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Dublin’s Wax Museum is back …or maybe not?

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Dublin’s Wax Museum is back …or maybe not?

The Wax Museum Plus is on its way back (or will be back soon), but oddly it won’t be a museum anymore, according to its director. I wasn’t invited to the launch (which happened without a single wax figure!), so I can only go by what others wrote about it, but it seems that the Wax Museum Plus (the plus stands for museum elements that were not wax figures) will re-open its doors again soon at a different location, but still in the City Centre.

The museum originally started in 1983 on Granby Row, near Parnell Square. That building was sold around 2000 and replaced by a hotel. The content of the museum was also sold to a Patrick Dunning and in 2009 the museum re-opened at Foster Place off College Green. In December 2016, it had to move again because the Irish Stock Exchange bought the building and now in Spring 2017 (probably around April) it will re-open in Westmoreland Street in the former Manchester United shop (later the the Lafayette night club).

In his article on The Journal.ie, Daragh Brophy describes an early media tour. He explains that there was no single wax figure in place yet and that the owner and director tried to convince the reporter that this is a museum that is not a museum, but was a museum but is now not a museum any longer. :-O He also mentions that there will be a new features, like an Augmented Reality aspect where your mobile phone will bring some of the figures to live. The article also includes a picture of Bertie Ahern with his wax figure…that doesn’t look like Bertie Ahern at all. :-O

 

Dublin, Events, Tourism, ,

Watch out! Sheerios expected to be on a stampede on Thursday night!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Watch out! Sheerios expected to be on a stampede on Thursday night!

RTE has reported that a number of Irish record shops will be open from Midnight on Thursday 02 March so that people can by the newest record by Ed Sheeran IMMEDIATELY when it is released.

WTF? It is ridiculous enough that Apple Stores open at midnight when a new iPhone is released considering that you could just stay in bed until the next morning and then leisurely stroll into your Apple Store and buy it at a time when normal people buy stuff. But ok, we know that Apple fan boys and girls need to tell their friends that they were there first.

That “virus” has now spread to Ed Sheeran fans? Apparently his fans are called “Sheerios”. (Not sure though if it is a flock of Sheerios or a herd of Sheerios or a gaggle of Sheerios that will be in Tower Records on Thursday night.)

Sure there is nothing wrong with being a big fan and there is also nothing wrong with shopping at midnight (I have been in Tesco myself around that time when many Tesco’s in Ireland were still open 24hrs.) but the mad run or queueing for something that is NOT scarce and will be plentiful in shops on the next day, just seems odd.

Dublin, Events, Society,

Suicidal Cyclists? – Helmet: Check! Lights: Who cares?

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Suicidal Cyclists? – Helmet: Check! Lights: Who cares?

Let me start with the promise that this won’t be one of these many blanket rants about cyclists that we find in plenty of media outlets, but it is an odd observation that I made in the last two week.

I don’t know if this is a new trend or a test of courage or stupidity or suicidal tendency among cyclists?! But in the last two weeks I encountered four (!) cyclists that were perfectly equipped with helmets and a pretty bike and even with lycras, but they completely left out the lights when they cycled at around 19:00/20:00 in pitch dark.

How can this happen? If they think they can be seen without lights or if they think nobody has to see them, then they are idiots. If they were just badly equipped or not serious cyclists or caught out by sudden darkness, I could understand it. But this time of the year, it is more dark then bright and these four were serious cyclists (judging by their good and serious bikes) and they were people that seemingly were aware of the general risk, otherwise they wouldn’t wear a helmet. ALL four wore a helmet!!!

How can you leave the house and check if you have your helmet and your bike and your bike lock and if you have put your lycras on, but then leave the lights behind? How can you think that it is in any way safe to cycle anywhere if you don’t have strong front and back lights?

Sure it can happen that you forget something (even lights) or that you run out of batteries/charge, despite otherwise really good planning. But FOUR forgetful cyclists in two weeks? Do they maybe really not realise that they are virtually invisible in the night?

Odd!!

Dublin, Odd, Traffic,

Snobbery in Dublin stops people from getting lower priced groceries!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Snobbery in Dublin stops people from getting lower priced groceries!

Once upon a time I was forced to buy my groceries in Superquinn. That was even before Tesco was in Ireland and before Aldi and Lidl arrived. Then I remember the week the first Aldi in Parnell Street opened. There were queues outside the shop and inside you couldn’t use a trolley because we had to walk through the shops like ducks in a row because there were soooo many people inside.

Nearly every Aldi and Lidl in Dublin (and there are MANY now) is busy and the market share of the two shop chains keeps growing, but there are some people who still think that they are too good to shop in Aldi and Lidl. But this snobbery is crumbling when you experience the high quality goods for SIGNIFICANTLY lower prices than others charge.

Oddly, though, when it comes to setting up new shops, some parts of Dublin are still totally against an Aldi or Lidl in their neighbourhood and I don’t believe for a minute that this is because of the dying village centres (they are already dead since Centra, Spar and Starbucks took over) or because of the REAL traffic increase. Maybe the PERCEIVED increase and this always reminds me of the stupid idea that Fingal County had when they limited the opening hours if Ikea near Ballymun and tried to force the shop to charge for parking during peak hours to avoid that looming traffic chaos that would bring the M50 to a stand still. Nothing like that ever happened and Ikea luckily was able to change the Fingal County rules.

So it is either a total misjudgement regarding traffic OR it is snobbery and I think ultimately it is the snobbery that is the reason for the NOs in Castleknock and Clonsilla that is described in this article www.thejournal.ie/lidl-2-3201010-Jan2017/

By the way, both Aldi and Lidl have managed to create pretty and very well integrated shops in some areas, so the look of the shops is not a good enough reason anymore to reject them.

 

Dublin, Economy, Odd, Society, , , , ,

ALL American Ambassadors are gone!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
ALL American Ambassadors are gone!

ALL American Ambassadors have been removed from their posts and consequently the USA is right now without ANY representatives outside of the USA. In a very strange and definitely unusual move, Donald Trump informed all US Ambassadors around the world tha they will have to have left their post before he became president.

US Ambassadors are usually political appointments and it is not unusual that they change when a new president takes office, but normally there is a grace period to get things organised, to give the existing ambassadors some time to get back home and to appoint the successors. Not this time! And to make things even more harsh, the order was sent to all ambassadors around the world just two days before Christmas on 23 December.

Kevin O’Malley, the most recent US Ambassador to Ireland, who is an Irish American attorney from St. Louis was in a plane on Inauguration Day to get back to the US as ordered. He was nominated by Barack Obama on 05 June 2014.

Ireland being at the lower end of the priority list for Ambassador appointments (The position was left vacant for nearly 2 years from December 2012 until September 2014!) might have to wait a while to get the next ambassador.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI0IJplzPqg

Dublin, Elsewhere, Odd, Politics, ,
 
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