James Galvin

When I gave an account of my adventures in some dodgy parts of Dublin’s south inner city, I had no idea that I had been right outside my sister’s apartment. Today I started working in Dublin, and I am temporarily using her empty room overlooking Saint Theresa’s Gardens (flats from hell), a very dodgy vacant lot, and a centre-of-the-universe Centra. I have been hearing stories the past few months regarding the entertainment provided by this Centra at night, far better than anything the television can offer. I assumed the stories of drug dealing in the vacant lot, and nightly fights and arrests outside the Centra were exaggerated, but it seems this place is as crazy as promised.

My first night’s entertainment was provided by a drunk guy getting thrown out of Centra by a security guard and two paramedics, and being taken into an ambulance. I don’t know what happened inside the shop, but twice he put his arms around the security guard and kissed him as he was being dragged away. The shutter was drawn on the shop, and the staff spent the following twenty minutes I guess cleaning up whatever damage the man had done.

They were still at it when the man returned, and shouted through the shutter “Come here you fucking bastard, do you want to start a war?” over and over again. Just before the police arrived, the man scurried off and hid in the vacant lot. I observed the unmarked Garda car do a few laps of the area trying to find him, while some other Gardai ushered the staff of Centra out of the shop.

A few minutes later the police were gone and the man reappeared at the shop and started trying to kick the doors in. Defeated by the shutter, he eventually gave up. I’ve got to put a webcam up here, this place is nuts.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 11th, 2006 at 1:30 am and is filed under Dublin, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.