Booming

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Recession?

What recession?

Let me take you on a short walk along the Irish Life Shopping Mall, which connects Talbot Street to Abbey Street in the centre of Dublin city.

We'll just check out the Abbey Street end, seeing as how that's the end we're at.

No shortage of thriving businesses. Furniture, I think, ...

... and a fashionable barber shop ...

... and a clothing shop ...

... that is so big I need two pictures to cover it ...

... and a cosmetics shop, I think ...

... a hairdressers ...

... and a smartphone shop ...

... and back out into the open air on a sunny sunny day.

What could be more pleasant?

We've turned the corner, seen the light at the end of the tunnel and savoured the green, green shoots of home.

All full ahead and steady as she goes.

Now where did I see this lady from the hairdressers before?

Ah yes, she used to work in the hairdressers in that big TCD commercial development in Pearse St.

I remember her because she was one of the victims of the Dublin Titter who went around obscuring invisible nipples with blue paint. Maybe that's why she left there to come to work here.

But the Pearse St. façades were fakes, were they not?

Didn't I blog them myself.

Booming my arse. You'd better believe it.

Every shop front I have just shown you represents a vacated premises. They are all fakes. The place is coming apart.

Lack of demand? Upward only rents? Increased rates?
Drug infestation in the centre city?

And more to come, much more.

Very, very scarey.