TARA BRADYvisits Tallaght Stadium, where car boots open with the promise of bargains and deals
NOT FAR FROM the terminus of the Red Line Luas, where Tallaght’s grand, aspirational sprawl finds a surprisingly neat centre, this week’s temporary traders are already setting up shop.
On a longer summer afternoon, passing punters and the plain nosy could expect to see hot-dog vendors and the occasional bouncy castle at the weekly car boot sale. Early February, however, is quite another matter; if this were a romantic Irish novel, we’d probably write it up as a soft day and stay home in the Big House.
For the operators of the trunk market at Tallaght Stadium, the damp makes for a hard sell; only 60 cars are here today, about half the normal turnout. Still, even this reduced capacity makes for a mightily impressive array for unwanted domestic goods.
We say “unwanted”. For many, this is no mere tacky bazaar or flea circus but a potentially sacred place where the Ghosts of Shopping Trips Past may finally be laid to rest; a kind of spiritual retreat for the reformed shopaholic. “We bought a lot of stuff during those Celtic Tiger years,” says one patron. “We don’t need it. We probably never needed it. And we’d rather have some money in our pockets, thanks very much.”
Scarcely used or rapidly outgrown sports equipment, particularly skiing gear, is not uncommon. Home gym sets – still in their original packing – suggest that some people’s New Year resolutions have already fallen by the wayside. Elsewhere, bigger kids have abandoned their three-quarter-sized guitars and violins in favour of adult dimensions or rival pastimes.
“You pay a fortune for it then use it twice” is a poignantly repeated refrain around these parts. Picture a dead letter office for discarded hobbies and interests and you’re halfway there. On any given Saturday, however, Tallaght Stadium offers the materially fatigued soul an opportunity to move on.
Car-boot sales, already a staple of weekend life for many Americans and Britons, are finally a growth sector in Ireland. We have, perhaps, been a little slow in this regard. UK residents have been avid “booters” since the early 1970s when Fr Harry Clark, a Mancunian priest, introduced the idea after seeing something similar while holidaying in Canada.
Newcomers to this particular vehicular symposium admit they’ve resisted the idea due to certain negative, peculiarly national connotations around street trading.
Others, hit by recessionary factors, have been won over by the lure of quick money. Keep smiling, say regulars, and you can expect to make anything between €200 and €300 each time. Whatever way you look at it, that’s walking around money.
One lady, lately returned from Thailand, flits between the markets as a way of financing exotic expeditions. For other families, it’s a fun way to pass a Saturday morning and – totted up over a few months – enough for an annual jaunt to Disneyland. (They don’t call this place Tallaghtfornia for nothing, you know.)
Sometimes the cash is rather less important than simply getting your damn cupboard back. Last-minute bargains are customary among sellers who just can’t face lugging that drum kit home again.
There are no professional hawkers here; these are mostly ordinary folks who wish to repossess their overcrowded attics and basements.
As this is Ireland, a nation where famously one can “go nowhere and do nothing” without attracting unwanted attention, many vehicles, including a BMW, are far from home. The owners love car-booting, but they love it all the more when the next-door neighbours aren’t likely to show up and start rifling through their particulars.
Even these parochial stigmas are, we suspect, on the way out. Wandering around the stadium or similar events at Ashbourne and Carrickmines, one finds a very middle-class looking clientele who might otherwise be found antiquing or at the hairdressers. If only that pesky snowboard or forgotten figurine would go and sell itself.
The Tallaght Stadium Car Boot Sale takes place every Saturday from 10am–3pm; Ashbourne Car Boot Sale is on Sundays from 10am; see irishcarboot.ie for details
