It doesn’t look very cool, does it? Unless you’re talking degrees centigrade. But for much of the 1970s, this unlikely collection of stalls, crammed higgedly- piggeldy into the site of the former Taylor-Keith bottling plant, right in the centre of town, was one of Dublin’s hippest shopping locations.
It is, of course, the Dandelion Market, still remembered with affection by many Dubliners for its supplies of items such as cheesecloth shirts, sheepskin coats, tie-dyed tops and trousers whose flares were wide enough to enable the wearer to set sail for the wilder shores of fashion heaven.
In our photo it looks, to be honest, more tatty than trendy. Although the lady on the stall at centre right has attracted an impressive number of folks who are studying with considerable interest her display of – well, what are they? Transistor radios? Telephones? Or maybe those space- age gadgets known as “ansaphones” which, in the years to come, would change all our lives forever?
Her cool-dude neighbour is either totally disgusted with the sudden flurry of activity next door or has deliberately adopted a flamboyant, hands-on-hips pose to show off his enormous watch.
See, folks? You too could sport a timepiece as big as a tarantula! Come and have a look!
It’s working, too. At the extreme left-hand edge of the image, somebody is indeed moving in to peruse the stall’s collection of watches. And replacement watch-straps. (Wow. Remember them? They were replaced, at some point when we weren’t paying attention, by replacement watches. More fools us. )
Time would finally be called on the Dandelion Market at the end of 1979, when preliminary work on the St Stephen's Green shopping centre got under way. Not before a young band by the name of U2 played some of their first gigs in the market. But that's a hipster tale for, ahem, Another Day.
