I, like tens of thousands of Cork people, eagerly awaited the opening of our newest (and what, on paper, seemed to be greatest) shopping centre yet. The gargantuan development on the site of the former illegal halting site and champion bare-knuckle boxing ring that is Mahon Point.
Well, the travellers are out and the high fashion is the new black, or err pink, or whatever the hell the new black is. Black? Anyway…
We were wowed by various advertising institutions over the course of the past few months leading up to what has become yet another place I wish I had never visited. Have you ever been in Merchant’s Quay shopping centre in the city centre? What about the city centre itself? Yes? Then you’ve been in Mahon Point. Only difference is that you don’t have that agonisingly long 20-step walk between each clothes shop. Wall to wall frills, pinks, ruffles, suede’s and whatnot. It could very well be the heterosexual male’s worst nightmare. I choose to differtiate between Hetero and Metrosexuals in this matter. On walking in what I will admit is a nicely designed front entrance I felt like soiling myself publicly just so I could turn right back around and run. Two floors of it! My God I’m amazed they didn’t put fucking clothes shops on the ceilings!
All that without even so much as a creche for the discerning 18-40 year old male whilst the women folk go off “ooh”ing and “ahh”ing at shit they’re never going to buy anyway. But wait, hooray; there’s an Eason branch. Too good to be true, it’s a completely crap Eason branch. Hold on, there’s a music shop and a video games shop. Nuts, they’re both complete balls aswell.
I can now see great merit in the idea of putting a multi-screen cinema in a building full of womens clothes shops. I know full bloody well I’m not going back down there until the cinema opens. Send herself off shopping with €50 in her back pocket whilst I sashay off to view the latest and greatest violence filled gore romp. It’s clearly a win win situation.
There is a Tesco, but err, what more can you say about Tesco? I guess I could say “erm yay, we now have 2 24hour supermarkets!” Pity that’s two more than we actually need. The only time a 24hour supermarket is useful is when you’re blind drunk and have a wicked dose of the munchies. Note though that minimun wage till jokeys don’t take kindly to being paid in 5 and 10 cent coins.
Case and point, the ladies of http://www.ivenus.com/ are getting all slippery thinking about the shopping bliss. I can’t help being nasty, it’s in my genes. On the upside, it’s created a whole load of new jobs, something which is always welcome in post-celtic tiger Ireland. On yet another downside, the residents of Mahon and employees of Mahon based companies learned very quickly that one doesn’t attempt to get to home/work anymore without spending a long long time in traffic.
So that’s Mahon Point, it’s everything I thought it would be; a fucking disaster!
(ahh, I love a good rant…)