street life

We started in the old Dandelion Market around 1977-78, were there when they closed it, and even occupied it for some time afterwards but, eventually, we were put out and started trading on the streets, explains Brendan Dowling, a familiar figure on Dublin s Grafton Street who has been trading there since then with his stall of leather belts opposite Bewleys.
At the time, he recalls, the laws were very old and obscure and we studied the legal position and found a lot of loopholes, including one where bridges weren t listed as prohibited areas, so we all hit O Connell Bridge! Whereas the old law only listed places where you couldn t trade, the new law they then brought in specified designated areas where you could sell. Yet, there was still a loophole because they couldn t bring in the law until the people who were trading under the old law were dealt with, and so we were given carte blanche to choose our places.
There were 22 traders involved, and we all agreed the pecking order of positions. Luckily, I was number two on the list and picked Grafton Street, opposite Bewleys. Number one on the list picked the spot next to Switzers [now Brown Thomas], and there are others on Grafton Street, one opposite Trinity, a few on O Connell Bridge, one next to Easons, and so on. I think there are 15 of the original Dandelion stalls still trading but, when we were allocated our positions, the door was legally closed behind us so that it s next to impossible to get a new position now.
Has Dowling noticed a different atmosphere developing on the street over the years?
There s certainly a difference on a performance level, he observes. People like Little John ( Charlie Chaplin ), Thom McGinty (the Diceman), and The Gruesome Twosome girls are gone. There was a sense of community through the years, but now it s a sense of someone coming in on a Saturday to make a few bob, not a sense of commitment to the street. Thom is sorely missed and he was a lovely man and a great friend. Indeed, during his last months he d come down and sit at my stall and have a cappucino brought out from Bewleys! The overall sense of the street, in general, is more transient.
As for Brendan Dowling himself, he wasn t always selling leather-belts on the street.
For years I was known as The Duckman because I was selling little wooden duck puppets, he smiles. I started in The Dandelion with them, and lived off the ducks for eight years. Then I did badges for a while and a bit of brass jewellery, but it s only in the last few years I m doing leather.
My relationship with Grafton Street is that I never regard it as a business . I do it as much as I need to do to make a living. I m out with the stall today, for instance, because I need the rent today. Yesterday, I didn t think I d need it today! I m not on the stall every day during the winter, but for Christmas and summer I let myself get into a business mode, if you like. It s a goldmine if I wanted it to be, but I choose to run it the way I want. I m always being made offers to rent my stall for more than I m making on it but, for me, the freedom I get from having it there is worth more than anything.
Dowling s particular modus operandi is to have his own input into production.
I like working with leather, he explains, it s very pliable and responds well to being worked. I like working with my hands and, on some level, I ve always worked with my hands. Wood is quite a hard material to work with by comparison, it demands certain lines. With the leather, I buy a hide of it and make the belts myself. Interestingly, there isn t a tannery left in Ireland and so, all the hides leave Ireland, mainly to England or Italy, where they get processed. The hides are then imported back into Ireland.
Has he noticed any decline in business for ideological reasons?
No, I haven t. Indeed, some of my best friends are in the Animal Liberation Front! he quips.
Although Dowling s prominent position on Grafton Street makes his occupation high-profile, he is best known in other circles for an entirely different reason.
As General Secretary of the Irish Martial Arts Commission and chief instructor of the Irish Aikido Association, his home club is the Whitefriar Street Aikido and to witness him in full flight is to admire great skill, flexibility and temperament.
Aikido was answering a need in me, he explains. I was born in Northern Ireland and, until 18, I was very involved in the scene there. It s not that I got disillusioned with it but that I felt that militarism wasn t going to get us anywhere and that, generally, it doesn t get anyone anywhere. I became a pacifist in a very negative sense, to the point where I would ve let somebody beat the shite out of me and I wouldn t have minded.
Then, when I saw Aikido first, in Dublin, it was like I found a missing piece of the jigsaw. I d never done martial arts because I was a street fighter who didn t go to learn to fight. The minute I saw Aikido, my eyes were opened. It was a sense of being able to stand up to shit, without becoming it. That was a dilemma that had become a problem in my own life. Yet, when I find something I tend to dive into it and tear it apart in trying to find out what s wrong with it. 14 years later I m still trying to find out what s wrong with Aikido!
In physical terms, Aikido looks like ballet-as-defence, so graceful are its non-linear movements. It is its philosophical aspect, however, which is the crux of the art.
There s a lot of negativity in the world, says Dowling, and the people that stand up to it, unfortunately, are mostly people who get better at being negative. Be it business, religion, fighting. That logic doesn t feel right to me. Aikido, in all its essence and all its movement, offers me a sense that there is no enemy and the minute you regard people as an enemy, the whole dynamic changes. You ve bought into their negativity.
The more equipped you are, the less threatened you are, he continues. Violence is the ultimate threat, and the less intimidated you are by that, the more you are free to explore other options. There s an interesting notion that Aikido is addressing a momentary imbalance in somebody else s frame of mind and you put back, whatever it is, to bring that into balance. Sometimes that ll be giving somebody a hug when they don t want it, sometimes it might be telling someone to fuck off, and sometimes it ll be walking away. The aspiration is to get back to the point of balance and harmony. An aspiration for me to win is not a balance.
Does he think martial arts should be brought into the definition of sports ?
There is a sporting aspect, in some martial arts more than others, though Aikido would be on the fringe of sport in the sense that, in our style, we don t compete but there are huge health, fitness and personal development aspects which are crucial. I think there should be more press coverage, but I think part of that has to do with a lot of sports journalists not knowing about martial arts. Part of it is our job to inform them with good packages of information.
There is work to be done on both sides, he concludes. n