Cover image for Dublin Inquirer print edition #15

One way you can tell that it’s summer in Dublin is that you can’t find a free bench in Stephen’s Green; another is to stroll down to Grand Canal Dock and see if the kids are diving off the pier in front of Daniel Libeskind’s theatre. For the majority of the year, the so-called Silicon Docks area is the preserve of bespectacled Googlers, and pale-skinned Facebookers, the soft-spoken overlords of the digital economy. But if the sun even threatens to shine, young fellas from Irishtown and Pearse Street arrive. They climb over the roofs of the Waterways visitors centre, do death-defying back flips off MacMahon Bridge, swim in the basin, and raise all manner of hell. For a few sweet hours, the steamroller of gentrification slows. Someday some well-meaning busybody will find a way to stop the fun, but not, thank God, this summer.