The name game
I’ve just been flicking through the latest issue of The Journal, and I thought this extract from Danny Cusack’s article on p70 was worth reproducing. It’s about the irreverent nicknames given to public monuments in Dublin:
The tart with the cart: The statue of Molly Malone at the top of Grafton Street, near Trinity College.
The hags with the bags: The statue of two women sitting and resting their shopping bags at the bottom of Liffey Street just near the quays.
The scut under the Butt: The memorial to James Connolly unveiled in 1994 and lovated under Butt Bridge, opposite Liberty Hall.
The chime in the slime: The underwater digital clock installed in the Liffey near O’Connell Bridge to count down the minutes and seconds to the new millenium (2000). It had to be taken up again because its presence constantly interfered with rowing crews trying to use the river.
The floozy in the jacouzzi/the hoor in the sewer: The statue of Anna Livia Plurabelle in her fountain in the middle of O’Connell Street. She has now gone to make way for the Spike.
The spire in the mire/the pin in the bin: A reference to the Millenium Spike and the litter-ridden state of O’Connell Street. The Spike is the tall metal tower about three-and-a-half times the height of the GPO and located in the middle of O’Connell Street on the site of Nelson’s Pillar which was blown up by the IRA around the time of the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising in 1966.
Does anybody have some Australian examples? The closest I can think of is the nickname “Polly pipe” for the tunnel on Perth’s Graham “Polly” Farmer freeway, but it doesn’t have the same ring to it as the Dubliners’.
Well, there is the Mall’s Balls in Adelaide (a stainless steel sculpture with two identical spheres, one sitting on top of the other, in Rundle Mall).
There’s Rick’s ahem… “Bell Tower” down by the river here in Perth.
It doesn’t have a ring to it like the Dublin ones, but I’ve always loved “Jeff’s Haircut” over the airport freeway into Melbourne.
I’ve heard the Anzac Bridge in Sydney called “madonna’s bra”..
Jeff’s Erection, somewhere in Victoria. The pick up sticks gate, officially known as federation something or other. Can you tell I only live here half the year?