THE Central Bank makes for an endearingly naff hang-out. There it sits, a squat, frumpy, vulgar lump of 1980s futurism - like something blurted from the imagination of a concrete fetishist who has read too much Philip K. Dick. If boredom had a colour it would be the porridge beige adorning this frowning Orwellian sponge cake. Stare long enough at those humourless flanks, and even the glum Dublin sky, hardly the most beguiling of sights, starts to look pretty. The kids, obviously, love it to bits.
At the plaza that fronts the bank's Dame Street entrance, they linger in grotesque little huddles - goths, punks, vaguely new-age-don't-wash-their-hair types, diffidently chewing on hand-rolled cigarettes, swigging cans of cheap beer. The atmosphere is terribly grim and po-faced; the sort of post-industrial miserabilism you expect from a Ken Loach movie or a BBC2 drama. God, why are they all angst-ridden, so pierced?
Saturday afternoon and it's hot as hell - stifling, clothes-sticking-to-your-skin hot. I'm sulking on the graffiti-spattered steps that lead up to the bank and which the Central Bank authorities have decreed will soon be fenced off to keep away the miscreants who each weekend gather here to drop litter, daub ugly slogans, spill beer, urinate, copulate and generally make a bloody mess.
The approach to the bank entrance doesn't give the right impression to important visitors, a bank spokesman said last week. A planned £1 million facelift will rail off the steps and restore the dignity which the Central Bank has lost due to the public's littering.
It has been getting so bad recently that they've had to scour the steps clean with chemicals. In places the stonework has been permanently damaged. Used condoms and syringes are starting to appear in the copses of bushes flanking the building. You can imagine the smell on a Sunday morning.
For some, the party has started already. A group of teenage boys sitting behind me are guzzling tins of what smells like lighter fluid but is probably discount cider and singing Republican songs. Well, I say sing. They don't seem to know any of the words and are quite drunk. One of them starts to heckle me. I've made eye contact. Big mistake. He jerks two fingers in my direction. I shuffle away. Time to check out the goths and new-agers. They look a little scary, but not as scary as a gaggle of inebriated 15-year-olds in Celtic tracksuits.
One chap sports bits of metal in both cheeks and a spike through his nose. Sure, he's making a statement, doing his own thing etc. but honestly - yuck. He scowls constantly at his girl-friend - another walking pin-cushion. Perhaps he is in pain. Actually, I'm exaggerating slightly. It isn't all that bad. Most of the people hanging about are doing just that - waiting to meet someone. Lots of through traffic from Temple Bar, busy people clutching quilted shopping bags the size of sofas and mobile phones smaller than mascara pouches. The full-time dawdlers, the ones caked in eyeliner and leather, are a minority. Certainly, the plaza is hardly the rank, filth-infused pit of depravity which it has been portrayed as in some quarters. Still, just gone 3 p.m. Give it a few hours. Only the skate kids, the speed-freaks whizzing about on roller-blades and hurtling into bollards, liven things up. Where have all the stag parties, the guys in frocks and orange highlander wigs, gone? A terribly unsavoury bunch, sure - but if we're going to have a seedy city-centre hangout - please can't we have a colourful one?
By 5 p.m. the wannabe misfits have seized control. I feel like I've strayed into a Prodigy video; hemmed in by tattoos and mohawks, unfeasibly massive jackboots and carefully judged expressions of world-weary superiority. Nobody says much. Too busy brooding and comparing dyed facial hair, presumably.
Two girls shrouded in regulation PVC park themselves on the steps and share a cigarette. They glare with open disbelief when I slouch over and ask why they are larking about here.
"Why shouldn't we? What's wrong with the place?" bristles the taller one. Her name is Paula. She looks like the lead singer from The Cure. They haven't heard about the plans to fence off the steps. The news doesn't bother them much. "Big deal," shrugs Paula "We'll just find somewhere else to sit."
Darkness descends at around 10.30. All the goths have gone, replaced by a dribble of shivering passers-by waiting for friends. A homeless man is begging near the bushes, not having any luck. People are in a rush; they've caught the scent of the pubs and clubs, the unfolding night. No time for charity. I walk up and ask him his name - he ignores me. I try to press the issue, he flashes an ugly look. I back off, mope over to the steps. Would kill for a beer right now.
Come 11.30 p.m. the Temple Bar flotsam begins to spills over the plaza in a lurid, babbling tide. Girls in ludicrously tight tops flit across the street, hulking boyfriends lumber possessively in their slipstream. Twenty minutes later an eerie hush has descended. There's just me, the homeless man and some elderly chap who has fallen in a heap on the steps and is now either comatose drunk or dead.
It's almost a relief when, sometime after 2 a.m., the party-goers return in vast, glassy-eyed droves. Such carry on! They shamble about and shout and snog and shout some more. Nightlink buses and taxis stream by, a chap in a ripped leather jacket passes out near me, an encrusted kebab flopping to the ground in his wake. The thing explodes like a hand-grenade made from body parts. I feel ill.
It goes on like this for some time, dozens of drunk people wander about, fall over invisible tripwires, babble at no one in particular. Typical Saturday night out, really. It's nearly 3 a.m. when I leave. All I can think is "gosh, my backside feels numb".
How tempting it would be to distil from these events some grandiose treatise on the spiritual vacuity, the empty hedonism, of modern Ireland. Or to lament the bored kids who think it's cool to hang around, gazing at their 10-hole Doc Martens, as bored as any restless youngsters clicking heels on a small-town street-corner. But such conclusions are fatuous, overwrought. You suspect that Paula the goth's prognosis was closer to the truth; people just like to hang around and leave a mess. If not, here then someplace else.