Is dublin a kip??

strawberry

I think Dublin is a lovely city The only places I'd know well enough to compare it to are Paris and Hong Kong, and in terms of where I would prefer to live I'd pick Dublin anyday.

Perhaps I don't go the same places as everyone else, but I don't think Dublin is that dirty - the plastic bag tax has done wonders, and the smoking ban is fantastic.

Dublin is hardly what I'd call ugly. The centre of town has some beautiful buildings, a lot of the old georgian houses have been done up, and they're finally starting to plant trees in the right places (you'd be amazed at the difference a tree can make) Sure there are fast food restaurants everywhere etc etc, but they exist in every city, they even have a McDo on the Champs Elysee. The adveritisng in our discount stores isn't that bad either based on a combination of factors such as the fact that we don't really have many sales cos everything's so damn expensive. There are council estates which look unpleasant, but that applies to almost any city (try comparing with the HLMs in Paris). What counts as a high rise flat in Dublin is like a playground compared to some places in other cities.

Irish people may seem to bitch about everything, but that may just because we seem to care more about the way things are run than in other cities. In Hong Kong I know for a fact that most people wouldn't be able to name their local councillor and they don't complain on the basis that they feel that there's nothing that can be done to fix their problems. Sure we have issues with planning, but at least we know we have these issues and can act towards fixing them.

Again, maybe due to my charmed existence, but as someone who is half-chinese, I'd be hard pushed to remember the last time I had a racist remark directed at me. There as that skanger in school who called me a ****** that one time, but that was just weird....

If you're careful, it's unlikely you'll get mugged or beaten up. There are bad people everywhere, you can't just get completely pissed and then compain that someone took your money.

And finally, the best thing about Dublin, especially when you're not there, is the fact that Irish people aren't hung up about their country like everywhere else where they insist that things are fine and perfect, and that their country is better than everyone elses. So compain away.

Asok

What majd said basicly.

Well written

BuffyBot

People that slag dublin either dont live there or just dont know when trouble is about and how to avoid it

No, of course we've don't live there, anyone who's realised how crap Dublin can be got out as soon as they did :rolleyes:

Majd's post said it all really.

Johnny Versace

I've been living in Dublin City Centre for about 8 years.

Yeah, there are scumbags everywhere, the place is covered in litter, and it's a rip off hole, but the architecture is quite nice, the people reasonably friendly and the council do try hard to have cultural events.

Temple Bar and the Georges Street/Grafton Street areas are really nice.

O'Connell Street and Henry Street have improved dramatically.

The suburbs vary a lot, but that is to be expected in any city.

...

So, no, I don't think it's a kip.

Also, I've only had hassle twice on the streets, and on both occasions I have been (reasonably enough) to blame.

Mighty_Mouse

Lived there for a little bit and hated every minute of it. Its a dangerous smelly kip.
Seriously dirty hole that badly needs cleaned.

Plus the blokes are EITHER Brown Thomas-like-girly-blokes who would be quicker to talk about moistureiser than sport OR dangerous scumbags who intimidate you for money etc ...

The women are the same. Either knackerish slappers or posh stuck up <beep>!

Dublin Bus is an intimidating experience day or night and theres absolutely no feckin Gardai around. Also you get hassled for money about 15 times per day. Its also a feckin Rat Race to live there. You get up in the morning at 7 and dont get home til 7.

Also theres a complete rip-off culture about the place. Taxis, food, drink, niteclubs are all overpriced. Oh yes and the bouncers are even more wankerish than anywhere else in the country (world record!)

If you go out for a nite its either €5 per pint in a ****hole like Cafe en Seine, Spy, Rynards to stand and pose with a bunch of fake orange ****ers (who are living off credit cards but yet think there loaded) and talk about .................... nothing. (actually probably about clothes Men and women alike)

People dont seem at ease and theres no sense of craic. Yes and theres definitely no chance of walking in for a pint in the day and striking up a conversation with a stranger.

I live in Galway and wouldn't move to Dublin for any money. Its the complete opposite of the above. There are "trendy" bars plus traditional looking places with great athmosphere to accomodate all types. And the majority of the blokes dont look orange, wearing eyeliner.

Rant over.

Ps
I had a horrible experience of Dublin but maby I'm wrong. I would consider living there If i was earning €60,000 per year.

SheroN

I don't know why anyone is giving out about the bums in dublin, try going to san francisco and then come back and talk to me about bums.

bizmark

iv been in dub many a time think its a decent city with all the normal problems of a modern capital city magnified by 40 or so years of less than stellar nation wide economic performance.....which has only changed recently give it time lads no douth Dublin will get better just needs to be run right and have money plowed into it money we now have to wast.....Oh and time

On the plus side i live in cork with is quite nice tbh

Dr. Loon

This thread is full of moaning eejits. I've had a few experiences in Dublin, and a few in London. Also New York. Every large city is the same, there's rough areas and nice areas. If you're stupid enough to go sauntering through a dodgy area in ANY city late at night with a rake of pints on you... then good luck.

London late at night??? Safe? My arsé. Council estates, flats, plenty of them, I lived in a block - some junkie ****er tried to break into our flat - my brother had to chase him away with a hammer... like I said - every city's the same.

Do y'all think the streets of Galway, London, Paris et al are made of cotton and everybody loves everyone else? Cop on.

I though I was going to be shot in New York when I accidentally walked into a bad neighbourhood. Also, much like Dublin, the streets of New York are a big time kip.... cracked pavements galore.

London city - rubbish bags all over the shop, píss all over the streets, plus the English can't handle their beer so well as us drunkards, so they get síck an awful lot. The sick on our streets is actually from English stag and hen nights.

Dublin is getting better I reckon... I think alot of people who have problems with skangers must be very young, cos anyone over the age of 18 generally knows how to handle them these days.

Fair enough - we're expensive, so is Paris (according to a friend who lived there) and London ain't bargain city.

There's alot of things wrong with Dublin, but I find there's alot of great things also. Same as EVERY city.

Personally, if I wasn't tied down here, I'd move to New York, not because I dis-like Dublin, I just like the buzz in New York.

Mac daddy

Dublin is not that bad, just need to know what to look out for.
I was down in wexford not so long ago, jezus that place was worse.
As soon as they here your accent they think your there to Rob the woman-ugly fat birds.
Every town/city has there knackers skangers/charlo's in it.

Sleepy

Originally posted by Dr. Loon
I think alot of people who have problems with skangers must be very young, cos anyone over the age of 18 generally knows how to handle them these days.

Yes I know how to handle them. unfortunately the UN call it genocide.

Dr. Loon

Originally posted by Sleepy
Yes I know how to handle them. unfortunately the UN call it genocide.

I call it not looking like a scared lost little puppy, and telling them to fúck off. It's like showing a dog fear - the dog won't respect you. Don't show a skanger fear. Sometimes there isn't even a requirement to speak, they'll know to get away from you just by the look of utter contempt in your eyes. Works a charm.

Sleepy

Works fine one on one. When you're outnumbered, you're outnumbered it doesn#'t matter what look you've got on your face.

AngelofFire

i doubt the so called 80% surveyed reflects the views of the entire population. as a matter of fact i think its way off. certain groups may have been selected for this survey such as elderly people- i dont mean any disrespect btw.the reason why i dont like that statistic is the fact that the government may use this statistic as an excuse to strengthen the nanny state. as well as not being able to smoke in pubs soon we wont be even able to drink, the way this government is going

Paddy20

Hey Loony,

Cop yourself on, before some young person believes your claptrap. You really sound as though you are living in your own fantasyland where real people 'do not' get attacked, stabbed, kicked too death etc, as they do in Dublin. Which is the subject of this thread.

Karl Hungus

Originally posted by Dr. Loon
I call it not looking like a scared lost little puppy, and telling them to fúck off. It's like showing a dog fear - the dog won't respect you. Don't show a skanger fear. Sometimes there isn't even a requirement to speak, they'll know to get away from you just by the look of utter contempt in your eyes. Works a charm.

This is true.

A nice little incident happened to me on the way to a friend's house the other week when two skangers came up acting tough, called me a ****, and one of them said something along the lines of "I'll Bust Yer Chops!" I just looked him straight in the face, and shouted at him to "Go on! I ****ing DARE you!" and turned up my cheek as if to give him a nice big target.

T'was ****ing comical to see, because neither him nor his mate would even look me in the eye. They were ****ing scared ****less, and I just walked on after that.

Bard

I completely agree with Minesajackdaniels on this one. Brilliantly written post there, Majd.

I was happy to get away from living in Dublin myself and am now thoroughly enjoying life in the slow lane here in Ardee.

Dublin. Is. A. Kip!

Atomic

I don't know why anyone is giving out about the bums in dublin, try going to san francisco and then come back and talk to me about bums.


Agree with you about San Francisco but I never felt threathened in San Fran. They tend to ask you if you've any money but if you say No then there is no follow up. In Dublin they'd be likely to keep at you.

Civilian_Target

Back to topic for a mo, Dublin isn't a kip. Try Belfast, or many UK cities, and you'll find its unkiplike. Obviously there are places you shouldn't go at night. The only time I've been attacked in Dublin was when walking down by St. Pats with 4 friends at 2am while drunk. Fortunately our attackers weren't exactly sober either, so after a quick engagement we just legged it and they weren't able to keep up. Fecking skangers...

Woden

Originally posted by Minesajackdaniels

The one place that strikes me as "where Dublin wants to be when it grows up" is Newcastle Upon Tyne. Newcastle has a pedestrianised city centre, all cobble-lock paving with bus lanes because buses and taxis are the only transport permitted in the dead centre of the city. It also has a "metro" line which is basically the same idea as Luas. The Metro runs in a loop around and through the city, in to the posher residential suburbs and out along the bay as well. There's a metro link out to the airport too. It's generally quite clean and has a pretty amazing nightlife because the centre of the town is policed and managed properly at night - and the tradidition in Newcastle, when "oot on the toon", is to never have two drinks in one establishment so the place is always full of people running about from one bar to the next (and normally too preoccupied with their next drink to start a fight). Closing times are staggered as well between pubs, late bars, clubs, private clubs etc so your night can finish anywhere between 11pm and 5am.

Agreed i was working in newcastle for the summer and it was a great place. living 5 minutes walk from the city centre and out to longbenton for work. tis a lovely city with a great nightlife and the area around the quays and the millenium bridge is also cool. with regards to police though i always thought there was less police around at night or at any time then there was in dublin. i very rarely saw any out at night however i took this as more of a sign that they weren't needed as opposed to the fact that they couldn't be there.

Dublin. i lived here all my life within walking distance of the city centre. when i was quite young about 14-15 i was mugged with a syringe for the whole 3 pounds 50 i had in my wallet. that was on the middle abbey street in broad daylight when it when every bus under the sun terminated there.

so dublin at night doesn't bother me. i'd be wary but i frequently walk home from town either up the quays are around by parnell street and ugc. the mother hits the roof but i've never had any hassle. theres places in dublin though i'd avoid at night.

so its not town that bothers me but more so when my younger sister can get mugged for her phone less then five minutes away from my house all the garda can say is we're building a file on the guy for the DPP. its the local knackers that bother me and the reprecussions that would be associated with "taking them on" so to speak


data

Kingp35

yeah i think its very true if you stand up to a skanger thats giving you grief then they will leave you aone but this is onlt the case when tthere is only one or two of them but they mostly travel in groups. its like a bloody epidemic. if you stand up to them then you are likely to get a beating.

That can happen anywhere tho as skangers can be found in most places but im talking about the city centre only. On a night out i would prob get someone saying something to you but if you ignore them then nothing will happen. Oh yeah and i just want to say that dublin is the dirtiest city i have been in. I mean litter and stuff everywhere and since the smoking ban there are cigarettes everywhere.its horrible. In that respect i think dublin is a kip but at least o connell street i looking better these days

Honkytonk

i have staggered drunk through dublin city center regularly for eight years. I have encountered aggression nearly every time, avoided it most of the time and been mugged once. Each time (including the mugging) I avoided a beating through not being aggressive myself. I suggest this is a better approach than trying to prove to "knackers " that you are not afraid of them. That approach works best in the movies.

jank

yea kip!
would never ever move there and many I know feel the same. Might have to go there next year for a small while

DrEvil

I think dublins a great place but there are problems.

Most common problems around seem to be because of civic irresonsibility and laziness and the only way they are solved is for each person to stop moaning about what's wrong and be pro-active in fixing the situation.

-How many times have I heard people complain about prices somewhere then immediately after still buy the thing!!! Why not just shop around??. Especially if your in the city centre there's NO EXCUSE not to. If everyone would do this and encourage others to then prices will come down, but that's too hard to do it's much easier to just complain and do nothing:rolleyes:.

-As for litter it would also be great if people 'pratice what they preach'. Also if you are with a group of friends and one of them drops some rubbish, you should let them know what you think and ask them to pick it up. 9 times out of 10 in my experience they usually will and there's ALWAYS at least one other person who will back you up as they're usually too afriad to be the first to disapprove

these are just two simple examples but Dublin has the potential to be a great place if people make an effort!

Deadwing

This place is hell. Seriously, hell.
Were being ripped off on everything we buy, just because they know they can get away with it, because of the irish 'dont make a fuss about it' type attitude. I heard ont he radio the other day a hotel in town charging 16 euro for 2 coffees. SIXTEEN EURO. Anywhere else thered be outrage over this kind of overpricing, but no, not in ireland and its 'dont rock the boat' mentality.
Its full of assh0les. Racist, scumbag, inbred morons. These idiots who cruise around in thier opel corsas, blasting 'in da club', wearing thier adidas tracksuits and thier fetching little knacker 'taches and soverign rings, and thier equally high class girlfriends with 'Anto is a bleedin roide' tattoed on thier asscracks, and cellulite stomachs hanging out over a pair of tracksuit bottoms they probably had to lube up just to fit into.
A government too concerned with where thier next brown envelope is coming from to actually do any good for the public. Too concerned with lining thier pockets, too scared to do anything that might be considered a little risky (like say, finding accommodation for homeless irish people before bending over backwards to give joe asylum seeker a free home). No politician is worth a **** and bertie ahern looks like a clown without makeup.
This place is hell.

Stark

Kip isn't really the correct term for Dublin. Now Glasgow, there's a kip. Dublin is a lovely scenic place, shame about the people.

Hotel charging €8 a coffee? Holy ****. I get pissed off at paying €2.10 for a coffee. Good points, although I do find the place tolerable despite its faults. You do have a good choice of places to buy stuff as one poster put it. There's usually a few small book/cd stores where you can pick up stuff cheaper than in HMV/Virgin. And a good few other places where you can pick up stuff that I'd otherwise have to order online if I was still living in Cork. We still have the knacker problem in Cork, and the population seems to have grown exponentially over the past 3 months, so that there seems to be about 5 times as many knackers/skangers/scobes on the streets of Cork than there seems to be on the streets of Dublin these days. So give me Dublin over Cork.

What also pisses me off is you can't walk 5 metres in town on a Saturday without someone looking for your money. Headphones are a compulsory accessory so you can pretend you don't hear people (they needn't be plugged into anything ).

Deadwing

*L* good points stark (especialy the headphones!)
I just tend to get riled up thinking about these things

Dr. Loon

Originally posted by Paddy20
Hey Loony,

Cop yourself on, before some young person believes your claptrap. You really sound as though you are living in your own fantasyland where real people 'do not' get attacked, stabbed, kicked too death etc, as they do in Dublin. Which is the subject of this thread.

I didn't say people don't get attacked, so don't go making shíte up Paddy. I've been mugged once in Dublin - in Raheny. I was soo drunk I didn't really know I was being mugged. I was compliant and handed over my watch and a snickers bar They let me walk on. The next day I discovered a guy had his head smashed with a hammer in the exact same location. I was lucky.

Since then I've been started on once in the City Centre... by a psycho. Most situations where I've encountered scum bags - no matter how many. I either ignore them or stare them out of it. It's worked for me so far.

I was battered to crap in Dundalk by five lads I had been chatting away to in a pub quite happily, for no reason I can think of - there's a real kip.

eth0_

Originally posted by Civilian_Target
Back to topic for a mo, Dublin isn't a kip. Try Belfast, and you'll find its unkiplike.

That is boll*cks. You're actually safer being out on the town in Belfast at night because the place is crawling with CCTV cameras (same as any other town/city in the UK....why don't we have that here? It really does work as a deterrent) and obviously you have a bigger police presence (although tbh it's not hard to have a bigger police presence than Dublin city centre). It's the same as anywhere, if you're not from a town you're more than likely going to walk into an area that is known to be dodgy (such as Sandy Row, a loyalist stronghold in Belfast that's practically in the city centre, easy for non Belfast people to walk into).

The biggest thing that pisses me off about Dublin are the charity collectors. They're like parasites. Why should I have to pretend to be on the phone or sending a text so they don't approach me? They should be banned from the streets, it's not like most of them even give a sh1t about the charity they're working for, they're all students attracted by the pretty good wage these charities pay.

I would have said Dublin was a total kip 3 or so years ago but it has come on leaps and bounds in the past couple of years, O'Connell St is no longer the ugly dive it once was, and it's not embarrasing to have it as the main thoroughfare in the capital city anymore.

eth0_

Originally posted by Civilian_Target
Back to topic for a mo, Dublin isn't a kip. Try Belfast, and you'll find its unkiplike.

That is boll*cks. When was the last time you were in Belfast? You're actually safer being out on the town in Belfast at night because the place is crawling with CCTV cameras (same as any other town/city in the UK....why don't we have that here? It really does work as a deterrent) and obviously you have a bigger police presence (although tbh it's not hard to have a bigger police presence than Dublin city centre). It's the same as anywhere, if you're not from a town you're more than likely going to walk into an area that is known to be dodgy (such as Sandy Row, a loyalist stronghold in Belfast that's practically in the city centre, easy for non Belfast people to walk into).

The biggest thing that pisses me off about Dublin are the charity collectors. They're like parasites. Why should I have to pretend to be on the phone or sending a text so they don't approach me? They should be banned from the streets, it's not like most of them even give a sh1t about the charity they're working for, they're all students attracted by the pretty good wage these charities pay.

I would have said Dublin was a total kip 3 or so years ago but it has come on leaps and bounds in the past couple of years, O'Connell St is no longer the ugly dive it once was, and it's not embarrasing to have it as the main thoroughfare in the capital city anymore.

eth0_

Originally posted by Civilian_Target
Back to topic for a mo, Dublin isn't a kip. Try Belfast, and you'll find its unkiplike.

That is boll*cks. When was the last time you were in Belfast? You're actually safer being out on the town in Belfast at night because the place is crawling with CCTV cameras (same as any other town/city in the UK....why don't we have that here? It really does work as a deterrent) and obviously you have a bigger police presence (although tbh it's not hard to have a bigger police presence than Dublin city centre). It's the same as anywhere, if you're not from a town you're more than likely going to walk into an area that is known to be dodgy (such as Sandy Row, a loyalist stronghold in Belfast that's practically in the city centre, easy for non Belfast people to walk into).

The biggest thing that pisses me off about Dublin are the charity collectors. They're like parasites. Why should I have to pretend to be on the phone or sending a text so they don't approach me? They should be banned from the streets, it's not like most of them even give a sh1t about the charity they're working for, they're all students attracted by the pretty good wage these charities pay.

I would have said Dublin was a total kip 3 or so years ago but it has come on leaps and bounds in the past couple of years, O'Connell St is no longer the ugly dive it once was, and it's not embarrasing to have it as the main thoroughfare in the capital city anymore.