Michael Moynihan: Cork should think about the vista it presents to visitors as they arrive

We need gates to this city — not to keep people out, but as places where we can clearly declare to one and all: 'This is Cork' 

The fifth Innisfallen passing Blackrock Castle on its maiden voyage through Cork Harbour and along the Marina into Cork City in May 1969 — surely a tasty way to encounter the city. Picture: Irish Examiner Archive

Here's how you approach a city: “It seemed like a matter of minutes when we began rolling in the foothills before Oakland and suddenly reached a height and saw stretched out ahead of us the fabulous white city of San Francisco on her 11 mystic hills with the blue Pacific and its advancing wall of potato-patch fog beyond, and smoke and goldenness of the late afternoon of time.”

Jack Kerouac wrote that decades ago and, as a description of Cork’s twin city, it takes beating. San Francisco has a serious advantage: You can arrive by crossing the Bay Bridge or the Golden Gate Bridge, both of which show off the city.