‘Williamsburg By The Liffey’

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Stoneybatter_785x410

The Dublin 7 ‘gentrification’ continues.

Via Rob Doyle in today’s Guardian:

In the aftermath of the culturally barren Celtic Tiger years, Ireland is said to be undergoing something of a literary rebirth. It’s now harder than ever to swing a cat in Dublin without skulling a handful of writers and dole-queue poets. Debut novels and short story collections are launched with pummelling frequency. Stoneybatter has become a hub of this renaissance.

Moynes? Fight!

A word to the hungry: Stoneybatter’s tastiest almond croissants are found in the Green Door Bakery on Manor Street – but only if you get there early enough, which I have managed on no more than two occasions. A few doors down is a real gem, still largely unheralded: the pleasant and unpretentious Biscotti Caffe, which offers what is hands down Dublin’s most satisfying full Irish breakfast (available all day, too).

FigNOMNOMNOMNOM

Discover Dublin’s Stoneybatter, a district on the rise (Rob Doyle, Guardian)

Pic: Failte ireland

Thanks Kevin Finnerty

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63 thoughts on “‘Williamsburg By The Liffey’

  1. hello you!

    Update: Biscotti has been closed for a while… but will open tomorrow as a creperie (lo, word on the streetz has it brah).
    Great quality/value breakfasts alright though (I went there before it was cool). Hopefully will still available after the makeover…

    1. Rob_G

      Start up your own blog for culchies with… I don’t know. GAA results, death notices, Macra na Feirme minutes, and so forth.

    2. classter

      Are you really moaning that BS has shared an article about a Dublin suburb which appeared in a foreign paper?

      You might think that it shows our pathetic need for international attention but they’d have done the same if it was about Cork or Limerick etc.

      How far up your own hole do you have to go to resent the merest mention of anything to do with the only real city on the island?

      1. ahjayzis

        Ah it’s a fair point. The world knows that Leitrim and Dublin, both being antiquated arbitrary counties, deserve equal prominence.

    3. Lesser spotted Bogman

      Plenty of us Culchies resided & still reside in the Batter!
      Sure they had a cattle market for years up at the junction of Hanlons corner/ North Circular/ Navan Road to stop us from feeling homesick!!

  2. Clampers Outside!

    “A plaque outside the Ashling indicates that philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein lived and worked there for a couple of years in the 1940s: interesting to wonder whether he ever tried the magic mushrooms growing a stone’s thrown from his door.”

    Where are these shrooms? …in the Park?

  3. Clampers Outside!

    I liked this bit too…. “If you aren’t put off by a high density of boutique moustaches and pedantic coffee connoisseurs, Stoneybatter is a worthwhile deviation from Temple Bar”

    Hah! :)

  4. Eoin

    I lived in Stoneybatter. Drunken scumbags trying to kick yer door in every Saturday night. Good luck with the gentrification.

    1. Anomanomanom

      My brother lived there for a while, it was a poo hole. Can’t comment on what it’s turned into since, but throwing the words gentrification on it does not make it a nice place. Has the area actually been “done up” or have hipsters just moved in.

      1. Prop Joe

        Bit of both, it’s got potential to make you feel cool, and to make you dead.

        On culture night of all nights an out of it zombie tried to square up to me to throw a punch, I actually stapped two feet away from him and he was flumocksed.
        I walked slowly away while he chased yet slower behind still trying to have a fight. It was amusing but worrying.

        This was an anecdote brought to you with no intention of swaying your opinion of the area. There are great things there, and awful things there. Lovely houses there, and awful houses there. It’s on it’s way but it will take some time.

      2. Bonkers

        I scratch my head about this supposed gentrification of Stoneybatter. The property prices there suggest it is happening but apart from a few cafes opened up it still looks much the same to me.

        1. Dόn Pídgéόní

          True hipsterification/gentrification hasn’t officially happened until you see a man (it’s always a man, a man with a silly mustache) on a penny-farthing riding up the street. Then you know its time to napalm the area.

          1. human

            So in your warped little reality you want to kill people with napalm for riding on old style bicycles? Why do you say stupid things like that in a public forum?

          2. MoyestWithExcitement

            “So in your warped little reality you want to kill people with napalm for riding on old style bicycles? Why do you say stupid things like that in a public forum?”

            I genuinely can’t work out if you actually mean what you say.

          3. Lorcan Nagle

            He’s basically cyberstalking Dón and deliberately taking everything she says out of context as a means to attack her. You can see him doing it on any number of threads across the site.

          4. MoyestWithExcitement

            Ah yeah, but it’s taking her statement about napalming hipster neighbourhoods literally (which obviously nobody would do unless they were, and I’m not joking, clinically dimwitted) and THEN following it up “Why do you say stupid things like that in public?”!!! He said something incredibly stupid to her and then asked her why she says stupid stuff. The next sentence. You would think, *would* think, in any other situation, that this was someone who *must* have been taking the pish. I just can’t fathom, genuinely cannot fathom, how someone can do that and not be making fun of themselves.

          5. Lorcan Nagle

            “I just can’t fathom, genuinely cannot fathom, how someone can do that and not be making fun of themselves.”

            He seems to be doing what’s called Escalating, a tactic popular with reactionary types online where they attempt to use the rhetoric of a progressive opponent against them – think of white supremacists who claim that it’s intolerant if you don’t tolerate their intolerance, for example. Here, human is taking Dón’s post literally in an attempt to suggest that she’s an awful person.

            Of course, he’s really bad at it and it ends up as an example of Poe’s Law in action.

        2. Lorcan Nagle

          Like Spaghetti Hoop says downthread, the gentrification happened about 10 years ago, the most notable things being the shops, offices and apartments around the junction of Stoneybatter, Arbour Hill, Brunswick Street, King Street and Blackhall Place.

          1. Lesser spotted Bogman

            Yep, Id say you’re on the money with this. Still, I cant believe all of this happened over 10years back! Time fecking flies

      3. Starina

        yeah i lived around the corner in smithfield for a couple years, it was like they tried to gentrify and it didn’t take. buying overpriced cheese in Fresh and hoping the junkies outside don’t try to rob you when you leave

  5. Cosmos

    “Stoneybatter’s tastiest almond croissants are found in the Green Door Bakery on Manor Street”

    How many variations of almond croissants are there to be found in the ‘batter?

  6. Spaghetti Hoop

    Wow – old news. Certain parts (not all) of Stoneybatter were being actively gentrified back in 2006/7. An ageing population were dying out and younger people, mainly dinkies, were snapping up the old brick terraces and modernising them. Seven was probably the first restaurant to arrive on the scene. To a far lesser and slower extent this happened in Dublin 8.

  7. Matthew

    A good 60% of this Guardian piece is about places that aren’t in Stoneybatter – Smithfield and Phoenix Park. Weird.

    1. The Old Boy

      Yes, they do seem to have defined it oddly. Stoneybatter doesn’t start till you pass Arbour Hill heading north.

    2. ahjayzis

      Ah same with Shoreditch – Bethnal Green, Hoxton, Haggerston and Old Street all get lumped in. If you’re walking distance, you count.

      1. The Old Boy

        It’s no excuse for pretending the distinction doesn’t exist. If you keep going that way you end up with places like Sallynoggin that seem to be slowly airbrushed from existence as more estate-agent friendly neighbouring districts steadily encroach.

        1. scottser

          sallynoggin? that’s glenageary to you mate, and you’ll cough up an extra grand a month for the privilege.

          1. Vote Rep #1

            I think you’ll find that it is in fact Killiney if you are living on the right side of Sallynoggin. If you are on the bad side, you are in Deansgrange. You don’t want to live in Deansgrange when you could be living in Glenageary or Killiney.

  8. Alex Lyons

    technically Stoneybatter is a 50 yard street between Blackhall Place and Manor Street

    if you listen to estate agents Stoneybatter also includes Arbour Hill, Infirmary Road, Grangegorman, and whatever they build in place of O’Devaney Gardens

    but yeah, the place doesnt need any more pretentious douchebags

    1. Lorcan Nagle

      Eh, I grew up on Blackhorse Avenue and live in Stoneybatter now. It’s a hell of a lot nicer and safer today than it was in the 90s.

    1. Tish Mahorey

      “dont ever get on a Dublin bus”

      Oh you one of those sad snobs who doesn’t use public transport…. like most Europeans.

  9. James Chimney

    Drank in Walshes for 20 years, I’d have to be dragged into it these days. Full of braying idiots.

    1. The Old Boy

      I haven’t been in for a few years. Sorry to hear it’s gone downhill. It wasn’t my local but I always had a great time and a very fine pint.

  10. Lesser spotted Bogman

    Nuts to this- no mention of Hanlons Corner, Gils Tandoori (Get your Peat Briquettes, the Herald & some Baltis all under the one roof!!) Clarke’s City arms, or Peppe’s Italian place?
    Loved my time in this part of Dublin circa the late 90s to the mid 00s

    1. Vote Rep #1

      Hanlons closed after someone got shot outside it. Its back open again but is called something else. Peppe’s is also gone.

  11. Tish Mahorey

    This is just arty types who couldn’t afford D4 and D6 and wishing up the place as somewhere cool.

    It’s littered with really bad flat complexes and scumbags.

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