Gay guy deciding whether to move to Cork

Scruffdog · 01-06-2019 9:09pm #1

Hey guys! First off I know this might sound ignorant, but bare in mind I am a homebird that has pretty much never set foot outside of the pale!

I am a 23 year old gay guy from Dublin. Basically I have an offer to study for the next 4 years in a course I would like to down in Cork. I have lived my whole life in Dublin and it took me a really long time to integrate myself up here and to make gay friends etc. The prospect of moving to a smaller more rural city intimidates me as I don’t want to feel alone and to find it hard to make gay friends/find guys to date. Because of this anxiety I have been wondering whether maybe I should work for the year and apply to other cities that are bigger abroad.

Basically I was hoping maybe some of you could shed some light on what life is like for a gay guy in Cork. As I said sorry if I sound ignorant, i genuinely just have never lived anywhere except Dublin and feeling isolated as a gay man again worries me.

Xx

wally1990 · 01-06-2019 9:22pm

I'm not a gay guy however just to advise there is a Gay bar/nightclub in the city centre called Chamber's.

It's always busy and would be a great place to meet other gay people.

Francie Barrett · 01-06-2019 9:28pm

Scruffdog wrote: »

The prospect of moving to a smaller more rural city intimidates me

Jesus christ, it's Cork you're moving to, not Saudi Arabia.

I don't know anything about Cork, but I do know a similar sized city (Galway). If that's anything to go by, I am sure you will be fine.

Scruffdog · 01-06-2019 9:29pm

wally1990 wrote: »

I'm not a gay guy however just to advise there is a Gay bar/nightclub in the city centre called Chamber's.

It's always busy and would be a great place to meet other gay people.

Aw thanks so much for your advice

Scruffdog · 01-06-2019 9:35pm

wally1990 wrote: »

I'm not a gay guy however just to advise there is a Gay bar/nightclub in the city centre called Chamber's.

It's always busy and would be a great place to meet other gay people.

Aw thanks so much for your advice

Scruffdog · 01-06-2019 9:35pm

Francie Barrett wrote: »

Jesus christ, it's Cork you're moving to, not Saudi Arabia.

I don't know anything about Cork, but I do know a similar sized city (Galway). If that's anything to go by, I am sure you will be fine.

lol thank u, saudi is next on my list xx

Bannasidhe · 01-06-2019 10:23pm

PM the Cork Gay Project (they are on FB) and Padraig or one of the lads will be able to answer any questions you have.

mike222 · 02-06-2019 12:05am

Rural?ðŸ˜Š

pauliebdub · 02-06-2019 8:57pm

I lived there for 2 years before moving to Dublin - my reason for moving to Dublin was for better career opportunities otherwise I would have stayed. Cork is a nice friendly city and you shouldn't have too much problems fitting in and making friends. It's also considerably cheaper than living in Dublin

twowheelsonly · 02-06-2019 9:16pm

Stop worrying about the Gay aspect of things. Everyone who has ever moved to another city, town or country has had the exact same anxieties as yourself. 99% of the time most of those anxieties are unfounded.
When you move, and particularly as you're looking at doing a four year course, you'll meet people in the exact same circumstances as yourself. They'll be Gay, Straight, Black, White, Yellow, Shades of Pink, Culchies and City Slickers but all of them will just be normal people like yourself.
If it's a course you really want to do then grab it with both hands and worry about everything else later.

Cork is a great city to live in for someone like yourself. It's big enough to lose yourself but small enough to have a 'local' feeling to it. There's plenty of good pubs and if live music is your thing you'll be in heaven. Two colleges (UCC and CIT) ensure that it's lively enough in term time. It's cheaper than Dublin but at the end of the day Dublin is only two and a half hours away.

Go for it IMO. Worry about the Gay bit later, that won't be a problem.

Heebie · 02-06-2019 10:24pm

Cork is only a couple hours from Dublin. You should be able to keep in touch with old friends and make new ones.

Ten of Swords · 03-06-2019 8:03pm

I'd always be in favor of spreading your wings and traveling when the opportunity arises as it's always a fantastic experience, I find, to get out of your comfort zone and branch out a bit. But let's put this in perspective, it's Cork, it's not that far.

If you're a bit of a homebird and prone to social anxiety I'm not sure living overseas in a larger city would really help you initially. Imagine living in London for 4 years, or even further afield somewhere like Berlin or even New York. These are massive global cities with a vibrant gay culture and a fairly large expat community but would this make you feel uncomfortable if you ever found it a bit too much? At least in Cork if it gets a bit overwhelming you can always take a day off, hop on a train, and be back in familiar surroundings in a couple of hours. That's less practical overseas so the fact that Cork is smaller (not exactly rural btw) may not be a bad thing for you at first.

How likely are these overseas opportunities to come up in your field of academia anyway?

Staying in Dublin indefinitely seems a bit insular to me and I wonder if it would be detrimental to your studies in the long run. I'd echo what has been said already, take the opportunity in Cork and try to make some friends in the process

Hedgelayer · 03-06-2019 8:12pm

You'll enjoy Cork, there's a great scene there and people are grand.

I remember back in the 1990's drinking with my gay friend in Loafer's back in the good old days.
Cork was gay friendly back then.

Nobody I knew had hang ups about gay's and I had a diverse range of friends.
From lads whole you'd walk across the street from late at night to very posh people from Lover's walk....and Montenotti
Being gay in Cork City wasn't a big deal back then, you were just another brick on the wall, which was basically a square deal.

I remember the first gay radio show in Ireland was Pink on red on redfm.
Risteard Keating was the presenter, the most sexy voice on radio that's for sure :d

Go for it

Scruffdog · 03-06-2019 9:46pm

Hedgelayer wrote: »

You'll enjoy Cork, there's a great scene there and people are grand.

I remember back in the 1990's drinking with my gay friend in Loafer's back in the good old days.
Cork was gay friendly back then.

Nobody I knew had hang ups about gay's and I had a diverse range of friends.
From lads whole you'd walk across the street from late at night to very posh people from Lover's walk....and Montenotti
Being gay in Cork City wasn't a big deal back then, you were just another brick on the wall, which was basically a square deal.

I remember the first gay radio show in Ireland was Pink on red on redfm.
Risteard Keating was the presenter, the most sexy voice on radio that's for sure :d

Go for it

Thank you so much ! Everyone’s help here has really made me put this more in perspective

)

bicloset · 11-06-2019 9:15pm

Hi,
I was exactly in your shoes this time last year and have been in Cork a year now. I went to college and lived in Dublin for a number of years and fancied a change. I am Irish but not from Dublin or Cork originally. My summary as follows

-Rent is just as expensive and scarce in Cork as is Dublin. Strongly consider how much you would save living in Dublin with family.
-Cork people are hugely cliquey. In my workplace they are all nice and all to me but I just feel like an outsider. Most Cork people grow up, study and then work in Cork so there isn't the same diversity and mix of people in the workplace. I have seen this go against me when I applied for permanent and progression opportunities.
-Cork is very easy to get about. The traffic is nowhere near as manic as Dublin.
-As for the gay community, like anywhere in Ireland or the world, it is small. Within 2 days of grindr and tinder you will run out of people to talk to or match with! lol

Any questions or specifics feel free to PM me.

Lackadaisical · 14-06-2019 12:32am

I'd actually rate Cork City as more LGBTQ friendly than Dublin in some regards. It's smaller but it's certainly not a "more rural city". (Rural city being an oxymoron).

Cork has a long and very proud LGBTQ history and has often been at the cutting edge of pushing gay rights in Ireland going way back into the 1970s.

Take a look at the Cork LGBT archive if you want to explore Cork's gay history. (Just Google)

I remember in about 2002 RedFM, which is basically the Cork counterpart to FM104 was entirely gay themed "Pink on Red" on Saturday nights. That was quite eye opening to me as I'd never encountered anything like that on Irish radio before and I'd grown up partly in both Cork and Dublin.

I also remember there being a gay part of the Cork Film Festival quite a long way back and the city always had some good gay venues. That's somewhat shrunk back to just Chambers, but I think that's genuinely a result of most venues feeling quite comfortable (to me anyway) to go with a same sex partner and be openly out there.

As a gay teen in Cork I never found it remotely problematic and my life revolved around Sir Henry's and Freakscene (not gay specific clubs but I was out and proud). There were gay venues back then too but I was a into my proper club nights. They're mainstream clubs from by gone era of 90s early 00s Cork nightlife, on the contrary in that era I got plenty of homophobic abuse in Dublin in the same era and never felt as comfortable in venues whereas in Cork I was happily snogging the face off my BF in non gay specific venues and thinking nothing of it.

Also it's a university city and UCC is one of the largest academic institutions in Ireland and was founded from day one as a completely secular institution and in my experience of it was always not only just a safe space but hugely supportive of LGBTQ people.

Even Cork City Council does a LGBTQ Week as an extra event. It's not during pride but ahead of it. The council also unanimously voted to endorse a call for same-sex marriage back in 2012.

All in all Cork's definitely striving to be extremely gay friendly so, don't worry about that side of things at all!

It's smaller, but there's a strong community. Come down for Pride which runs 29 July to 5 August in Cork. It doesn't clash with Dublin Pride, so you can do both.

I like both cities. They've different personalities. Cork genuinely feels very progressive and in many ways a lot safer than Dublin as it just doesn't have as much of that roaming thug element. And I say that as a Dub. I'm not just doing the Corkonian slagging off Dublin. Genuinely, I find I feel comfortable walking home at night in Cork whereas I feel somewhat nervous in parts of Dublin. Those are just general observations, more than anything LGBTQ specific.

It's both an established and growing tech hub with a lot of international residents, mostly from continental Europe and it's pretty multicultural.

Also it's reasonably well connected by air to London (extremely well) and most UK cities as well as Paris & seasonally other french cities, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Madrid, etc etc ..and quite a few other European destinations too.

My advice is if you're moving down just jump into everything that's on. Get involved in organisations (not just gay focused ones), turn up at Meetup.com, go to festival events, foodie stuff, gigs, launch nights and so on.

It's a very vibrant, small European city - approach it like that and you'll enjoy the place.

Btw the cliquish thing applies in Dublin in a huge way. I've experienced it in terms of old school buddies cliques and also UCD and Trinity cliques. I've also heard this from people moving to Dublin from UK cities too. It's not unique to Cork by any means but you kinda have to just break past that too. Moving to a new city inevitably is stressful and you do have to really push yourself to get out there and find a new circle of friends.

My advice is use networking tools like meetup.com, go to business stuff, go to community stuff, get involved in some arts stuff even if you've no major interest in art... Loads of things go on and loads of people are also out there in similar newbie situations.

...

Oh one word of warning. Some Cork people are incredibly sarcastic. It can come across as hostile. It isn't. It's usually just slagging. You need to wisecrack back or at least know it's not intended to be taken at face value. It's similar but not identical to Dublin humor but if you're unfamiliar with it it can be very jarring. Some people will tend to interpret it as haughty or a bit sneering. It's done tongue in cheek... usually.

mike222 · 14-06-2019 6:33am

Great post lackadaisical, I do agree, you point to all the positives Cork can and does offer, despite being a small city!

Gay guy deciding whether to move to Cork

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