Michael Moynihan: So much street furniture in Cork and still nowhere to sit
Pensioners sitting outside the English Market in Cork city. There was never as much seating to be found on the streets of Cork, but there aren’t too many places you can sit down, paradoxically.
Mature readers may recall Klondyke (Jeremiah Healy), one of Cork civil life’s more colourful characters.
A councillor back in the forties, Klondyke had a strong focus on one issue: the provision of a public toilet for women in the city. Legend has it his rallying call was topical for the time (‘they are building arsenals all over Europe, all we want is one urinal’).
(Literal-minded reader: But if it was a women’s toilet why-
Me: stop, you’re killing the magic.)
The great man was successful, of course, though the toilet built at his urging was knocked back in the eighties. Which tells its own story.
We could do with another Klondyke now, not so much for access to toilets, though that would help, but maybe to campaign for a few more plain benches for the streets of Cork.
Last weekend your correspondent hiked into the city centre, research assistants in tow. During the mission, one of said assistants got peckish, and to accommodate her high notions we went to the sushi place in the English Market.
(The other research assistant cast longing eyes at an O’Flynn’s fries-and-sausage meal box, which her father agreed to help with.)
Afterward, we repaired to the fresh air out on the Grand Parade and looked for somewhere to sit down.
This is a trickier proposition than you’d think. There was never as much seating to be found on the streets of Cork, but there aren’t too many places you can sit down, paradoxically.
The explosion in street furniture sometimes seems a literal one — you stroll a street unhindered one day, then the next there are seats, stools, tables, chairs of all sorts, barriers both temporary and permanent, dogs on leads tied to those barriers, people sprawled across the chairs
Where once the pavement stretched ahead, smooth and unspoiled, there now arises an obstacle course to test even the mountain goats among us when it’s not forcing people off the footpath and into the open road to confront the traffic.
This has consequences for people. I won’t embarrass the outlet in question, but there’s one particular corner in the city centre which has hundreds of people funnelled into one narrow corridor because of the way the area has been colonised, or infested, by tables and chairs. A minor inconvenience for someone hale and hearty even if laden with groceries; a major challenge for those pushing small children around, or people with mobility issues.
Back to my field trip last weekend: yours truly plus research assistants had to try a picnic on the large smooth blocks set up on the Grand Parade outside the Market entrances on that side.
God knows in my youth I snacked in worse places and at worse times, but if a reader has ever perched on one of those blocks they’ll know that the traditional accompaniment to their coffee or sandwich (or sushi roll) is a bracing lungful of car exhaust from the vehicles parked right next to them. Thus our visit.
(True, there are the benches across the road in Bishop Lucey Park, but that’s down for redevelopment, which means the space will soon be inaccessible to the public. Move a little further down the Grand Parade and there are places to sit outside the main branch of the library, though there’s an issue with the local bird population, who are ... not being served by a Klondyke of their own, put it that way.)
If you look around the city, though, you will see no shortage of seating arrangements, courtesy of the sudden embrace of the continental outdoor seating model forced upon us by Covid.
Contrary to the gloomier forecasts, this street furniture has survived a couple of winters and all of us have now grown accustomed to sitting outside cafes, bars, and restaurants as though we were Mediterranean in appearance, outlook, and temperament
However, this seating is all provided by private enterprise. No doubt if my own wagon train bearing California rolls and O’Flynn’s Breakfast Sausage had wound its way from the Grand Parade blocks to some chairs nearby we would have been told politely that the seating was there for the benefit of customers — customers of the outlet which had provided them in the first place.
Perfectly understandable and at one level, completely acceptable. If a cafe or restaurant table is occupied by some teenagers killing time, or a couple of pensioners taking a sos beag, that means less room for people who’ll pay to sit there: these are businesses which are being run, not social services.
But we can also look at this in a different way. If a business plants tables and chairs outside its front door then it’s occupying the public space while also charging those citizens if they wish to use that public space. Is that fair?
The obvious defence such businesses could mount is to point out that if the local authority is not providing places for people to sit down in the city, it’s not the businesses’ job to do so in its stead. Of course, the council should provide more benches and seating for its citizens in the interests of their safety and comfort.
(A similar point could be made about the inaccessibility of public toilets in the city, something that would probably surprise Klondyke if he were able to return from the great beyond).
But there’s a reason I mentioned teenagers and pensioners above, not to mention those with mobility issues.
The first two are groups of people to whom six or seven euro, or more, for coffee and a cake is a stiff price to pay for somewhere to meet and talk or to rest for a few minutes
The same may be true for those in the third group as well, who also have an additional challenge in simply negotiating streets that are far more cluttered than they ever were before.
What I don’t notice is a chorus of voices advocating for these groups of people. Allyship is the great clarion call of our time, with many declaring themselves staunch supporters of this cause or that, often signalling their commitment with determined keystrokes, or courageous emoji work.
Some causes and people seem to attract vociferous support, though, and others don’t. Why not? Because there isn’t a gratifying trendiness associated with those causes?
Calling for Cork’s citizens to be facilitated with clear footpaths and ample council seating is not a cry for freedom destined to adorn a thousand t-shirts; nor is your columnist about to alarm anyone by saying ‘first they came for your right to sit on a bench, and your children are next’.
Improving life in the city is about a thousand small changes, though, and not a few headline-grabbing moves. Tidying the streets and installing more benches would make Cork better for the very young and the very old alike.
And as we’ve seen plenty of times, improvements that are targeted at those groups are improvements that benefit everyone.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
