Christmas Lights!

York Street Flats, York Street 🙂

GPO Arcade, Henry Street/Princes Street.

Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, City Quay. A Dublin Christmas favourite.

Saloon Window, Provost’s House, Grafton Street.
Candles have been lit in all the upstairs windows – a lovely touch.

Grafton Street: the finest Christmas decorations in Ireland:

…and a more modest attempt on Moore Street 😀

The Westbury Hotel, Harry Street. True to form in the vulgarity stakes.

Plaza Lime Trees, O’Connell Street.

They look much better this year as the lights have just been roughly passed through the branches this time. Still rather faint though, and double the amount of lights is needed for a spectacular display.

Dublin City Christmas Tree, O’Connell Street.
It is a 20m Norway Spruce grown in Athy Co. Kildare, and is c.56 years old.

North Earl Street. Some of the last remaining aul ones: good to see they’re still with us. Nice and simple.

Clerys Department Store, O’Connell Street. The trees are very disappointing this year, in number, scale and lighting – and turn off those floods!

It’s bad enough getting through the streets without a tripod to carry, so no stand; rather I used equipment kindly supplied by DCC, namely bollards, lampposts, litter bins that really have to be smelled to be believed, and the odd 18th century wall 🙂

Curved Street’s lights are up all year round and can look good, but they could do with a bit of work at this stage….

On a few negatives, the lovely clear lights on the trees on College St were removed two years ago when the branches were ‘trimmed’, and have not been replaced – they used to look great. The College Green trees could do with some too, give them a purpose for once, as well as those on what is an exceptionally dark Westmoreland St.

Also the simple strings of lights on South Anne Street are missing this year, and a few other side streets don’t seem to have been bothered with either.

As for the three main trees bought by the CC for Grafton St and O’Connell St – again disappointingly poor.
The southern Grafton St tree at the Green end is the worst public Christmas tree I have ever seen – it is nothing but a giant weed. The notion that the CC actually paid someone for this is nothing short of embarrassing:

…and they know it, as it was dumped down at the southern end, while the more important College Green entrance got a decent tall slender specimen:

…though as can be seen, a large chunck of its (poorly strung) lights aren’t working.
The O’Connell St tree, in spite of being very large, looked half dead from the moment it went up. Last year’s was much nicer.
And as for those panto cast-offs of base hoardings they’ve been using since the 70s :rolleyes:

I’d love to know how New York gets its lights like this – indeed even London’s lighting is as crappy as here, our trees bound in strings of lights like a roast joint.

Still, in spite of these faults (not forgetting the clumsy absence of lights on the centre limes on O’Cll St too), the amount of effort that goes into this every year on the part of DCC and traders has to be acknowledged. Every single one of the 30-40 lighting units on Henry St has to be mounted and connected by hand, every one of the c.20 Grafton St suspensions is erected, repaired in situ, and wired by specialist contractors, and every package of multiple sets of lights in each of the O’Connell St lime trees have to be put in and taken out every year – what a headache.
Not to mention the countless other streets.

Likewise the Christmas trees, seemingly the sole responsibility of the City Council, take a heck of a lot of effort to get up and running (!):

Maintenance is also superb; you’ll note there isn’t a single non-operational bulb or unit on Henry Street, every one of the Plaza limes is operational, all streets have working units, and when a section fails it’s usually fixed within 2 days, often hours, having experienced these crews at work so many times over the years.
It seems the CC take over maintenance once the lights are erected – indeed their crew was even doing the rounds when some pics were taken, no doubt heading for the blown Grafton St unit in one image.
All effort that goes without praise or even notice by most people, and ought to be acknowledged.

Still, the old favourites die hard, and as of last summer Christmas in Dublin will never quite be the same again. There’s over fifty empty chairs at the dinner table this year…

http://www.fantasyjackpalance.com

They were magic 🙁