South Dublin

by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly

  Interviewee: Correct.

  Employer: In fact, you've never worked at all. Apart from one summer in – where was it? – Cape Cod. Shelling prawns.

  Interviewee: Yeah, I was on a J1er. Actually, I put down there that I did it for three months. I only stuck it for, like, three weeks.

  Employer: And you dropped out of college after one year. Well, I say, college. Am I right in believing this was a private college?

  Interviewee: You most certainly are. See, one of my biggest problems has always been getting up in the morning. Most of the lectures storted before ten. It was like, fock that!

  Employer: And I see you failed every subject in your Leaving Certificate?

  Interviewee: Whoa, correction, Dude – not every one. There were actually two exams I didn't turn up to. No focking prizes for guessing why! Hey, I hope I'm not giving you the impression I've got a problem here.

  Employer: Well, to be honest… Oh, wait a minute… Hey, I see here that you went to my old alma mater, Castlerock College!

  Interviewee: Yeah.

  Employer: Welcome to the firm.

  Shopping

  Shopping – are you kidding? These people practically invented it. Nearby Stillorgan is the site of Ireland's first-ever shopping centre, which opened in 1966. Since then Blackrock and Booterstown have let nothing – not even history and architecture – get in the way of their desire to shop.

  Blackrock has two shopping centres – the Frascati Centre (on the site of the aforementioned flattened Frescati House) and Blackrock Shopping Centre. They are separated by the Blackrock Bypass, but pedestrian lights on this busy thoroughfare ensure that when Blackrock decides to shop, the traffic literally comes to a halt.

  Blackrock has become a haven for fashionistas. The ladies here always look well and that's no surprise as there is no end of posh boutiques for them, including Sandz and Monica Peters.

  For men, there are two looks that are always in fashion – rugby-chic and marine-casual. For the latter, there's Nautica in Blackrock Shopping Centre, where you can pick up your Helly Hansen jacket, Canterbury trousers, Dubarry Docksiders – in fact, all the clobber you'll need for having a drink in the sailing club bar. If it's the rugby look you're after, you're spoiled for choice, but check out Diffney in Blackrock Shopping Centre and the excellent Gentlemen Please on the Main Street, both of which will kit you out in the old rugger regalia so you won't feel out of place while you're here.

  There's furniture aplenty, too, with a range of shops that reflects Blackrock's mania for Scandinavian and Spanish interior design. The section of the Main Street opposite the library has been nicknamed Baltic Drive, with shops like Nordic Living and Danish Design Kitchens fitting out local homes with Scandinavian hand-tufted rugs and free-standing, Narvic mirrors in Norwegian oak. Then there's KA-International, the Spanish Interiors Company whose aim is to ‘democratize interior decoration’. Not even Blackrock, where marketing-speak is the second language, has a clue what that's all about, but it's well known that if you're after a chaise longue or a banqueta estepa capitone (that's a stool, to you), then this is the place to come to.

  The Millrose Gallery and the Waldock Gallery have paintings by a wide range of artists, including many scenes of the coast around Blackrock, without which no South Dublin vestibule is truly complete.

  A WORD FROM OISINN

  Blackrock kids are known to be the most obnoxious little shits in the world. A huge number of them are called Lorcan, as well. Actually, here's a little tip for parents: call your kid Lorcan and he'll turn out a focking brat just as sure as he'll turn out bent if you call him Julian. There's no point in scratching your head later and wondering did you do something wrong.

  Like I said, Blackrock has lots of little Lorcans who seem to have the run of the town on Saturday mornings. You're enjoying a latte, a stack of pancakes with maple syrup and Gerry Thornley's preview of the big match and there's one running around your table, making a noise like an Indian, working off his 7Up sugar rush, while his parents stare into space, oblivious to the irritation the little focker's causing. Of course, it's the most natural thing in the world for you to want to pick the thing up by the ankles and beat it like a focking rug.

  Oh yeah, you'll hear the occasional, pleading ‘Lorrr-can’ from his old pair, but the kid's got the message long ago that his parents are too PC to belt him when he's bold.

  It was a couple of years ago, after sticking out a sly foot and causing one Lorcan to snot himself in the middle of Café Java, that I came up with probably my first ever business idea – a child-slapping service, where mums and dads who don't believe in hitting their kids could bring them to me and I'd do it for them.

  I had a price list and everything worked out. Three slaps across the back of the legs with an open hand was ten sheets. With a wooden spoon, it was fifteen. And it was twenty-five if you wanted me to take a leather strap to the kid's orse. I'd actually found premises in Blackrock and everything. Went to see the bank manager, but he wouldn't stump up the bread. Probably because he was Blackrock College and I'm Castlerock.

  If I had to choose a ladies’ fragrance that captures Blackrock and Booterstown in a bottle, it would probably be Ghost Cherish, which embodies purity with individuality for a woman with a strong sense of herself, a subtle sensuality and deep feelings, basically a woman who's a modern romantic – honest and open.

  The Atomic Wedgy

  A wedgy is a practical joke that involves gripping the victim's underpants, twisting them until they snap, then hanging them from a tree or other public place where they are visible to all and sundry. Designed to inflict pain with humiliation, this laudable trick was first performed by Randy Warne, a high-school student in Sacramento, California, in September 1973. The increasingly popular, though far more dangerous, atomic wedgy involves the removal of the underpants over the victim's head. Harry Adams, a second-row on Blackrock College RFC's third team, is credited with being the first man to successfully perform the manoeuvre when he relieved full-back Simon Gannon of his boxer shorts after the team suffered a heavy defeat to Bective at Stradbrook Road in January 1997. A statue marks the spot.

  Superquinn

  It's difficult for the younger generation to grasp what life was like before Tesco colonized Ireland. There was a time when there were no twenty-four-hour warehouse-sized supermarkets selling everything from organic leeks to 48-inch plasma-screen televisions right around the clock. Then, the weekly grocery shop was a chore. You pushed a trolley with a defective wheel up and down narrow aisles, and you chose from an even narrower range of products. There were only two types of bread, for example – brown or white. And, difficult as it is to believe, you couldn't buy pak choi or organic tofu for love nor money.

  Except in Blackrock.

  Superquinn was a splash of exciting colour in the drab, monochromatic pre-Tiger world. Even back in the bad old eighties, when Ireland was so poor it looked like it would be repossessed, it was somehow comforting to know that you could still get a reduced-salt batard and block of Wensleydale with apricots from Feargal Quinn's gleaming flagship store in Blackrock Shopping Centre.

  Quinn is a master of innovation and was the first supermarket owner in Ireland to introduce online shopping and a loyalty bonus scheme. Along with Riverview and West Wood memberships and the platinum AmEx, the SuperClub card remains a staple in every South Dublin wallet.

  Southsiders love being listened to – it's one of the reasons they talk so loudly – and part of what has made Superquinn such a success story is the way it responds to customer demands. It was the first supermarket to remove sweets from its checkout areas after receiving complaints about ‘pester power’. And it introduced other parent-friendly initiatives, such as playhouses for children and assisted bag-packing. Hell, if it's raining, they'll even walk you to your car with a brolley over your head. It's not surprising that the weekly shop in Superquinn has become more a social event than a necessary household task. On Thursday evenings and Saturda
y mornings the aisles are full of mums and dads with strangled Southside accents, talking about golf and gardening and whether the Cotswold is more wonderful with or without onions and chives.

  How to Get Around

  Centrally located, Blackrock is essentially the hub of South Dublin and every vehicle in the Dublin Bus fleet passes through it – and Booterstown – at some point in its journey. The Dart also stops at Booterstown and at Blackrock stations.

  Where to Stay

  Key to accommodation:

  Luxury

  Seriously opulent

  Pretty much palatial

  Blackrock Clinic

  What do you mean, there's nothing wrong with you? Get a boil lanced, your eyebrows plucked or your Henri-Lloyd sailing jacket surgically removed. Anything. If you can afford it, this private clinic is one of the places to stay in South Dublin. The coffin-dodger's mantra – ‘I don't like hospitals’ – is never heard here. Blackrock Clinic has all the ambience of a hotel resort in the Tropics – indoor palms, water cascades, rare birds and Ennio Morricone covers played on the pan pipes. There's no vomiting bug here. Nobody sleeps in the corridors, and trolleys are only used to wheel your five course, à la carte dinner to your bedside.

  Radisson SAS St Helen's Hotel

  They call this Dublin 4 – wouldn't we all if we could get away with it? No, this is really Booterstown, but spending a night at St Helen's is like scoring a British Royal and going back to her place.

  Strolling around this spectacular, converted eighteenth-century mansion, you'll catch yourself speaking in an awfully-awfully accent and have to fight the urge to shoot an animal with a double-barrel shotgun. The only double-barrels here, though, are on the guest list.

  This is a seriously swanky pile of bricks that is five-star all the way. Built in 1750 for Thomas Cooley, MP, the house has been beautifully restored and contains over 150 luxury rooms and suites, two excellent restaurants, a conservatory bar, a state-of-the-art gym and a snooker room. The price? If you have to ask, you don't belong here. Kindly leave. Or make do with afternoon tea in the marble Ballroom Lounge, or the best buffet breakfast in town in the Talavera restaurant.

  If you can afford it, ask for a suite with a balcony and a view of Dublin Bay, order up a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape and remind yourself what a wonderful thing it is to be seriously loaded.

  Where to Eat

  Talavera in the Radisson SAS St Helen's is without doubt the best Italian restaurant in Dublin. Head chef Giancarlo Anselmi is a kitchen Da Vinci, producing authentic dishes from Tuscany and Basilicata, which are served up in a number of candle-lit dining rooms with cosy fireplaces. If you have a penchant for risotto with asparagus and truffle scent, it's probably God's way of telling you that you have too much money.

  At weekends the locals flock to the Radisson for the famous Sunday lunch at LePanto, before a stroll around the hotel's famous gardens and a couple of straighteners in the bar.

  Dali's on the Main Street in Blackrock has been called the Southside Unicorn, its excellent grub making it a favourite for middle-earning barristers and RTÉ types.

  There's an Eddie Rocket's on the Main Street in Blackrock and another in nearby Stillorgan, where the clientele are the privileged teens who'll grow up to run the world – or at least the world as you know it. Enjoy watching them knock back hillocks of nachos with guacamole and vanilla malts today, because tomorrow you might be facing them across the counter of the bank, begging them not to repossess your home.

  TGI Fridays on Newtownpark Avenue in Blackrock is a demonstration of the awesome spending power of South Dublin's twenty-somethings, who can pay twenty quid for a burger and chips without cribbing about it for a week.

  Entertainment

  Twice a year the caravans arrive in Booterstown in their dozens and park in a field along the seafront – and the locals don't even call the Gardaí! That's because these caravans belong not to members of the Travelling community but to one of two circuses that have become synonymous with Booterstown. Duffy's Circus, which arrives in June or July every year, and Fossett's, which arrives in October, have been entertaining children for generations, though obviously not too many local children, what with circuses being considered terribly working class in this area and parents fearful that their children might pick up headlice or, worse, ‘howiya’ accents.

  Blackrock is just 7 km from Dublin City Centre and yet you could literally grow a beard in the time it takes to drive from one to the other in the morning and evening rush hours. So bad is the traffic congestion on the coastal route known as the Rock Road that many people now make the commute into the city at 3.00 or 4.00 am, catching three or four hours’ sleep in the company car park before beginning work. Then they wait until 10.00 or 11.00 pm to drive home. Like the crush of commuters on the Tokyo underground, it's well worth seeing the chaos on the Rock Road. In particular, look out for the way the traffic is reduced to a single lane just north of Booterstown, while cars in the right-hand lane queue for up to a mile to cross the busy commuter railway line through an old-style gate-crossing, which is closed on average every three minutes. Marvel, too, at the world-famous Blackrock Bypass, which features an amazing six sets of traffic lights in the space of 300 yards. Watch the traffic drive through Blackrock village to ‘bypass the bypass’.

  Travelling through Booterstown on a public bus, you might well hear a voice shout, ‘Phwoar, look at the tits on that.’ It's quite likely the voice will be referring to the beautifully colourful songbirds that have made their

  home on Booterstown Marsh. South Dublin's only concession to bogland is home not only to common birds but to some of the world's most endangered migratory species, including Black-tailed Godwits. It stinks.

  A WORD FROM CHRISTIAN

  I remember when I was a kid, Mum and Dad used to take me to the circus, sometimes Duffy's, sometimes Fossett's, and even though they were both pretty good, I'd always be there thinking how cool it would be if, like, Circus Horrificus came to Booterstown? As in the alien freak show that used to, like, travel from star system to star system? Actually, Jabba the Hutt recruited Malakili – as in the main rancor keeper – from Circus Horrificus. He's supposed to be running a restaurant in Mos Eisley now…

  Pubs and Clubs

  Blackrock is rightly renowned as the best place in South Dublin to go on a pub crawl.

  Sheehan's is a cool, sophisticated pub, all polished floors and dark-wood furnishings, and tends to attract the after-work crowd. If you fancy the arse off the bird in the bank, the chances are you'll find her here on a Friday night.

  Across the road Tonic, with its whitewashed walls, mirrors and spotlighting, has a wine-bar ambience. There're some fine works of art to see in here – not just the paintings that cover the walls but the girls with pouts like blow-up dolls who stare through you as they pass by. If you decide to chat one up, don't bother telling her she's beautiful – she already knows.

  The Mad Hatter has had its fair share of growing pains, but, like Lewis Carroll's wacky hatmaker, you can't but have a soft spot for the place. In 2003 ‘The Hosh’, as it's affectionately known, introduced all-you-can-drink nights (€40 for goys; €25 for birds) and got slated by the government, who accused them of setting targets for binge-drinkers. At the time of writing, the Hosh is closed but is set for another rebirth soon.

  For rugby there's Gleeson's in Booterstown. It's an interesting pub and has several alcoves to which they've given names – rooms, they call them. With its blood-red walls and framed paintings of old hunts, it has the feel of a private members’ club and is owned by the uncles of Keith Gleeson, the Ireland rugby international. If you don't have a ticket for Lansdowne, this is the next best seat from which to watch the game. Although if you're from South Dublin, you'll probably have one anyway.

  The Wicked Wolf is the pub that puts the rock into Blackrock. Long and narrow, with high tables and benches arranged around the walls like a railway station waiting room, once night falls it suddenly kic
ks off like a box of firecrackers in an old folks’ home. It earned its ‘rep’ in the 1990s as a place you could go to take off your shirt and play air guitar on the bar to ‘Sweet Home Alabama’. The pub has changed hands since then – for almost €4 million in 2000. The Lynyrd Skynyrd CD came with it.

  The Playwright on Newtownpark Avenue is a great ‘battle cruiser’ that's often mistaken for a soccer pub because of its association with former Ireland manager Mick McCarthy. The only Celtic jersey ever seen in this big, spacious pub is the one belonging to the former joint-owner, which once hung in a frame behind the bar. The people who drink here are Blackrock pure-breeds.

  The Orangerie is a Victorian-style conservatory bar in the Radisson SAS St Helen's Hotel that attracts South Dublin's new royalty: barristers and builders – these builders being the ones with manicured fingernails who wouldn't know which end of a trowel to hold. The name is believed to be a nod towards the local fashion for sunbed tanning.

  Suggested Itinerary in Blackrock & Booterstown

  Pint in the Avoca. Pint in Jack O'Rourke's. Pint in the Wicked Wolf. Pint and a short in the Breffni. Pint and a short in the Mad Hatter. Pint and a short in Sheehan's. Pint and a cocktail in Tonic. Get refused by the Playwright. Sleep in a bus shelter.

  The high diving board at the old Victorian swimming

  baths is a reminder of darker days, when Blackrock

  witnessed poverty, verrucas and fat women in bathing