skate site in Hackney and made my parents drive to the suburbs of Los Angeles on our holiday to buy Vans. The 2001 docu-movie Dogtown and Z- Boys, a great history of how the Santa Monica skaters first came together, breaking into abandoned backyard swimming pools,  later to become celebrity skaters when picked up by the corporate sponsors revived this interest.

This book looks really great. The exhibition is only on until 26th October so if you're interested catch it quick. The book is for sale in the gallery and at www.1980editions.com
 http://www.thecopperhousegallery.com/exhibitions/25/overview/

Dylan McGrath's Fade Street Social

I just had to share this photo because it's so cool! It's a chandelier in Dylan McGrath's new restaurant, Fade Street Social in , yes you guessed it, Fade Street. The chandelier is (supposedly) made up of broken plates from his old restaurant Mint. Now why they would have been kept is beyond me, but it's a great idea for a piece of restaurant art anyway so we'll let that pass!


At the moment the map on facebook is curiously saying the restaurant is in Balbriggan, so don't go there by mistake whatever you do! A gastro bar and a restaurant, it is meant to be "a departure from fine dining." Well I wish good luck to anyone opening a new restaurant -the Dublin restaurants always seem to be packed so we are definitely into our eating out. I for one can't wait to try it!

Abercrombie and Fitch -New store College Green, Dublin

There's great excitement around the news of the new Abercrombie and Fitch store to open on November 1st 2012 at 34 College Green where the Habitat store used to be. Since the end of August they have been advertising for staff.


Not just any staff mind you. As you would expect- they've got to be beautiful! But brains too! The job specification requires;

# Bachelor’s Degree From An Accredited University
# Decision Making Skills
# Diversity Awareness
# Leadership Skills
# Communication Skills
# Sophistication
# Great Sense Of Style
# Ability To Work In A Fast-Paced And Changing Environment
# Strong Work Ethic

So those Abercrombie boys aren't just pretty faces you know!

Will iPhone 5 be Number One Google Search this year?

I love lists, and as we start to come towards the close of the year (I know it's only Halloween!), I started thinking about what would be the top Google searches in Ireland for 2012. As a bit of research I looked them up for 2011- I wonder how they will have changed?

'Fastest-Rising' Searches
1) Donedeal
2) iPhone 5 (which didn't even exist)
3) Rugby world cup
4) Saorview (finally here but still rubbish)
5) Pippa Middleton (she'll be way down!)
6) Tayto park (ha ha -that great institution!)
7) Imogen Thomas
8) Galway Races 2011
9) Jessie J
10) Steve Jobs


'Fastest-Rising' People
1) Pippa Middleton ('the bottom', beating her sister by four places . "You might be a Duchess......"
2) Imogen Thomas
3) Jessie J
4) Steve Jobs (the only man in a sea of women- R.I.P)
5) Kate Middleton
6) Casey Anthony
7) Mila Kunis
8) Michaela Harte
9) Kelly Rowland
10) Georgia Salpa

Top Entertainment
1) Sickipedia jokes (admit it- we all love a sick joke)
2) Newstalk listen live (and listening to the news at the same time!)
3) Ryan Dunn
4) Xfactor 2011
5) Google Guitar
6) Big Brother 2011
7) Jedward Eurovision (ahh, those craayzeee young lads-bless 'em)
8) Batman Arkham City
9) Amy Winehouse
10) Movie Star Planet

Top Celebrities: 
1) Kim Kardashian
2) Scarlett Johansson
3) David Beckham (a rose amongst the thorns...oh, sorry the other way round)
4) Jennifer Aniston (finally making wedding plans)
5) Britney Spears
6) Emma Watson
7) Victoria Beckham (must say- looking great in the Karl Lagerfeld photo)
8) Megan Fox
9) Khloe Kardashian
10) Lindsay Lohan

'How To' Searches -for the deep ones out there.
1) How to Shuffle (an iPod you fool..!)
2) How to study
3) How to reference
4) How to pronounce (after me "Dub-er-lin", "fil-um")
5) How to draw
6) How to flirt
7) How to make
8) How to hack
9) How to crotchet (sorry- did I read that right? Is a revival in Irish crochet on the way?)
10) How to meditate (that's after you fail to make the crochet)
 
'What Is' Searches
1) What is pottermore (sorry? oh, the online Harry Potter website-now you don't have to google it!)
2) What is spooning
3) What is reiki
4) What is ICT
5) What is bipolar
6) What is dubstep (it's from Souf London innit?)
7) What is thrush
8) What is paypal
9) What is zumba (to the left two, three, four)
10) What is mono

Top Shopping Searches
1) Ebay (now with a new logo)
2) iPad (oh let me have one!)
3) Amazon
4) Donedeal
5) Argos (great to see a high street retailer in there-buy your iPad there!)
6) Digital camera
7) iPod
8) Laptop
9) iPhone 4
10) HP Touchpad

Sports- surely this year to be surpassed by Olympic searches
1) GAA Fixtures 2011
2) RWC 2011
3) PGA Leaderboard
4) Irish Open 2011
5) WWE 12
6) 6 Nations 2011
7) Wimbledon 2011
8) Copa America 2011
9) USPGA Leaderboard
10) Rory McIlroy twitter (he only individual sportsman in the list)

Travel Destinations - "it's just for research!!- well that's my line
1) Orlando
2) Disney
3) Caribbean Islands
4) Cancun
5) Barbados
6) Maldives
7) Las Vegas
8) Croatia (the only European destination in the top ten)
9) Manhattan
10) Cayman Islands


So I can't wait to see the list for 2012- who and what do you think will be on it?

The Bleeding Horse and other Ghost Stories

The Bleeding Horse and Other Ghost Stories by Brian J.Showers was first published in 2008 by Mercier Press. It is an attractive looking book with a suitably ghost looking cover of a Gothic-looking ghost and wafting sheets by Scott Hampton.
 
An introduction by Jim Rockhill elaborates on the history of the ghost story paying particular tribute to Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's skill at capturing the particularities of time and place. This nicely serves as a lead into the book concerning the ghostly goings-on of Rathmines, but he asks, "how much in them is truth and how much is fiction?"

Showers sets the book as if telling tales around a pint in the pub, that pub being The Bleeding Horse in Camden Street, Dublin. Retelling the history of Rathmines and more particularly the 1649 Battle of Rathmines, we learn of a barman's tale hundreds of years after this battle of heavy banging like horses hooves, followed by a great force that knocked the man to the ground, leaving him lying over a red ingrained stain on the floor not previously there.


To Portobello and tales of ghostly happenings in Portobello House- in later years a nursing home and the final residence of Jack B.Yeats, and of La Touch Bridge, named after David Digges La Touche de Rompiers, a French Huguenot from the late 1600s. We learn of some of the tragic tales associated with that stretch of the Grand Canal and we travel on to Rathmines Road Lower and learn the history of Gilbert de Meones who controlled the area in the early 1300s, from his 'rath' or castle and of his defeat of the 'Meones Beast' said to kill livestock and travellers.



The book moves on to the stories of Blackberry Fair and the circumstances causing its closure in 2002, and a slight detour takes us to Dublin Castle to follow the story of the theft of the Crown Jewels in 1907 and the accusation of Francis Shackleton, brother of the celebrated explorer, who came to live in Rathmines in his later years. The book closes with some tales relating to the history of the Church of Mary Immaculate in Rathmines and of the strange discovery in an unearthed coffin, and the (fictional ?) extracts from a Father Corrigan's diary charting his gradual nervous breakdown.


This book is at once an entertaining and fascinating history of the particular area of Southside Dublin, using places as digressions into other historical events. The black and white  print illustrations throughout by Duane Spurlock add to the historic and Gothic feeling of the book and the tales read easily on from one to the next as we are drawn around almost by hand by a writer obviously passionate and thoroughly well-informed about the area he lives in.
www.brianjshowers.com
www.mercierpress.ie

Crime Thriller Awards 2012

On Thursday the winners of the Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards 2012 were announced:

The Bestseller Dagger went to Kathy Reichs.


The Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel went to Gene Kerrigan  for The Rage, described as a "suspense driven storm of violence set in the backstreets of Dublin."
     

The Steel Dagger for Best Crime thriller went to Charles Cumming for A Foreign Country, regarded as one of the best of the new generation of British spy writers.
 

The New Blood Dagger went to Wiley Cash for A Land More Kind Than Home, a "tale of the smarting underbelly of religious fanaticism of his Deep South youth."
 

Well done to all the winners and I look forward to adding these to my to-read list.

Irish Publishers-Associated Editions

For the next in my profile series of Irish Publishers I am looking at Associated Editions based in Dublin.


Associated Editions specialises in the publication of illustrated books on a number of  different subjects. These include Architecture, Art, Art History, Artists Books, Children's Books, Design, Limited Editions, Music and Social History. They have several new releases in these subject areas; Gloria: An Introduction to 1000 Years of European Sacred Music by Tim Thurston and  Dublin: An Urban History by Niall McCullough.


Tim Thurston hosts a weekly Sunday morning radio programme on RTÉ Lyric FM ‘Gloria’, and this book & CD ‘Gloria – An Introduction to 1000 years of European Sacred Music' tells the story of European sacred music from earliest times to the present day. The book is interspersed with pen portraits of  composers and is illustrated with Sacred Art for Christmas from Irish collections including Trinity College Dublin, the Hunt Museum, the Ulster Museum, the National Gallery of Ireland, Waterford Museum of Treasures, the Chester Beatty Library and Glenstal Abbey. The book includes a CD of Christmas music.


Dublin was one of Europe's largest cites in the 18th century and this book is about its contribution to the history of European urbanism and its physical structure.
Dublin An Urban History is written by one of Ireland's leading architects and  explores the city plan over time. The book is a beautifully designed with more than 350 illustrations and photographs and it gives an insight into the cities development.
See http://www.associatededitions.ie/ for more books.