The Leeside Insider: Jack O'Rourke Cork Special

CORK is an interesting city, because it’s small enough to make you feel welcome and not feel lost. At the same time, it’s big enough to explore and feel slightly anonymous.

First off, it’s a city of contradictions. For example, I teach on the northside, where you’ll find the ‘Four-Faced Liar’, which is how we characterise the Shandon Bells. It’s got four clocks – and each one tells a different time. I think that sums up Cork. There are so many different accents, mentalities and personalities.

The album I’ve just released is all about the experiences I had growing up in the city. The lead single ‘Naivety’ mentions the moment I kissed my first boyfriend under one of the old elm trees in Fitzgerald Park. You can go to that park, then head over to ‘The Shakey Bridge’, which takes you across the River Lee. The bridge shakes vigorously when you’re on it, which as a young kid is the scariest thing - as an adult, it’s still fairly terrifying!

It’s all part of Mardyke, which is one of the most beautiful, historical parts of the city. If you look out across the bridges from the River Lee, you can marvel at all the old Georgian houses across the water.

Then if you keep on the northside and wind your way past Murphy’s brewery, you can smell the hops from the stout being made – that, to me, is the smell of home. Across the road, there’s spring water. No scientist has yet been able to identify the source it comes from, but it drips into the vats to give Murphy’s its unique taste.

If you want a good place to eat lunch, Cork Coffee Roasters is a nice café on Bridge Street, which does the most incredible home-roasted coffee. The English Market is a great spot right in the centre, which does a lot of good local and vegetarian food. Gub’s, in the Triskel Arts Centre, is also an amazing place: every Friday night they do a tasting menu which is well worth checking out. My friend Doxy and Jimmy run that place, and they also sell a huge selection of records and vinyl. On that note, there’s a lot of nice vintage shops popping up in the city now. The Village Hall is an amazing spot, which is filled with so much old vinyl it’s like you’re at Camden Market.

I don’t want to sound like a raging alcoholic here, but there are numerous great pubs in Cork. One of my earliest gigs was played at Sin É, which will always be a special place for me. You go upstairs and find this great piano and a room decorated with old posters of previous gigs. It’s a very historic place for music that mixes the traditional with the modern. You could have The Cure playing on the speakers, then the next thing you know a trad session would break out. Or you might have a statue of the Child of Prague with the head broken off beside a poster for PJ Harvey.

That’s just the type of place it is. It’d also be remiss not to mention Coughlans. It’s just a lovely pub for live music and recently won the National Live Music Venue Award.

If you want to explore further, take a trip to the west of the county for a day. There’s the most amazing cornucopia of legendary artists, poets and musicians living out in West Cork.

My parents used to joke that there were gays out in West Cork before there were gays in the rest of Ireland. It’s always attracted people with an artistic temperament from all over the country. And if you head to Ballydehob for the Jazz Festival during the summer, you’ll find all these artists coming together.

One last thing: make sure to check out the Coal Quay, one of the oldest markets in Ireland. You can get good food there and bric-a-brac with anything you want, but you’ll also find so many great characters. You might overhear old women gossiping about how some young one is “all fur coat and no knickers”, which is just local poetry without even realising it.

In the final analysis, that’s the main thing to take away from Cork – it’s always been the people that make the city the great place that it is!