171 Navan Road, Dublin 7

Someone said to me when they heard that I was back that I should photograph/document the "ghost estates" around the rim of the commuter belt, in the beyonds of Meath, Kildare, etc. Places that got built and then never occupied, or were almost finished but then the developer ran out of money. Fuck that! I like my derelict buildings with a bit of character. Even if those "ghost estates" were occupied, they'd still be full of zombies, brain dead from their daily two-hours-there, two-hours-back commute in gridlock. Oh those poor people, I read, the recession has left them with negative equity. FUCK. THEM. Thats what you get for wanting a house with 4 bedrooms and garden back and front, instead of living closer to where you work in an apartment, LIKE THE REST OF EUROPE DOES. Deal with the choices you made in your life. You're a stupid fucking Irish person who thinks they've above their station in life, with a widescreen TV and a new car, but you're actually commuter belt nouveau riche (and now pauvreté, or perhaps misère would be more appropriate) trash, its YOU thats responsible for the recession, not the bankers.

So after a brief hiatus, its back here again, with so much other fetid spam alongside us in the dole queue. But not for long (I swear, I hope), so I'll cram all the properties into the blog before operations are shut down again and moved to a tax exile island. I think I've reached this love/hate duality/dichotomy/juxtaposition status with Ireland at this stage in my life. I get dewey eyed about the green auld sod like any diaspora moron, no doubt given a few years away again I'll be a Continuity/Real IRA supporter from afar, have a strange hybrid accent, be a regular at my local paddywhackery "Oirish" bar harping on about how inauthentic the place is, act the drunken buffoon at the socially awkward Paddys Day workplace drinks for the amusement of my colleagues, and so on. Part of me does miss it - but again its a warped nostalgia, where the grass is greener on the other side. You forget the rain, the rain, the idiots who run the country and the idiots who voted for them (and the idiots who think the "opposition" are in any way ideologically different), the state of the place in general, the rain, the fact that now you're home you're not from Ireland any more - you're just a knacker as soon as you open your mouth to a stranger, and so on. So it'll be adios, again, sooner rather than later.

In the interim, enjoy these properties from the northside.

241 New Cabra Road, Cabra, Dublin 7

190 New Cabra Road, Dublin 7

52 Old Cabra Road, Cabra, Dublin 7

52 Mountjoy Street, Broadstone, Dublin 7

I think there used to be some sort of metalwelding business in the rear of this building, maybe a gate and fence manufacturer. It was used by junkies a while back but now its been boarded up again. Doesnt look like there's any current activity.

60 Mountjoy Street, Broadstone, Dublin 7

I really wish the council would stick a metal gate up at the entrance to the laneway at the side of this gaf, with keys given to the residents of Fontenoy Street. The laneway is constantly full of half burnt sofas, shopping trolleys, and other assorted shite.

UPDATE: 134 Navan Road, Dublin 7 ("Cabra Farm")

Now you see it, now you dont. "Cabra Farm" got the chop recently, thanks again to P for the heads up. Apartments, apartments, apartments... They could have left some of the trees, couldnt they...?

7 Myrtle Street, Broadstone, Dublin 7

I wonder if derelict houses have a gender. I imagine with some degree of certainty that the owners are inevitably male. This impression doesnt come from looking at the derelict sites registers and seeing the names are those of men; its more from a general sensation that without the loving, caressing, gentle female touch that the owners eventually stop giving a fuck about the things that they have, and find themselves (or their houses) falling down into this spiral of regret, decay, self-destruction, with scant regard for the concerns of others. Or maybe its not that the owners or houses are male, maybe its just that they're of either gender, but lonely and isolated in the city where they find themselves, in need someone to come and take them in their hands, reassure them that everything will be OK, that any surface damage or serious structural physical defects inflicted during a rough period of dereliction can be repaired, regenerated... that there is some love there still which can inject life and succour back to where there was once none... This small cottage is located in the little warren of streets near the Blessington Street Basin. Myrtle Street is the continuation of Wellington Street, off Dorset St.

UPDATE: 142 Navan Road, Dublin 7

Apologies to you, dear reader, for another extended absence. But it was a bad month. A shocking unexpected very first self-harming episode, roller coaster emotional trips (from ecstatic erotic elation running through every pore of our bodies, to the black core of human darkness pitching us into extreme depression and continuous self-doubt), sliver blade gut wounds, overseas heart shredding, bone breaking binge bicycle rides.. not stuff you want to experience. Not stuff we wanted to experience either. L'amour fou will chew you up and spit you out like so much unwanted Wrigleys Extra. But what can you do? You persevere, you endure... You move on. Or you try. We've all been there... things change, they adapt, they get better... just like this building on the Navan Road. Of course we wouldnt dare claim credit for the building being fenced off, its windows properly boarded up and the overgrown jungle of a garden out the back being churned up and turned into a manageable space... but it would be nice to dream we had something to do with it, regardless of miniscule readership. No idea what's being done with it, a lot of work seems to have happened within a short space of time and then nothing again in recent days. Again these pix are from the mobile but in the course of the move from the burbs to the core, the piece of shit digital camera seems to have gone walkies and we're reduced to the grim washed out pixels of the nokia.. no fucking Leica thats for sure. But you get the general idea. Not everything has to be aesthetically pure for you to appreciate the essential essence of its being, or the transformation of it. Does it..? If it does, then we're all fucked...

134 Navan Road, Dublin 7

You'd nearly miss this one because its surrounded on all sides by very mature trees. Its right up the road from the previous entry, and again just on the corner of the Nephin Roadand the Navan Road. Its a big, detached house on a corner site, with a large (overgrown) garden, and a small shed to the side with vehicular access from the Navan Road. I seem to remember the entire site being for sale recently within the last two years maybe, billed as "development potential", so its quite possible the whole house will be knocked and some low-rise apartments built on it. There's no planning permission notice up as yet but I wouldnt be surprised if one popped up soon. The rest of the area is all 2-storey semi-detached houses so any high rise development would probably encounter local opposition. If you hop the front gate, and walk around the back of the house, you can access the garage via a back entrance. You can also see a couple of accessible open windows around the back, so for junkies and squatters its pure bingo - the only drawback to this of course is that its right across the road from Cabra Garda Station. The photos below (very tricky getting the hang of this) are from the sitting room, the back door (note the open bathroom window), and the inside of the workshop/shed next door to the house. ** update ** This house is known locally as "Cabra Farm", and I really should have seen the sign with this name when I was hopping over the front gate. There's a planning application in the works for a 7-storey apartment block on the site. Thanks to P for the info.

142 Navan Road, Dublin 7

This is one of a few small cottages near the junction of the Navan Road and the Nephin Road. I guess you could call it Cabra but people just generally refer to anything north of that junction as the Navan Road. The other cottages behind are called the Roosevelt Cottages, so that name might warrant further investigation, although I dont recall any American president ever claiming to have ancestry near Cabra.. This house doesnt look too bad from the front, apart from the plastic sheeting taped up over the smashed glass on the front door, but if you go around the back, all the windows are boarded up and graffiti'd on (and I'll happily post some extra pictures of it up once I get more to grips with the blogging technology, forgive my ignorance), and the generously sized back garden is heavily overgrown with tall weeds. The cottage itself isnt that big, possibly two bedrooms, with a small kitchenette extension out the back, and would be a decent home for a small family. The stepped entrance down to the front door with the gate is a nice touch. There's a planning application stuck up on the side wall by a Michael McGarty, but the date has faded from it with age. The application was for alterations and an extension, but what possibly got turned down was the request for vehicular access from the Navan Road. The house is right next to a bus stop, and its hard to see how this could be altered so a driveway could be constructed. Its still no reason to let the house fall into disrepair though...

112 & 113 Phibsborough Road, Phibsborough, Dublin 7

These two gafs have been like this for as long as I can remember. They're right next to the "Cross Guns Bridge", which is at the junction of the Phibsboro Road and the Canal/Villa Bank/Whitworth Road. You can see that at some point they made a bit of an effort to clean them up by putting in paintings of window frames but they're still a fucking disgrace. I remember a planning application up on them a while back but nothing seems to be happening with them, except people parking their cars in the front yard. I think they may have been sold as one lot along with the pub next door, which was once the Cross Guns Inn (I think? I was never in there anyway), now called Smyths and gone more upmarket. So maybe the pub owns them and will do something with them. They're on a prime site, the apartments around the corner - with a wonderful view out the back of the Mountjoy Wall - sold for shitloads.

2 Carnlough Road, Cabra, Dublin 7

This is one of these two-up two-down gafs that you see around Cabra, Whitehall, Crumlin, Larkhill, East Wall, off Clonliffe Road, etc. I think these ones in Cabra were built in the 40's and 50's, most if not all by Dublin Corporation, rehousing people from town. A lot of them around Cabra I think are in private ownership now, and they sell for around €350k. Although an ex-work colleague who lives down around Imaal Road was saying to me before that the Corpo (now Dub. City Council) were buying them back off the older folks. This one on Carnlough Road near the Old Cabra Road junction has steel boards up and spikey fencing at the side garden. Next door didnt look too healthy either, it had the same temporary steel gate to the side, and an overgrown garden... but the windows were still intact. This gaf might have something to do with a future redevelopment of the area behind, next to the railway tracks. There used to be some sort of chemical plant there (you can still see it) next to the underused connection between Heuston & Connolly stations. I think there might be apartments going up, so maybe this one might be getting the chop. Still, its shit that it isnt being used as a temporary rental space.