Stoneybatter is not just beards and cake

NOTE TO MEDIA: There is more to Stoneybatter than Mulligans, Mi Thai and Slice. And this part of town does not consist solely of hipster beards cycling to cake shops with a freshly baked sourdough baguette under each arm. And what follows is a rant, about the media. But I'll try to back it up with hard facts. Statistics.

The Viking streets of Stoneybatter, and Dublin's 'Milluminum' anniversary

Many of Stoneybatter's streets have Norse-sounding names. In a literal sense, most of them came via the Artisans' Dwelling Company around the late 19th century. Many of these back streets, like their terraced houses and cottages, were brand new back then.

A country pub in the city

Sometimes you walk into a Dublin pub and step back in time. You have in fact entered an old-fashioned, homely hostelry at a remote country crossroads.

Christy Brown's coal lorry, Arbour Hill

Dublin writer and artist Christy Brown was born on this day in 1932. My Left Foot, Jim Sheridan's award-winning film from 1989, tells the semi-fictional story of Christy (brilliantly played by Daniel Day-Lewis), and this is a famous scene shot in Stoneybatter, around Arbour Hill.

Grangegorman Military Cemetery

Grangegorman Military Cemetery is back in the news again. Yesterday morning Canada's Ambassador to Ireland, Kevin Vickers, pounced on a protester during a State ceremony to remember the British soldiers killed in the Easter Rising.

O'Devaney Gardens: three videos

To some TV viewers, O'Devaney Gardens stands for a fictional block of dilapidated flats in Dublin where Ado (Mark Dunne) has a bolthole in Love/Hate.

To some politicians, O'Devaney Gardens is a real-life housing estate in Stoneybatter that shouldn't be knocked down just yet but should be temporarily renovated, then demolished: a €4.7 million sticking plaster for the housing crisis instead of a permanent solution. Talk about half-baked.