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Was Dublin better in the 80s?

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Comments

  • #32
    JupiterKid
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2, Paid Member Posts: 14,980 ✭✭✭✭JupiterKid


    Dublin, despite its current issues and problems, is in far, far better shape now than back in the 1980s.

    In the 1980s Dublin city centre outside of the Grafton St and Henry St shopping areas and the Dublin 2/4 business area was very run down, the level of dilapidation and complete dereliction was unreal. About 45% of the urban space between the canals was derelict or vacant, poverty was much much worse and there were very few options or opportunities for young people except the boat to England or the airplane to the States to find work.

    Unemployment was through the roof - over 20% in around 1986, cronyism and corruption was everywhere and the hard drugs problem had hit the inner city areas hard at the time.

    Beautiful historic Georgian townhouses were still being torn down for bland ugly office blocks being built since the early 1960s up to the early 80s or worse still, vacant sites. There was very little money in the economy in the 1980s. For a child in middle class suburban Dublin, as I was back then, things were pretty good but my parents constantly worried about money and bills. Crime - especially thefts, muggings, burglaries and joyriding was very high. Nearly everyone’s house was burgled and neighbours’ cars were being stolen for joyriding.

    The critical turning point for Dublin came in the 1990s, when first urban renewal and then the economy really took off which began to transform the city. If you look at old photographs of what the area around Christchurch, or North King Street, Smithfield or Parnell St looked like in the mid 80s they were like a wasteland of dereliction. Temple Bar had a few arty, bohemian shops but was pretty run down until the regeneration programme in the 90s.

    So no, that taxi driver was talking pure ****e...


  • #33
    Chiparus
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,296 ✭✭✭Chiparus


    Joy riding was rife.
    Unemployment , drugs, petty crime , Dublin is far far better now.


  • #34
    sabat
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 2,895 ✭✭✭sabat


    On the extremely rare occasions when I go to see a particular DJ or late gig, or even just a late bar, with a mainly younger crowd present, it's noticeable how little fun they're having compared to people in the past. Even the tackiest suburban Dublin disco-bar of the mid 90s was better craic than the trendiest places today.


  • #35
    banie01
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,348 ✭✭✭✭banie01


    Chiparus wrote: »
    Joy riding was rife.
    Unemployment , drugs, petty crime , Dublin is far far better now.

    22000 cars stolen in Dublin alone in 1983!

    22000....
    That's staggering!

    Granted you could rob a car those days with a house key and a coat hanger!
    But just shows you the regard that property and by extension property crime were held in at the time.


  • #36
    Esse85
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,498 ✭✭✭Esse85


    The better question to ask is, were people happier in the 80s vs today?


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  • #37
    Church on Tuesday
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,858 ✭✭✭Church on Tuesday


    JohnnyFlash wrote: »
    It is far better now. It was a rundown kip back in the 80’s. Boarded up shops, lads standing in the doorways of pubs, the pubs were paying protection money to the provos, smog, no where decent to eat etc.

    Those true blue Dub sorts always wax lyrical about Dublin in the rare auld times. Sentimental shïtes.

    :pac::pac::pac::pac::pac::pac::pac::pac::pac:


  • #38
    mick087
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,123 ✭✭✭mick087


    sabat wrote: »
    On the extremely rare occasions when I go to see a particular DJ or late gig, or even just a late bar, with a mainly younger crowd present, it's noticeable how little fun they're having compared to people in the past. Even the tackiest suburban Dublin disco-bar of the mid 90s was better craic than the trendiest places today.




    Yes i agree, the craic SOH is not there, the slagging its all so differernt.
    But thats what my dad says about my generation :pac:
    We are getting old.


  • #39
    Macytoby
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 98 ✭✭Macytoby


    Esse85 wrote: »
    The better question to ask is, were people happier in the 80s vs today?

    Dunno, but we always reminisce with rose tinted glasses.


  • #40
    FVP3
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,187 ✭✭✭FVP3


    mick087 wrote: »
    Most people had a Dublin accent in the 80s.
    Now most Dubs have this new D4 accent.

    well thats bollocks for one. The accent has gotten more dublin.


  • #41
    mick087
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,123 ✭✭✭mick087


    FVP3 wrote: »
    well thats bollocks for one. The accent has gotten more dublin.


    Must be i moved to a more posher area then :pac:


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  • #42
    JohnnyFlash
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,055 ✭✭✭JohnnyFlash


    Church on Tuesday wrote: »
    :pac::pac::pac::pac::pac::pac::pac::pac::pac:

    It’s true, dude. I worked in more than one of them during my time in college. You were even threatened with a visit from a lovely man who eventually became a Lord Mayor of Dublin if you didn’t pay up.


  • #43
    odyssey06
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 38,671 ✭✭✭✭odyssey06


    Nope. Only one All Ireland.

    "To follow knowledge like a sinking star..." (Tennyson's Ulysses)



  • #44
    talla10
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,297 ✭✭✭talla10


    Had a better soccer team in the 80's :pac:


  • #45
    mick087
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,123 ✭✭✭mick087


    talla10 wrote: »
    Had a better soccer team in the 80's :pac:


    Euro 88. Who put the goal in the England net? :pac::pac:


  • #46
    4068ac1elhodqr
    Closed Accounts Posts: 9,577 ✭✭✭4068ac1elhodqr


    The bigger question is was anywhere (in the world), better back in the 80's?
    Thus welcome to natural progression and general improvements to multi-standards of living.

    One place globally that is worse off now is Irn, sure didn't they have free flowing locks (even the wimin), rock n' roll, and plenty of western type freedoms, before the old guarde took over for dire oppression, double that with recent sanctions for wanting bigger throwing sticks in their stockpile. n.b Might have been the 70's.

    The 70's were cool!: Disco.


  • #47
    Chiparus
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,296 ✭✭✭Chiparus


    banie01 wrote: »
    22000 cars stolen in Dublin alone in 1983!

    22000....
    That's staggering!

    Granted you could rob a car those days with a house key and a coat hanger!
    But just shows you the regard that property and by extension property crime were held in at the time.

    There was so much joyriding they had to send them to the penal colony in the south- Cork


  • #48
    Mad_maxx
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 13,496 ✭✭✭✭Mad_maxx


    JohnnyFlash wrote: »
    It’s true, dude. I worked in more than one of them during my time in college. You were even threatened with a visit from a lovely man who eventually became a Lord Mayor of Dublin if you didn’t pay up.

    if its who i think it is ? , seeing his face close up would have me paying all the protection money in the world


  • #49
    Mad_maxx
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 13,496 ✭✭✭✭Mad_maxx


    Myah Screeching Jay wrote: »
    The bigger question is was anywhere (in the world), better back in the 80's?
    Thus welcome to natural progression and general improvements to multi-standards of living.

    One place globally that is worse off now is Irn, sure didn't they have free flowing locks (even the wimin), rock n' roll, and plenty of western type freedoms, before the old guarde took over for dire oppression, double that with recent sanctions for wanting bigger throwing sticks in their stockpile. n.b Might have been the 70's.

    The 70's were cool!: Disco.

    the uk and the usa had a booming economy through much of the 1980,s , that we completely missed it shows what a fcuk up the place was at the time


  • #50
    JupiterKid
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2, Paid Member Posts: 14,980 ✭✭✭✭JupiterKid


    This photo will give the OP - and anyone else too young to remember - a little taste of the state of inner city Dublin back in the 1980s...

    This is Ormond Quay Lower, near where the Morrison Hotel is now.

    11417_89556453_bda7e12e-2aea-45ef-9d31-9646b9fbccc3.jpeg


    Good photo gallery on Dublin city Centre in the 1980s here in this link:

    https://www.dublincity.ie/library-galleries1/202


  • #51
    Gregor Samsa
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,139 ✭✭✭Gregor Samsa


    FVP3 wrote: »
    well thats bollocks for one. The accent has gotten more dublin.

    I grew up on the Northside in the 70s. The accent around where I’m from has definitely got flatter since I was a kid. When I go back there now, the kids in the area definitely speak with a much flatter accent that I or any of my friends ever did.

    My grandad was born just off Pearse Street in 1901, and was 7th generation Dublin (a cousin of his spent years doing a family tree). He claimed that the flat Dublin accent wasn’t very prevalent in the city when he was young.

    So the accent has definitely got more Dublin in the sense of the flat “howya” type.


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  • #52
    Gregor Samsa
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,139 ✭✭✭Gregor Samsa


    Everyone thinks that the time they grew up in and came of age in was the best.

    I was born in Dublin in the 70s. For me, the late 80s/early to mid 90s were an absolutely amazing time to be in the city. It was a time of adventure, when we had no fear and nothing to lose. But that was because of youth, not the city or era. My parents looked on the 60s in the same way, and just saw the 80s as being a time of depressing misery for the most part. Imagine a family paying a 16% mortgage interest rate on one income? I didn’t have a mortgage when I was 14, so I didn’t care. All I remember about the time was discovering music, playing in bands, making friends and dodging getting beaten up.

    Looking objectively, at the economy, the state of the city, the money we had, the opportunity that was there, we’re definitely living in a better time now. Doesn’t mean I don’t miss it, though.


  • #53
    Thelonious Monk
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 16,513 ✭✭✭✭Thelonious Monk


    One thing I was thinking of earlier is that there are people begging outside Spars in the suburbs nowadays. I never saw that as a kid. We may have more materials now but maybe we are poorer socially.


  • #54
    Gregor Samsa
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,139 ✭✭✭Gregor Samsa


    Thelonious Monk wrote: »
    One thing I was thinking of earlier is that there are people begging outside Spars in the suburbs nowadays. I never saw that as a kid. We may have more materials now but maybe we are poorer socially.

    We used to have people regularly calling at the door begging in the 80s. Some were travellers, but not all. Not even trying to sell anything - just hand out looking for money. They’ve just decided to work smarter, not harder.


  • #55
    Thelonious Monk
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 16,513 ✭✭✭✭Thelonious Monk


    Gregor Samsa wrote: »
    We used to have people regularly calling at the door begging in the 80s. Some were travellers, but not all. Not even trying to sell anything - just hand out looking for money. They’ve just decided to work smarter, not harder.

    Yeah we only got travellers knocking on the door back then. It must be beneath them now!


  • #56
    JohnnyFlash
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,055 ✭✭✭JohnnyFlash


    Thelonious Monk wrote: »
    Yeah we only got travellers knocking on the door back then. It must be beneath them now!

    They prefer not to knock these days.


  • #57
    Rodney Bathgate
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,440 ✭✭✭Rodney Bathgate


    Thelonious Monk wrote: »
    One thing I was thinking of earlier is that there are people begging outside Spars in the suburbs nowadays. I never saw that as a kid. We may have more materials now but maybe we are poorer socially.

    I wouldn’t consider beggars to be an indication of poverty levels.


  • #58
    Gregor Samsa
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,139 ✭✭✭Gregor Samsa


    There used to be a bit of thing of men living in their cars, parked outside the house that their wife (and often children) lived in. I used to pass by 3 of them on my walk to and from school. The cars didn’t run any more, and the windows were covered in newspaper. Alcoholics in their 50s/60s that got kicked out of the house, and made the car outside their new home. The wife would still do some basic washing and maybe cooking for them (I know one in Marino used to bring his dinner out to the car on a tray), but all the rest of their time was spent in the pub when not sleeping in the car. Don’t know if anyone else experienced/remembers they or if it was just my area (although these three were spread between Dublin 3 and 9, so it wasn’t in the same estate or anything).


  • #59
    Rodney Bathgate
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,440 ✭✭✭Rodney Bathgate


    Gregor Samsa wrote: »
    We used to have people regularly calling at the door begging in the 80s. Some were travellers, but not all. Not even trying to sell anything - just hand out looking for money. They’ve just decided to work smarter, not harder.

    Work :)


  • #60
    Hurrache
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,729 ✭✭✭✭Hurrache


    Anyone who thought it was better in the 80s weren't alive, or in early stages of dementia.


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  • #61
    Gregor Samsa
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,139 ✭✭✭Gregor Samsa


    Rodney Bathgate wrote: »
    Work :)

    The physics definition of work. The product of force and displacement. Less force and displacement utilised sitting outside a Spar than walking house to house.


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