South Dublin Read online

  The jewel in the Sandymount crown is Dunne & Crescenzi, however, an Italian restaurant much revered by media types for its authentic Italian staff and excellent but inexpensive trattoria fare. If they tripled their prices, this could become D4's favourite eatery. They won't, of course.

  The people of Dublin 4 are a special breed, and they won't eat any old muck – unless, of course, it's organic and fabulously expensive. The area has a number of excellent gourmet food shops, including Michael Byrne Fine Foods in Sandymount and the Douglas Food Company in Donnybrook.

  Eddie Rocket's is a chain of 1950s-style American

  diners that serve hamburgers, onion rings and enormous shakes to rich kids, against a soundtrack of Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly and Bobby Darin hits. The American accents affected by most of the customers contribute to the sense of being trapped on the set of Happy Days. Going to Ed's, as it's known, is a rite of passage for many South Dublin teens, and the restaurant in Donnybrook is probably the most famous outlet in this respect. Their first visit there will invariably be on a Saturday afternoon with friends, while their moms or dads wait outside in the Lexus, engrossed in The Irish Times magazine or Golf World. Within a year or two their little charges will be going by themselves, lining their stomachs with cheese and bacon fries, then changing out of their school uniforms in the toilets, before trying to pass themselves off as eighteen in the local pubs.

  Donnybrook Fair

  Donnybrook Fair is the mothership of fine food emporiums and proof that the people of Dublin 4 will buy anything as long as it's made by a small cottage industry in Connemara and costs a tenner a jar. The customers of this smart little mini-mart want their shopping baskets to reflect their smug sense of themselves. They don't want bread; they want onion and bacon loaf. They don't want custard creams; they want cantucci biscuits. They don't want virgin olive oil; they want virgine olive oil, which is the same as the other stuff but costs €11 per bottle. Yes, this is where Dublin 4 stocks its double-door Smegs with quail eggs, Dutch-smoked Gouda and organic sheep's milk.

  The clientele you'll encounter here are moms and dads with far too much money; gay men, who are known affectionately as the Donnybrook Fair-ies; and sulky, stick-thin women in their twenties who dress to kill just to nip out to the shop to buy melba toast – their sole source of nourishment.

  An hour spent perusing the shelves in here is an insight into how ‘the other half’ lives. You'll step out onto Morehampton Road, clutching your American-style paper grocery bag with its distinctive D/F logo, with your pockets considerably lightened – but your spirits lightened, too.

  Pubs and Clubs

  Kielys of Donnybrook is by far the most famous pub on this side of the city, and it's as South Dublin as high-fiving, talking loudly and getting a ‘wedgy’ from a bunch of jocks in a car park. There's plenty of all three in this establishment because this is Rugger Bugger Central, where if you're not wearing the Rugby Regimentals – chinos, Dubes, Ralph and a sailing jacket – they'll look at you like you're wearing clogs and a leather codpiece. This is where D4's beautiful twenty-somethings kick back over a few Kens and discuss the big issues of the day: will Brian O'Driscoll still be playing for Leinster next season? Is the Nokia 8800 the greatest phone ever made? How did Amie-with-an-ie Drummond's tits suddenly get so big if she didn't have any? Signed rugby jerseys and photographs wainscot the walls, and you can barely make yourself heard over the sound of high-fiving and mobile phones ringing. The home ground of the Leinster team is just 100 yards from the front door and the players regularly show their faces for lunch or after matches, making Kielys as much a place of worship as a place of imbibing.

  Despite its close proximity to St Vincent's Hospital, the Merrion Inn has never really attracted the famously warm-hearted nursey set. The M1, as habitués know it, is more a hangout for stuck-up UCD types, and, as far as scoring goes, you have to work hard for whatever you get. This place also attracts a lot of Andrew's and Michael's heads – in other words, people who left St Andrew's College or St Michael's College years ago, but talk about it like they're still there – rugger buggers enjoying a brief sabbatical from Kielys, and a rich, camel-hair-coated, fifty-something, empty-vessel stereotype known as Merrion Man.

  The Schoolhouse is an old school building next to the canal in Ballsbridge, which has been tastefully converted into a four-star hotel. Its bar has become a favourite after-work hangout for South City suits who never had time to find a life partner. This is the place where D4 love stories – or at least marriages of convenience – begin. On Thursday and Friday nights it's quite a scene. You meet a girl, you exchange views on the privatization of Aer Lingus and suddenly you're loosening your tie. Six months later you're announcing your merger in the social pages of The Irish Times.

  On the day of a big rugby international it's safe to drink just about anywhere within a mile of Lansdowne Road, provided, of course, you can put up with the back-slapping, esprit de corps and grown men calling each other by their surnames. Most fans enjoy their ‘one or two’ pre-match ‘scoops’ in Ballsbridge, choosing one of the drinking emporiums along a strip that non-rugby types refer to as Wankers Way. It includes famous ‘battle cruisers’ like Paddy Cullen's, Crowe's, The Horse Show House and, further up the street, Bellamy's. Rugby fans can be trusted to take their glasses out onto the street without sticking them in each other's faces, so when the weather's fine – which it always is in this sun-kissed part of the world – the match-goers spill outside, where the banter and bonhomie, to say nothing of jolly japery, can reach ear-splitting levels.

  Here, too, you'll have the opportunity to leer at literally hundreds of young women in figure-hugging Ireland rugby jerseys. Interestingly, Umbro has never brought out a fitted Ireland soccer shirt for women – maybe because when you weigh 15 stone, every shirt is figure-hugging.

  At the other end of the street, in the Four Seasons Hotel, is the impossibly glamorous Ice Bar, which combines the cosmopolitan sophistication of New York with the design cool of Milan and the bar prices of Dublin – in the year 2041. This is the home of the €6 bottle of Bud and the pint of Heino for €6.40. Try the €19 Champagne Mojito. It takes fifteen minutes to prepare, and they crush the ice and fresh mint right before your eyes. The regulars here – perfectly toned men in €2,000 suits and emaciated model-types with the signature D4 dead-fish stare – aren't afraid to look you up and down when you walk through the door. And don't worry about what to wear – no matter what you hang on yourself, you're going to feel completely under-dressed in here.

  The King of Clubs

  Dublin 4 men of a certain age love being members of clubs – as long as they are exclusive clubs. It's as vital to their sense of self as are the letters after their name. Possibly the only thing they enjoy more than being members of clubs is being on the membership committees of clubs, thus deciding who gets in and who doesn't, which allows them to enjoy the sweet power of veto over Cabinet ministers, high-court judges and captains of industry. There can be no greater trip than telling rich and powerful men to fock off. Most of the clubs in South Dublin have no waiting lists, and no criteria for membership are ever published. Not even the Consistory in Rome applies this much secrecy to its considerations, with nepotism and score-settling often playing a large part in the process.

  Most D4 men are members of two clubs: one golf and one tennis/fitness club. There's very little mixing and matching – usually it's either Milltown Golf Club and Fitzwilliam Lawn Tennis Club, or it's Elm Park Golf Club and Riverview.

  Milltown and Elm Park are Dublin 4's favourite golf courses (despite the fact that both are technically outside the postal district), and on an average weekend you'll find the entire Supreme Court, Law Library, boards of the major banks, most of the country's leading surgeons and all the important movers-and-shakers in Irish financial, legal and medical life traversing their fairways, looking like a tit in ridiculous knitwear.

  The K Club might be more expensive and Powerscourt more prestigious, b
ut Milltown and Elm Park can claim moral superiority over them for one reason – they are not impressed by money. Some of the country's wealthiest builders would give their left vestibules to become members, but, despite their billions, Ireland's new aristocracy have not been able to buy their way into either club. In fact, for whom is Michael Smurfit's golfing Elysium built if not for rich men who couldn't get into Milltown and Elm Park?

  Nonetheless, the two clubs draw sneers from ‘true’ golfers – usually those they've blackballed at some point in the past – who assert vigorously that if it's not 7,000 yards long and next to the sea, then it's not a ‘real’ course. That's why most members of Milltown and Elm Park are also members of Portmarnock Golf Club. You'll often hear them explain: ‘I play my serious golf in Portmornock – and my social golf in Elm Pork.’ Yes, it's heavy-duty banter in the Berkeley Court bar. At Fitzwilliam you can play tennis or squash, enjoy a swim, or work off a carvery lunch in the steamroom or sauna, although FLTC has always regarded itself as more of a private gentlemen's club than a common leisure centre. The age profile of its membership – they seem to have more sixty-somethings than fifty-somethings these days – has seen it dubbed ‘God's Waiting Room’, or the Devil's Waiting Room, depending on your political viewpoint. The club, which grew out of a rundown shack on Lad Lane into its current, state-of-the-art headquarters on upmarket Appian Way, has always had an enlightened attitude towards minorities, accepting Jewish members at a time when virtually no other club in Ireland would do so. However, in the corner of the bar you can still find choleric old men bitching into their pints about the decision to allow women in.

  Membership of Riverview – or David Lloyd Riverview Leisure – is more than just a line on your Who's Who entry, although obviously it's that as well. Located between Donnybrook and Clonskeagh, this prestigious club has a swimming pool, tennis courts and a very impressive gym, where you'll find the stars of the various schools Senior Cup teams eye-balling each other across the weights room as they work out between matches. Most of them are there because ‘the old man’ is a member, even though the last time he held a tennis racquet, Arthur Ashe had just won Wimbledon.

  Botox

  Dublin 4 girls are famous for their inscrutable faces. It's often impossible to gauge what mood they're in by simply looking at them. This is often the result of Botox injections, which freeze the face into a stony moue. However, by knowing the subtle nuances to look out for, it is possible to read a Dublin 4 girl's facial expressions. For a handy guide see pages 166-7.

  Mount Anville

  It's not, strictly speaking, in Dublin 4, but Mount Anville is where Dublin's richest mommies and daddies send their little princesses to be educated. It is the closest thing Dublin has to a finishing school, and its students – the celebrated ‘Mounties’ – graduate with not just an excellent education but also the confidence that comes from being well versed in

  etiquette and all matters of social refinement.

  This elite, fee-paying school, situated in the former home of railway tycoon William Dargan, has traditionally excelled at hockey, tennis, debating and drama, but extracurricular activities also include such urbane pursuits as furniture restoration. Mounties come across as fancying themselves – but then, everyone fancies them. Impossibly cool and trend-setting, they were the first girls’ school to adopt Dubes as part of their uniform.

  It is a well-kept secret – and one that students of nearby Alexandra and Muckross colleges will delight in – that Mount Anville was once on the Northside, starting out life in Glasnevin in 1853, before transferring to a better neighbourhood on the other side of the city in 1865.

  The Society of the Sacred Heart, which founded and still runs the school, has five aims: to instil in its students a living faith in God; to encourage personal growth in an atmosphere of ‘wise freedom’; to foster a deep respect for intellectual values; to stimulate the building of community as a Christian value; and to cultivate social awareness that ‘impels to action’. Its students, on the other hand, have one aim: to get off with as many boys from Blackrock College as possible, or whoever happens to be doing well in the Leinster Schools Senior Cup. And, as their rivals know only too well, the Mounties always get their man.

  A WORD FROM OISINN

  I remember this one time we were all in Kielys after we had kicked somebody-or-other's orse in the Cup – I think it was, like, Michael's – and the place was just full of birds, all of them there for one reason alone – to try to be with anyone connected with our team. I shit you not, it was like conducting interviews. Anyway, I'd just red-corded this bird from, like, Teresians, of all schools, when suddenly next up is this absolute focking stunner – not my type, in other words!

  She turned around to me and she went, ‘Congrats – you'd a great game,’ the usual opener for ten, and naturally I responded with, ‘Thanks. So… what school do you go to?’ expecting her to say, like, Mount Anville, or Alex, or Loreto Foxrock, or Muckross, or whatever. But no, totally out of the blue she went, ‘John Scottus’. So I was like, ‘Can I ask you to say that again?’ ‘John Scottus,’ she went and suddenly I'm having one of those tumbleweed moments. I do remember thinking that Scottus sounded like one of those infections that requires a dose of penicillin and two weeks out of the saddle. I think I might have actually mentioned this to her because it was at that point that she – not me – walked away. So I asked around and it turns out that John Scottus is this, like, seriously exclusive school on Morehampton Road and the bird I knocked back – Sive was her name – has a dad who's worth, like, four billion squids and she now plays the violin – get this – for a living.

  I stuck with what I knew and ended up with one of the harem of Mounties that attached itself to us that year. No regrets, though. They were great, those girls – like a flock of turquoise flamingos that followed us everywhere. Me, Ross and JP went through them like an epidemic. We used to have this joke: how many Mounties does it take to change a lightbulb? Four – one to go and get Daddy and the other three to bitch about her behind her back!

  Anyway, if you asked me to choose a ladies’ fragrance that captures the essence of Dublin 4, it would have to be L’Eau d’Issey by Issey Miyake. It's fresh and feminine, without being too flowery; unmistakable and persuasive, yet subtle and classically elegant. It's the perfect scent for an independent woman who's not afraid to express herself.

  Entertainment

  Dublin 4 dwellers love watching sport – especially from the vantage of a corporate box or sponsor's tent.

  Lansdowne Road is the home of rugby, the arena in which Ireland have pulled off many famous victories and many equally famous defeats. The stadium – the oldest rugby union Test venue in the world – is due to

  The morning after the night before! Before it

  closed for redevelopment, Lansdowne Road hosted

  occasional ‘soccer’ matches and, traditionally,

  supporters showed their gratitude by pissing in

  local gardens. Here, a housekeeper and gardener

  make their way in to work…

  face the wrecking ball, with a new €700m, 40,000-seater stadium to be built in its place. The battered old stands have borne witness to a lot of history – Ireland winning the Triple Crown in 1982, coming seconds away from putting Australia out of the World Cup in 1991 and denying England the Grand Slam in 2001. (Regrettably, the stadium hosted occasional games of ‘soccer’, too, and thousands of men with newsprint moustaches laid siege to what is a quiet residential area, drinking cider, eating punnets of chips and shitting in local gardens.) During the stadium's reconstruction Ireland is playing its matches on the Northside of Dublin in a stadium called Crock Park. There are doubts about whether any Ireland fans – or players for that matter – will be able to find it. Thank Christ for Sat-Nav.

  Not many people can say they have two homes in Dublin 4, but the Leinster rugby team can. They play their home games in the European Cup at the RDS and Celtic League games – a kind of Europ
ean Cup Lite – in Donnybrook. The highlight of matches at the RDS is when the theme tune from Hawaii Five-O is played over the tinny public address system every time Leinster score a try.

  The Dublin Horse Show is one of the highlights of the Dublin 4 social calendar, when ladies who wouldn't know their horses from their elbows don summer frocks and spectacular Philip Treacy millinery creations and feign knowledge and interest in showjumping. The real aficionados at the event, which takes place over five days in early August, are the boggers, who relegate the locals, for once, to the role of arrivistes. Still, as long as they have a plentiful supply of strawberries, a full flute of Champagne and good seats for the Aga Khan, the locals really don't mind. Merrion Cricket Club and Belvedere Rugby Club are among the local clubs which, in a display of ecumenism, allow their grounds to be used as car parks for the horse-trailer trash.

  Since it first threw open its doors in 1975, Funderland has brought some of the world's scariest amusement rides to Ireland – and some of the world's scariest people into the heart of Dublin 4. The funfair, which operates out of the RDS from St Stephen's Day until the second week in January each year, attracts tens of thousands of poor people to Ballsbridge, many of them wearing soccer jerseys and sovereign rings. Dublin 4 thought it had seen the last of their kind when Shamrock Rovers, a soccer club, stopped playing matches in the RDS showjumping arena. A growing number of Southsiders – including Ross O'Carroll-Kelly's old dear and a couple of her friends – have come to regard Funderland's famous big wheel as a blot on the Dublin 4 skyline and are campaigning for the entire operation to be shifted some place more appropriate, which basically means Ballymun.