Would be good pals with a lad working in there. The sheer apathy of the place would astound ya. Theyâre been resting on their laurels and letting the City down. The old Eyre Sq was a mile better than the current one. I miss the fountain.
1 Like
I see a brighter future for Ukraine than I do for Ireland. Maybe Putin will but both countries out of their misery.
When I was in the psychiatric ward one of the people there worked reasonably high up for the council. I couldnât fault him on a human level as he was a genuinely great fella and a sort of social hub within the place, lovely to talk to, I could have talked to him for hours, but I wouldnât have particularly trusted him with a public works project.
The fountain was one of these things that was disliked at the start but very quickly became liked and now itâs gone itâs missed, like Buck Rogers take away.
1 Like
Peak galway was when shop street was packed with punters and you could farry your pint from one pub to another. Itâs demise was punctuated with bouncers and plastic glasses
Id never go to quay street much, but the quays was an ordinary pub, and naughtons unchanged. Murphyâs was perfect. Town was way better. All the good pubs were still going. Salthill was great (albeit mildly dangerous). I mostly stayed in Salthill anyway. Quiet roads. I preferred it from an entirely selfish point of view. There was no work was the thing.
You could walk down town the finest. Galway was never randomly dangerous. Salthill was when we were young lads.
Suoermacs in Eyre square was dodgy but that was all reds.
1 Like
Leisureland in 1980s Galway was unreal and a real treat.
6 Likes
The Quays used to be what is now just the front part. January 1st 1990 was one of the best days of my life. My uncle brought me to play snooker in the Savoy or Tower or whatever it was called on Eglinton Street, which was about the fourth time I was ever in this place and the final time because it shut down not long after. You went down the steps then up again into this place full of sumptuous snooker tables which was musty and seedy and amazing. Then afterwards he bought me these amazing sweets which were like mini sticks of rock but with a taste which no sweets Iâve ever had have compared to, in a place downstairs in Corbettcourt. They were made in Huddersfield I think. They only other place I ever saw them on sale was Liverpool Protestant Cathedral the day of the Ireland-Holland play off at Anfield in 1995, and I bought lots of them. I never saw them on sale anywhere ever again. Then after that we went to the Quays to see some traditional music because my uncle loved traditional music and music in general - heâd play the mandolin when heâd come home at Christmas - and Nottingham Forest v Liverpool was on the telly and Ian Rush scored and Liverpool went 2-0 up. It was the first day of the 1990s and life in that moment was perfect.
Then we went home to watch the second half and Forest came back to draw 2-2 and my uncle had to go back to London the next day and that made me very upset.
The sad thing about Galway and about lots of other places is theyâve been stripped of their uniqueness. Itâs H&M and River Island now and no more Lydonâs or OâGormanâs or Naughtonâs or Rafteryâs. I still donât know what Rafteryâs was as a shop. They sold musical instruments and tricycles. Then again Yamaha makes motorbikes and guitars so there is precedent for this sort of business model.
5 Likes
FFS lads, the @thegalways are getting as bad as the @thelimericks for hijacking threads and making it about themselves. Head over to the Tribesman/woman thread with your Galway stuff.
1 Like
This redneck went in to Sally Longs on his own one day and stuck my 50p on the pool table. Had 2 pints while waiting for my turn. I was gimped by the time someone beat me.
Yep three pints.
2 Likes
https://twitter.com/blueatlgeorgia/status/1847469069806817631?s=46
I thought lads said on here America was finished
America is fine, its the americans that are finished
Some local in full hells angels kit and a Kawasaki 125 outside.
2 Likes
Pantera belting out of the jukebox.
Listening to a Claire Byrne there earlier, the Republican guy was a bit concerned that Trump is getting a bit more unhinged. More off script, aggressive and offensive. Afraid it would turn off some Republican voters. Against that the other talking head said that the rallies are smaller but now more diverse, not just white guys any more. They both seemed to be saying that both candidates were only canvassing to their base rather than trying to attract moderates, so itâs a campaign of getting the vote out.
I wonder will Trump alienate more Republicans by being a complete scumbag and fascist or will Harris be lose more Democrat voters over the Middle East.
1 Like
A 30 million dollar bet originating from outside the US was placed with Polymarket, which shortened the odds on him winning with other bookies. Said shortening of odds also led to an inflation of the share price of Trumpâs social media company, some of which were sold off. Shady shit.
Also, the shortening of the odds will help fuel a âstolen electionâ narrative should Harris win.
2 Likes
Just to note that Claire was off today, again.
Iâm calling it now. Trump will win.
Didnât even notice that.
Iâd say you might be right there.
Or you might be wrong.
Its 50/50, but a ballsy call nonetheless.
1 Like
Thought this was a good piece reflecting @Cheasty v @Horsebox .
Just as Trumpâs support cuts across the usual divisions, so, too, does a divide among his opponentsâbetween the maximizers (@Cheasty), who think that Trump is a unique threat to liberal democracy, and the minimizers (@Horsebox) who think that he is merely the kind of clown a democracy is bound to throw up from time to time. The minimizers (who can be found among both Marxist Jacobin contributors and Never Trump National Review conservatives) will say that Trump has crossed the wires of culture and politics in a way that opportunistically responds to the previous paralysis, but that this merely places him in an American tradition. Democracy depends on the idea that the socially unacceptable might become acceptable. Andrew Jackson campaigned on similar themes with a similar mannerâand was every bit as ignorant and every bit as unaware as Trump. (And his campaigns of slaughter against Indigenous people really were genocidal.) Trumpâs politics may be ugly, foolish, and vain, but ours is often an ugly, undereducated, and vain country. Democracy is meant to be a mirror; it shows what it shows.
And so, the minimizers say, taking Trump seriously as a threat to democracy in America is like taking Roman Reigns seriously as a threat to fair play in sports. Trump is an entertainer. The only thing he really wants are ratings. When opposing abortion was necessary to his electoral coalition, he opposed itâbut then, when that was creating ratings trouble in other households, he sent signals that he wasnât exactly opposed to it. When Project 2025, which he vaguely set in motion and claims never to have read, threatened his ratings, he repudiated it. The one continuity is his thirst for popularity, which is, in a sense, our own. He rows furiously away from any threatening waterfall back to the center of the riverâincluding on Obamacare. And, the minimizers say, in the end, he did leave the White House peacefully, if gracelessly.
And so the maximalist case is made up not of alarmist fantasies, then, but of dulled diagnostic fact, duly registered. Think hard about the probable consequences of a second Trump Administrationâabout the things he has promised to do and can do, the things that the hard-core group of rancidly discontented figures (as usual with authoritarians, more committed than he is to an ideology) who surround him wants him to do and can do. Having lost the popular vote, as he surely will, he will not speak up to reconcile âall Americans.â He will insist that he won the popular vote, and by a landslide. He will pardon and then celebrate the January 6th insurrectionists, and thereby guarantee the existence of a paramilitary organization thatâs capable of committing violence on his behalf without fear of consequences. He will, with an obedient Attorney General, begin prosecuting his political opponents; he was largely unsuccessful in his previous attempt only because the heads of two U.S. Attorneysâ offices, who are no longer there, refused to coĂśperate. When he begins to pressure CNN and ABC, and they, with all the vulnerabilities of large corporations, bend to his will, telling themselves that his is now the will of the people, what will we do to fend off the slow degradation of open debate?
Trump will certainly abandon Ukraine to Vladimir Putin and realign this country with dictatorships and against NATO and the democratic alliance of Europe. Above all, the spirit of vengeful reprisal is the totality of his beliefsâvery much like the fascists of the twentieth century in being a man and a movement without any positive doctrine except revenge against his imagined enemies.