Besties Barbers stands in the centre of Newtownards and the mural above is on the side wall (in Gibson Lane). It features footballer George Best in Northern Ireland strip and sponsorship by local taxi company, Kare Kabs. The interior of the shop is decorated with more Northern Ireland football heroes.
Elsewhere: Squinter critiques the mural.
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Copyright © 2014 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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“She Sat Down So We Could Stand Up”. Rosa Parks was born 101 years ago today, on February 4th, 1913. This board in the New Lodge hails her as as the “mother of the civil rights movement”. It includes images of Parks in old age, a reproduction of a photo of Parks sitting on a bus in Montgomery in 1956, after the Supreme Court ruling which declared segregation on the buses illegal, eleven months after the boycott began, and a Montgomery civil rights march on December 5th, 1955 led by Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King. The title of today’s post is a Parks quote. Someone suggested to her, in an attempt to minimize her actions, that perhaps she had refused to move simply because she was tired, to which she replied, “The only tired I was, was tired of giving in”.
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Copyright © 2013 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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“Welcome [to the] loyalist Westwinds estate U.V.F.” – mural a little way down Blenheim Drive from the entrance to the Westwinds estate, Newtownards.
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Copyright © 2013 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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The stained-glass window shown above is on the stairs in An Chultúrlann. It was designed in conjunction with the Windsor Women’s group (Ionad Na mBan Windsor) to commemorate the fact that the place was formerly a Presbyterian church (1896-1982 Eaglaıs Preıspitéıreach, Broadway). The broken white lines which form the cross also stand for road markings. The glass also features the sun, a burning bush, a rainbow, and a Celtic shield. Unveiled June 22nd, 2012.
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Copyright © 2014 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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Here are two more pieces of loyalist graffiti, possibly by the same hand.
The first – “Flag protesters jailed, terrorists bailed” – is in Glenvale Street, just off the Woodvale Road.
The second – “PSNI women beaters” – is further along Woodvale Road at Enfield Street.
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Copyright © 2014 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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Robert Blair “Paddy” Mayne was a rugby player, boxer, golfer, and solicitor, and in WWII a commando and one of the first members of the SAS (Special Air Service), participating in raids behind enemy lines in Egypt and Libya (depicted in the board above), and later, as SAS commander, in France, Belgium and other countries. His many decorations, including the DSO (four times) and French Croix De Guerre and Legion D’Honneur, are pictured below. (His WP page includes an explanation of the ribbon bars.)
Mayne was born in Newtownards and returned there at the end of the war. His statue stands in the town’s Conway Square and this board can be found in Queen Street.
Previously: From The Boyne To Afghanistan
Painted by muraltec.
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Copyright © 2014 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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Yesterday (29 January, 2014) marks the 50th anniversary of Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, currently#42 on IMDb’s list of greatest films. (See the image below – Slim Pickens in the scene of a lifetime, a role Peter Sellers intended to play, alongside his three others; see also this New Yorker magazine retrospective “Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was True”.) The movie retains its relevance in 2014, as evidenced by this stencil in Fountain Street, protesting the use of drone technology by the US in the mideast and Pakistan. Next the stencil of a cowboy riding a drone are the words “The Drone Ranger Tour 2014 – Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria”.
As can be seen in the wide shot below, this piece is next to the Obama ‘I See You‘ (and round the corner from the ‘Don’t Drone Me, Bro‘ stencil).
Slim Pickens as T. J. “King” Kong riding a bomb to mutually assured destruction in Dr. Stangelove.
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Copyright © 2014 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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Above is an RNU board from Lenadoon, protesting against the police system and an alleged identity of the PSNI, the Orange Order and loyal paramilitaries. (See previously: Trinity)
“No political policing. No special powers. No daily armed raids. No daily harassment. No PSNI in our schools. No MI5. No £10 tours. No interment [sic].”
The board dates from 2012 (eleven years after the PSNI’s creation and five years after Sinn Féin’s acceptance of the PSNI) but is no longer present.
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Copyright © 2012 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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Armed masked men, shotgun, automatic weapon, sledgehammer, hand grenade and two pistols, with the flags of Northern Ireland, the UK and the UVF in the background. The plaque reads, “Dedicated to the memory of our lost volunteers who made the supreme sacrifice. Gone but not forgotten”. “Lest we forget” at the bottom. The full mural (below) shows (clockwise from top left) YCV, PAF (Protestant Action Force), UVF (on an Ulster shield), and 36th (Ulster) Division insignia.
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Copyright © 2014 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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“No vote, no voice” and “Vote Unionist”. Here are two pieces of loyalist graffiti concerned with (as they see it) under-representation in the political process. The first is at the corner of Springmartin Road and Ballygomartin Road (“Bobby Sands died 4 fuck all” can be seen underneath). The second is on the Forthriver Road at the Glencairn Day Centre.
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Copyright © 2014 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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Extramural Activity 