Last chance to look through the Portal
When I first heard about the idea of the Portal (a real-time, livestream webcam connecting Dublin and New York), I thought it sounded, to be honest, kind of daft. Maybe it would have impressed us 20 years ago but today? Everyone has a portal in their pocket that can video call anyone they know wherever they are in the world at any time. With just two clicks from my breakfast table in New York, I can get a live feed to my parents in their lunchtime kitchen in Ireland . I also remember watching the Roddy Doyle film, ‘When Brendan Met Trudy’, which contains a scene in which Trudy rushes to O’Connell Bridge to wave at a webcam, knowing that her sister in the USA would be watching online. And that was 24 years ago. It was somewhat futuristic then, but God, not now. We’ve lived through a pandemic for Christ’s sake. Did the Portal artist think he was introducing us to Zoom?
Who would walk to a portal anyway when you can simply google “live webcam O’Connell Street” any time from the comfort of your own home. (OK, I just did this for the first time for research purposes and now I can't stop looking at it. So mesmerising. The Luas, the seagulls, the Deliveroo cyclists, Dublin buses, the rain. I googled cameras for my hometown too but found only this one, trained on the altar of the Catholic church where not much is happening at any given time. Though the link also contains full recordings of recent funerals as well as one 3 hour wedding from the summer of 2023 and a test recording (with the lights off) from 2022. Isn’t the internet a fabulous place?)
I say all this but I say a lot of things. At the end of the day, I love a gimmick and it is my home city so obviously I went to see it twice in its first three days. What can I say, the excitement got the better of me.
I was there for opening day and the atmosphere was fantastic! News reporters with TV crews interviewed members of the crowd. Dublin looked great and a woman standing beside me said aloud to herself: “I miss Dublin so much”.
I wanted to tell her that New York already had a portal to Dublin. A real portal. Did she not know? There's a Penneys in Brooklyn that is so exactly like any Penneys that it genuinely feels like you’ve been transported to O'Connell Street. Same stock, Irish sizing, prices in Euro, basins lining the path to the till filled with secret socks, make-up sponges and 2-for-1 wipes. Who knew I was so homesick for €1 face masks and hair treatments I'd never use? Not me until they were filling up that weird shopping sack/basket thing you only get in Penneys. All I needed was a Butler’s hot chocolate, 3 sugar coated mini donuts and a Bible-basher to try and sidestep to complete the O’Connell Street experience.
I hadn't arranged to meet anyone at the Portal but still found myself searching the crowd looking back at me from Dublin hoping to see someone I knew. You know when you land in Dublin airport and you haven't asked anyone to collect you, but you still scan the crowd at Arrivals in case there’s miraculously someone standing there with a sign with your name on it even though you never gave anyone your flight details and you’re only a 20 minute taxi ride home anyway.
Two days after the opening, one of the kids had a doctor’s appointment downtown. We were about a ten minute walk from the Portal and I thought: I can't be this close and not drop in. If word had got out that I was spotted in the area and hadn’t called in to say hello, I’d never hear the end of it.
I had both kids with me this time and anyone who has kids this young (3 and 4 and a half) knows that you can have only one activity a day. Two activities, you're really pushing it and three - well, you're taking your life in your hands. At this point I’d already gotten everyone successfully downtown for an 8am hospital appointment and afterwards, rewarded that effort with a diner breakfast which was activity number two. The wheels were already starting to come off in the diner, but I was overcome with an overwhelming sense of obligation as though showing my children a lunchtime view of North Earl Street was an important part of their heritage.
So the three of us walked in our summer clothes, in the cold and rain, because I had dressed us for the weather we had had the day before without actually looking out the window or checking the forecast for today. The whole way there my 4 year old cried that she wanted to go home and she didn't want to look at Dublin because it sounded like a BORING idea! And to be fair to her, it did sound like a boring idea. When we got there, the Portal was turned off but someone, looking at their phone, announced “They can see us in Dublin” and with the confirmation that they could see us in Dublin, my 3 year old turned round, bent over and lifted up her dress to the blank screen. I do believe this was the first mooning incident - my poor, bored 3 year old kicked all the hoo-ha off. I apologise.
Some people move to New York and make it their whole personality (Exhibit A: a Substack called ‘Notes from New York’ where I write about New York with an accompanying photograph of me in a New York subway station. Did you know that I live in New York?). The week the portal opened, the portal became my whole personality. I got so caught up in the excitement that I talked about it to anyone who would listen. Seriously. I was waiting to cross the road one day and an elderly man standing beside me said, “It’s cold today, isn't it?”. I think it was partly the shock that a New Yorker was striking up pleasant conversation and not berating me for no reason or looking at my kids like they were an unflushed toilet for simply existing, but I completely over-egged my response.
“Yeah we’re just back from the Portal” I said to him. “Do you know the Portal? It’s a portal to Dublin - it’s like a live feed and I could see in the Portal that they were wearing short sleeves in the Portal so it’s obviously warm in Dublin which I could see through the Portal.” And then the friendly man started to back away slowly and I realised I needed to stop saying ‘portal’. I said the word portal so much that it completely lost all meaning. I returned to my apartment trying it out out loud: “Portal? Portal. Pordle. Pordle?”
End of the Portal
The Portal is set to close permanently next month, 2 September. They’ve taken it away from us before for bad behaviour but if you want to look through it, this really is your very last chance.
In New York, the Portal is located at the Flatiron Plaza on Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street and in Dublin, you will find it at the junction of North Earl Street and O’Connell Street. It is open from 6am to 4pm in NY and from 11am to 9pm in Dublin.
Meet you at the Portal?
I will be on the New York side of the Portal tomorrow (Friday 30th August) at 11am (4pm in Dublin). Come say hi?
Three activities and you can’t be sure that everyone will come back alive. 🤣
I’m desperately waiting for a portal to be placed in London , great post 😀