There was a specific kind of brainless, base energy at the Dublin-New York Portal on Tuesday afternoon that recalled something from my childhood. At first I could not quite think what it was, and then I realised that it was the feeling of being in an all girls school and converging with the all boys school.
This would happen occasionally, back in Ireland where I grew up – we would be in plays or science competitions that involved overlap with the boys’ schools (in fact this was why we wanted to be in said plays and science competitions). There would always come a moment when we would all be revealed to one another and gawp at the spectacle of our equivalents, so like us and yet so alien. Those moments were filled with a giddy sense of anticipation and inherent disappointment, so that all either side could do was laugh and jeer and point at one another.
The Portal, conceived of by the artist Benediktas Gylys and produced through collaboration between Dublin city council and a Manhattan business group, is an open-air video link that connects O’Connell Street in Dublin city centre and the Flatiron district in Midtown Manhattan. Its creators’ dreams of poignant connection and shared humanity were briefly thwarted last week after incidents of misbehaviour forced the portal into temporary shutdown. Body parts were flashed, drug references pantomimed, swastikas and a photo of the September 11 attacks held up to the portal’s screen.
Though certainly at least one of the more notable rule breaks, an OnlyFans model flashing her breasts and promoting her content, took place in New York, it seems the bulk of the mischief – and certainly the lion’s share of the mooning – was in Ireland. This induced in me a familiar blend of shame and pride, one that arises whenever Irish people do things that are so stupid that I find them funny in a deep gut way. There is some drive to pointlessly destroy things that is so senseless that I find it almost life-affirming. I am thinking, for instance, of my friend telling me of a boy on a Dublin bus who threw rubbish on the ground and was reprimanded: “The bus is not your bin.” He responded, sneering: “The world is my bin.”
The portal, too, was briefly a bin, but now it has been rejuvenated with innocence intact and secured. Adjustments to address the bad behaviour have been implemented – extra fencing, security guards, shorter opening hours to prevent late-night debauchery, and blurring technology that will intervene if a person comes too close to the camera. I live in New York and spent an afternoon in Flatiron, after the Portal had been reinstated, where I was mostly overwhelmed by the Pollyanna-ish camaraderie on display. It made me feel a little ugly, actually, a miser of spirit, because I was there, I realised, with a bit of a pre-emptive smirk, ready to roll my eyes. And I did indeed roll my eyes but I was also laughing near constantly for several hours with sheer fondness, fondness for how pathetically, adorably basic humans are. Even last week’s naughtiness made me feel that way, too – what’s more fundamental a reaction to having an audience than to simply pull out your arse?
My afternoon began with making my friend Oisín, an ex-boyfriend from my early 20s when I lived in Dublin and a dear friend ever since, meet me from the other side. I don’t have a sign, I told him, but I’m wearing a really bright dress. I was running late, shocked and ill-dressed for the suddenly boiling weather, in semi-formal wear from a date the night before, and barrelled up to the screen where I saw my old friend and got on the phone with him. “I can’t believe we finally have an authentic New York-style portal in Dublin,” he joked and we shot the breeze for a few minutes while conceding we felt incredibly stupid. It felt good to see him in the flesh, because the last time we were seeing each other on screen like that was on Zoom during Covid. As we spoke, an elderly man on the Dublin side slowly ambled ahead of the security railing and peered, frowning, directly into the portal before being bundled amiably away, which struck me as much funnier than any mooning could be.
Oisín and I hung up and I chatted to some of my fellow portal dwellers. As ever in New York, my ears are finely tuned to identify an Irish accent at great distances; I am famous for irritating long-term ex-pats who wish to self-define as New Yorkers, as I sidle up to them and grinning, accusingly shout: “Cork! I hear Cork there!” In the crowd I heard an Irish couple marvelling, asked where they were from and was delighted to learn they were from my home town, Waterford. Sandra and Sam told me they were on holiday to celebrate a 50th birthday. They had just been to mass at St Patrick’s Cathedral, and had come to look at the feed of Ireland, beguiled.
A police officer stopped beside me with a look of comically extreme ecstasy on her face and said, “Is this real? It’s really Dublin in Ireland?” The newly implemented security also included a jovial crowd-wrangler whose shouts assured us this was certainly Dublin in Ireland, and every few seconds yelled at people to stay between the lines to remain in shot, and to show the people in Dublin some love.
A bashful, charming embarrassment was the defining emotion, broken sporadically by the bolder folk coming front and centre to do whatever little routine they wished to execute. A woman twerked furiously to a rapturous reception in Dublin. A game of rock, paper, scissors broke out. Nobody managed any nudity while I watched, though two teenage boys in Dublin with jittery, frantic energy kept miming almost yanking their pants down, to scandalised hooting on our side. It felt that both sides were waiting for the other to engage in a spectacle that never arrived, but the generalised let-down atmosphere was softened by a pervasive sweetness. Person after person held up their dog like Simba in the Lion King. A large, extremely jacked guy wearing hot pants said to his chihuahua: “Do you see those people? Those people are all the way in Ireland.” Pretty women wearing a lot of makeup and gym clothes came through occasionally and posed and pouted as near to the screen as they could get and I heard several of them say: “But I can’t see myself.”
My friend Jean came by and said that the whole thing made her sad, because it was putatively connective but in reality had no substance. Nobody was communicating anything or reaching one another. I knew what she meant, but I felt the opposite: the inevitable failure, and people’s gormless attempts regardless of such, felt heartening to me. There was something simian about it, not only in that it felt zoo-like being regarded by the other side as they waited to be entertained, but also in the way that people behave when language is out of bounds. Some of them dance, or make that insufferable heart gesture with both their hands, and mostly they just laugh and wave and throw their bodies around enough to get attention. I always like being reminded how foolish we actually are, how universally limited our minds. The urge to goof off for the enjoyment of other people, internationally common idiocy, this is the kind of connectivity that I can stand behind.
Megan Nolan is an Irish novelist based in New York
