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:

The Burlington Hotel, Upper Leeson Street.

Henry Street. The new lights look great, a worthy investment. Little blue lights flicker in them the odd time, really bringing them to life.

Buswells Hotel, Molesworth Street.

Christmas Village, Wolfe Tone Park.

Royal College of Surgeons, St. Stephen’s Green West.

RT

…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!

Johnson’s Court. These are new this year and look stunning.

Brown Thomas, Grafton Street. The ever-decadent Christmas windows.

Georgian House, St. Stephen’s Green North. A well-known balcony.

Ardilaun Centre, St. Stephen’s Green West. Eircom do this every year now.

Wiers, Grafton Street. Very disappointing this year – the traditional line of bright white lights running around the shopfront and magnificent display of trees and lights mounted round the building have been ditched this year. Nothing but a few pathetic gels on what are permanent uplighters : (

Bank of Scotland, St. Stephen’s Green West.

Finally an icy Fusilier’s Arch, St. Stephen’s Green. If only it was snowing…

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 🙁

🙂

Just few more pictures from 2006 for what it’s worth. (apologies for lack of tripod)

The St. Stephen’s Green Centre have gone all blue this year; a fleeting change in taste by management that causes a quarter of a million bulbs to be ditched…

Wicklow Street.

Note Weirs have no Chrstmas trees up again this year 🙁

Across the road, the former Brown Thomas facade is illuminated in candy pink by its current premises’ facade lighting opposite.

The tree at the southern end of Grafton Street is a fantastic improvement on last year’s.

A wonderful touch by the City Council has been the planting of holly in all the planters along the Boardwalk – a lovely seasonal touch that looks great in the morning sun.

A great idea – just a pity it couldn’t have been extended to the planters on O’Connell Bridge.

Interesting article, though hardly surprising. Even before the multiples were mentioned, it registered instantly which businesses weren’t coughing up. I suspect some of the mobile shops are similar, or indeed other businesses with no local connection. The fall in funds could be an explanation for the uncoordinated mess of Grafton Street’s decorations this year – much worse than I expected. The red bulbs have been lazily replaced in their entirety on some units with white lights, and liberally scattered on others. It’s very odd considering a substantial investment was made at least twice in recent years, which improved them considerably. Such a shame to see these fine, dinstinctive decorations slowly go down the tubes 🙁
The absence of the tackorama spectacular on South Great George’s Street was also notable this year.

Depends on what you want to use your camera for really, archipimp. A powerful zoom lens can make all the difference to architectural photography, but the resulting bulky size in camera can be a bit much for casual occasions. And at least an element of manual control is highly desirable. In that respect, there’s a great mid-range of cameras out there if you don’t want to go the whole way – ‘semi-SLRs’ as it were with decent x12 lenses, high resolutions and decent colour fidelity etc. The above camera is in the Panasonic Lumix range – and just about fits into a coat pocket with a bit of a squeeze 😉

Christmas 2007

So another year has passed, and time once again for the annual wander around the winter wonderland *cough* that is Dublin city centre at Christmas. As already mentioned a few weeks ago, the big news this year is Grafton Street’s spectacular new lighting scheme. North Earl Street traders have also invested to elegant effect.

Grafton Street

Central Bank, Dame Street

Q Bar, Burgh Quay

General Post Office, O’Connell Street

Jervis Shopping Centre, Mary Street/Jervis Street

Messrs Maguire, Burgh Quay

Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, Kildare Street

North Earl Street. Stunning new lighting this year – excellent choice.

Citi Bar, Dame Street

Brown Thomas, Grafton Street

Habitat, College Green. Half-hearted…

North Great George’s Street. After last year’s funding fiasco, a decent, whimsical investment was made this year.

Plaza, O’Connell Street

Bank of Ireland, College Green

Happy Christmas everyone!

A typically prosaic civil servant approach alright 😀
Ah the ropelights are kinda cool though when you see the full pair of trees. ‘Different’.

Just a couple of stickies regarding Grafton Street. While the new scheme is very impressive – apparently by a French lighting company – and the concept an excellent one, in execution it is somewhat clunky.

As a collective, the scheme works very well, but individually the suspensions are rather cumbersome and lacking in the finesse one would expect of such a professional arrangement. The reality of industrial tubular panels covered in a mesh of lights is very apparent, not least as they relate poorly at the join to their host buildings, and especially to the chandeliers in the centre. The latter in particular ought to have been better resolved – perhaps having the panels rising above and across the chandelier and have it suspended from that. As is, the panels – also often at rather skewed angles – are just too mechanically ‘obvious’.

Also such a shame that the chandeliers are so stunningly beautiful yet farcially finished off with cartoon-like plastic candles of ridculous proportion and illumination.

For an enormously expensive scheme of such pretension and ambition, it’s really quite shocking that this detail was allowed through the net (pun unintended). There is little question that these could and should have been better designed. Especially given the decorations as a whole look quite appalling during the day – of course that’s the nature of modern decorative lighting – but decent candles would at least give better form to the units during daylight hours. The gold baubles are a lovely touch.

But overall, an exceptional investment. It’s a scheme of international standard (not sure if that’s necessarily a good thing!), that does justice to such a massively trafficked thoroughfare. Impressive the DCBA went to such lengths to bring something decent back home, so top marks on that front.

Some pics to follow of the white elephant that is Docklands at Christmas btw 😉

Very true Alek, as with Westmoreland Street, Kildare Street and various other parts of the city centre. At least we’re compensating for some of the, um, excesses below…

A few more twinkly pictures of the city at night. Have to say I find it faintly obscene that entire stretches of the city centre are devoid of Christmas lighting – and those parts that are, relatively few being of a decent quality – whilst the Docklands is burning away tens of thousands of euro, not to mention kilowatts of electricity, for the sake of an as yet handful of residents and passers-by. Nonetheless, these lights have set a new standard for festive lighting in Ireland, and are a welcome development.
Why O’Connell Street, even just the Plaza, is not of this quality is utterly beyond me.

Grand Canal Dock

Great views from Alto Vetro.

Grand Canal Dock from Pearse Street

Grand Canal Dock

Office Building, Sir John Rogerson’s Quay

Custom House from Sir John Rogerson’s Quay

City Quay

Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, City Quay

Dublin Castle