YUCK OF THE IRISH
Boozy & worse in NYC video ‘Portal’ to Dublin
This is why some of us can’t have nice things.
Surprising absolutely no one, the voyeuristic new “Portal” street exhibit in the Flatiron District — connecting New York City and Dublin with a 24/7 live video feed — has already caused chaos, with mischief-makers on Ireland’s side flashing everything from bare bums to swastikas and a photo of the Twin Towers in flames on 9/11.
Part interactive sculpture and part webcam, the 3.5-ton artwork was installed Wednesday at the busy Manhattan junction of Broadway, Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street. It opened in tandem with its sister “Portal” in Dublin, positioned facing the city’s bustling O’Connell Street.
Billed by project organizers at Portals.org as a “bridge to a united planet,” each structure enables passers-by in either city to see — but not hear — what’s happening on the other side 24 hours a day on a massive 8-by-8-foot video screen.
But that earnest utopian vision proved no match for the pub-lined Dublin thoroughfare, whose Guinness-glugging patrons were quickly drawn to the futuristiclooking exhibit like moths to a flame in videos circulating online.
Within hours of the Dublin portal going live, a “very drunk” woman in her 40s was led away by cops and arrested after “grinding” her backside against the screen, as Liza Linnane, the woman who filmed video of the incident, explained on Instagram.
“Basically she was there for about 20 mins very drunk and was slapping and grinding against the portal before guards stepped in,” she wrote.
The arrested woman wasn’t the only Dubliner who couldn’t resist using the symbol of international kinship to display their rear-end.
Drunken stupor stream
Another video on X shows an inebriated-looking man waving at a crowd on the New York side in broad daylight before dropping his pants and giving them a Big Applesized eyeful of a full Irish moon and then stumbling away.
Another Dubliner missing the point of the exhibit entirely brandished a cellphone showing the image of United Airlines Flight 175 careening toward the south tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11, with the crowd on the New York side groaning in response.
Adam Nunan, a cruise-ship audio engineer from Dublin in New York while his ship was docked, said, “That doesn’t represent Ireland very well when you do that.
“That was everyone’s thoughts back home, there was a lot of people who didn’t want the portal to be built for that reason,” he said. “But in these types of things, there’s always going to be that minority of people who ruin it for everyone, you know?”
People checking out the Portal in Manhattan on Sunday afternoon took the rude behavior mostly in stride, although some exchanged mock lewd gestures and middle fingers with the crowds on the Emerald Isle side.